Rainbow’s performance at the Genting Arena in Birmingham from last June is to be released as a double album.
Titled Live In Birmingham 2016, it’ll be out on June 9th through Eagle Rock Entertainment.
The show was the band’s only performance in the UK in 2016 and preceded two dates at Germany’s Monsters Of Rock festival.
Ritchie Blackmore reactivated Rainbow with Lords Of Black singer Ronnie Romero, Stratovarius keyboardist Jens Johansson, Blackmore’s Night drummer David Keith and bassist Bob Nouveau last year.
A statement from the label reads, “This new 2CD set captures the full audio from the British show at the Genting Arena at the NEC, Birmingham.
The setlist for this show, combining classic tracks from both Deep Purple and Rainbow, includes two tracks from the Mark III Deep Purple era, Soldier Of Fortune and Burn that were not included in the German shows.”
Blackmore will bring the new-look Rainbow back to the UK this summer, with four dates planned in June.
1. Over The Rainbow / Highway Star
2. Spotlight Kid
3. Mistreated
4. Since You Been Gone
5. Man On The Silver Mountain
6. Soldier Of Fortune
7. Medley: Difficult To Cure (Beethoven’s Ninth) / Drum Solo / Bass Solo / Band Jam / Keyboard Solo
8. Catch The Rainbow
Disc 2:
1. Perfect Strangers
2. Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll
3. Child In Time
4. Stargazer
5. Medley: Black Night / Woman From Tokyo / Black Night
6. Burn
7. Smoke On The Water
Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow UK tour 2017:
Jun 17: London O2 Stone Free Festival
Jun 22: Manchester Arena
Jun 25: Glasgow SSE Hydro
Jun 28: Birmingham Genting Arena
Phil Collen: The last tour (in 2016) everyone was saying, “This is the best we’ve ever heard you; this is the best we’ve ever seen the show.” And this was consistent. The last run of dates, the first one to sell out was Detroit, and we thought, “We’ll record it and document this”—literally for that reason. And that was it, really. The show went down a storm and it just captured where we were at.
Pulse: How would you compare playing onstage with Def Leppard now to say, in 1987, when Hysteria came out?
Phil Collen: We’re way better now. We can sing properly. We were kind of busking it a bit then, shouting and screaming, and trying to get it in tune. Now, I’m a better singer this year than I was last year, and a way better guitar player. That goes contrary to what I’ve been led to believe, that when bands start sucking or a singer can’t sing quite as well, or a certain player can’t play as much, it’s because they’re not playing as much or singing as much or putting the effort in. It’s like aging. Our bodies don’t just break down because we’re old, they start breaking down because we stop using them—they atrophy. On a side note, last December, I got to play with Jeff Beck in Japan. He plays all the time, and I was just blown away. I’m on stage, watching him, playing along with him, and he improves all the time because he keeps playing. I know a lot of guys from that era who don’t really do that. But then again, they don’t play. And I don’t mean practice; I mean just play and keep it flowing, inspiration-wise. The same with athletes—you see NFL players quit, and then a year after, they’re like twice their size when they were playing. They’re just not active. So, it’s really about that… staying inspired and staying in shape. That’s the big difference with us… It just keeps getting better and better, and for me, it’s really exciting.
Pulse: Def Leppard is touring once more with Poison and Tesla.
Phil Collen: I just produced the new Tesla album, which turned out phenomenal. It’s not mixed yet, but it’s different. It’s really diverse. We’ve been touring with Tesla, and especially for the last two years, we recorded a lot of this stuff while we were on tour, and then we finished it up in Sacramento where the guys are from. I get to spend a lot of time with them. And Poison, the last time they went out, was with us in 2012. The brilliant thing about this lineup is it’s the celebration of integrity. Poison are the same original four members and we’re the same band that put out Hysteria, except Steve Clark passed away [in 1991] and Vivian Campbell is in the band. And Tesla is all the original members, except Dave Rude is playing instead of Tommy Skeoch. I really do treat it as a celebration of integrity and you can’t say that this much these days.
Pulse: Def Leppard has been especially popular in New York for quite some time.
Phil Collen: It’s the first place I ever came to when I came to the States. I was 19 and had a Greyhound bus journey across America. We sing with American accents because we learned from American artists. Rock music and pop music was an American art form, and that’s how we learned. Even the Stones sung in American accents. It was a big deal for us to come to New York in the first place, as was LA. But the first “port of call” for me was New York, and the band, as well. We spent a lot of time there; the record company and the management were based there. So, we were able to work it a bit more. Maybe that’s got something to do with it. But we did spend a lot of time there.
Along with Hashian and Grossi (whom submitted this news), Jim Collins (Vocals) and Donnie Vito (Bass), appear on the song. Listen to the 1996 performance, below.
Boston drummer John Thomas “Sib” Hashian died at the age of 67.
His son, Adam, told TMZ that Sib collapsed onstage while performing on the Legends Of Rock cruise. A witness says CPR was performed and a defibrillator was used but to no avail.
Hashian performed on Boston’s self-titled debut album, released in 1976, and on the band’s sophomore release, Don’t Look Back, issued in 1978. Due to pressure from the Epic Records label, Boston leader Tom Scholz chose Hashian to replace original drummer Jim Masdea prior to the recordings of the debut album. Sib left BOSTON during the recordings of their 1986 album, Third Stage, marking the return of Masdea.
Quiet Riot guitarist Alex Grossi states, “Sibby was the real deal in every sense of the word. Writing and recording with him, Donnie and Jim was an amazing opportunity at age 18. I know many people will miss his smile, sense of humor and amazing drumming – He was a class act all around, which is VERY rare in this business.”
Guitarist Joe Perry reported last week that he thinks the band have at least one more album in them before they retire – and hinted that the upcoming live dates weren’t the last they would play together.
Now Tyler has told People.com that he “can’t say for sure” if the end is in sight.
He explains, “We’ve gone through trying to get a job in a club that we thought was the only way we could pay our rent – to being in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and everything in between – rehabs, arguments, children being born, marriages coming and going, ups and downs, different managers, lawsuits and record labels.
We’ve done so much – one thing we’ve never done is a farewell tour, so you never know – it may wipe the slate clean of some of the problems, things that happen with each other.”
He adds, “The band’s been together for 40 years. Can you imagine? There are no marriages together for 40 years where the passion still runs as deep as it did the first 10 years, in my humble opinion – but the passion is still there.”
Tyler also admits he still gets emotional when Aerosmith are onstage and playing their classic tracks in front of their fans.
He says, “At rehearsal the other day, I haven’t seen the guys in a long time, and we have our differences. It’s outrageous the s–t that sometimes gets in the way.
But once we start playing, I get as emotional as people in the audience when they hear songs like Love In An Elevator or Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing or Walk This Way. It triggers their remembrances of way back when.
“The feeling you get playing, there’s nothing else like it. It’s like sex, it’s like an orgasm – what music can make you feel like – it’s the best friend you have, times 50.
“So I’m really looking forward to being on tour with them. Performing for two hours, my body wakes up, so it’s totally aerobic and it just turns into the way it was when I was 18, so it feels great.”
Martin Kielty of Ultimate Classic Rock wrote a feature article on guitarist, Berne Tome, who played seven shows with Ozzy Osbourne, after Randy Rhoads was tragically killed in plane crash. Excerpts from the story appear, below.
Former Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy was suffering on the road in 1982. The Diary of a Madman tour, supporting the release of his second album, had already featured his notorious bat-biting incident, his collapse on stage, his even more notorious Alamo scandal and a heated disagreement between him and guitarist Randy Rhoads. The singer would later go on to shave off his hair in an attempt to escape his personal torment, while several sets of dates were postponed as he struggled with addiction and depression.
On March 19th, Rhoads was killed during a flight on a small plane. The musicians had loved and respected each other – but they were in disagreement about their future directions when the tragedy struck. Ozzy’s manager and later wife, Sharon Arden, seemed to feel that if Osbourne stopped at that point, he might never return to music. So their thoughts turned to replacing Randy, and they quickly settled on Torme, who’d recently quit Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan’s solo band.
“I’d been on Jet, Don Arden’s label, and I kind of knew Sharon,” Torme told Ultimate Classic Rock. “I was on the periphery of the family, and I’d just left Ian. They thought, ‘He’s out of a job – he’ll jump at it!’” But he had his own album and tour to work on. “Big artists have a thing where it’s totally incomprehensible that anyone would say ‘no.’ When I was saying, ‘I can’t, I have all this going on,’ David Arden [Don’s son] was thinking, ‘He’s probably only saying that to up his price. Typical muso!’”
Bills need to be paid, and so when David offered Torme £2000 a week, and paid a week’s wages in advance, the guitarist agreed to step in – as long as it was only for a month. So he flew out to the U.S. to join a band that included keyboardist Don Airey, bassist Rudy Sarzo and drummer Tommy Aldridge. “When I got there Sharon told me it wasn’t 2,000 pounds a week… it was 200 dollars a week. She said, ‘David’s on drugs. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ I said, ‘But I’ve had two grand already!’ She said, ‘Well then, we ain’t going to pay you anything until it’s paid off.’ Start off on the best footing!…”
…“It was horrible,” he said of the emotional situation. “I was out there on the Thursday and Randy had died the previous Saturday. It wasn’t even a week. I don’t think anyone spoke to me the day I arrived, other than Don Airey. It was a really bad atmosphere, and understandably so. I suppose, on some level, Tommy and Don wanted to carry on. Ozzy had no desire and Rudy certainly hadn’t.”
An audition successfully passed, three days of rehearsals took place, and Torme began to realize the lose-lose position he’d got himself into. “Even if I played okay, even if I played a nice solo or whatever, if anyone looked at me on stage they thought, ‘Oh, s—. It isn’t Randy.’ The first show [April 1 in Bethlehem, Pa.] was appalling. I didn’t have my amps, my pedals and I had one guitar. There were three or four tracks where we re-tuned and I had to use a hire guitar that was a piece of s—. And apart from anything else, I did not know the songs.
“It was incredibly hard to hear anything on that stage – you had the castle and everything, and all I could hear was the snare drum and Ozzy. I was literally stood at the bottom of Tommy’s pyramid, staring up trying to see when he was hitting things. It was really terrifying.”
And Ozzy? “He was having a really bad time. I’d come off stage and he’d be standing at the back, crying his eyes out. Any day off he was out of his face. He wasn’t able to cope. I think he had a terror because his career has been in complete s— for years, and he’d had a kind of life again because of Randy. And again, I had this situation where Sharon and him thought I was just playing hard to get. I was saying, ‘I have to go home in a month – I have this tour booked,’ and they were going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Ozzy, underneath his persona, is really insecure, so Sharon was protecting him by saying, ‘Bernie really wants to do it, Ozzy.’”
On reflection, Torme feels it’s likely that he was Don Arden’s pawn in a political game that stretched across the Atlantic, between Jet Records in the U.K. and their U.S. distributors. “By the time we did Madison Square Garden I was fairly okay. I wasn’t by any means playing what Randy played; I wasn’t even able to try. When we got to MSG I kept saying, ‘When’s the sound check?’ They said, ‘Don’t worry about that.’ I didn’t get a sound check – they told me, ‘The record company demanded that we try out Earl Slick!’ I was pissed off about that. I’m here, I’ve carried off these shows, you keep asking me to stay… and then you do that?”
He only met Night Ranger guitarist Brad Gillis – who would go on to take over the guitar slot in Osbourne’s band on April 13, after Torme had played just seven shows – by accident…He said, ‘I’m here because the label think you’re going to f— off.’ Don Airey was the only person who had any interest in auditioning anyone, so I said, ‘Don, I want to go home. This guy is great. Give him an audition.’ I’d already told Ozzy and Sharon that I was leaving, but that I’d hang on until they found a replacement. Then I discovered they were carrying a replacement but they wouldn’t audition him!…”
…[Torme] went home the next day, believing that his frontman still had a low opinion of him. “When I’d gone to their hotel suite to say, ‘I’m going to leave,’ Ozzy had looked absolutely flummoxed. Sharon said, ‘It’s because he wants to play a completely different type of music, Ozzy.’ It was protective, and I understand it, so I’d just gawped and said, ‘Yeah!’
“I saw Oz when they did the U.K. tour. Rudy had left and they had Pete Way on bass, and I think Don had left too. We had a laugh, but it was very stressed because there was a massive row in the dressing room between Tommy and Pete. I came away thinking, ‘I’m glad I’m not doing this!…’”
“…For years I regretted that I hadn’t met Randy,” he said. “Five or six years ago I met his brother Kelly and had a long chat. There were a lot of things I didn’t know. He was half-Irish; I’d always thought he was pure Yank. That’s a small, tribal thing to say, but it made a difference to me. It helped with the emotional aspect.
“People just don’t understand what it was like. You get the most inane comments, and people are allowed to say anything, but it was emotionally a terribly hard thing for me. I still have nightmares about it.
“I’m glad I was able to keep people’s wages being paid, but at the same time I think, ‘Would you have done it if you hadn’t been offered two grand a week? You selfish bastard!’ But then I think, ‘Ah yes… but I did good.’”
Beautiful Creatures have released a remixed, remastered (by Anthony Focx), re-sequenced deluxe edition of their sophomore album Deuce, which will include the brand new song Get You High – the band’s first new song released since 2004.
Following Beautiful Creature’s self titled release in 2001, the core band (Joe LeSte (Vocals), Kenny Kweens (Bass) and Anthony Focx (Guitar) immediately entered the studio with a new lineup which included lead guitarist Alex Grossi and began recording material for the follow-up to their debut, which would end up being titled Deuce.
Produced and mixed by guitarist Anthony Focx, with additional production by Beautiful Creatures founding member Kenny Kweens, Deuce was released worldwide in 2005 and ultimately landed premier placements on the hit FX TV series Sons Of Anarchy, the Walt Disney/Touchstone hit film The Proposal starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds as well multiple other TV & movie soundtracks.
Kenny Kweens states, “Deuce was NEVER properly released digitally due to all the changes in technology during that particular time period – We are really looking forward to everyone hearing “Deuce” as it was meant to be sonically in a digital medium.”
“We are really excited to be doing this”, says Joe LeSte “We have all been through a lot both personally and professionally as a band – and even though we have all gone down different roads, whenever we see each other or chat on the phone, it’s like no time has gone by at all. I saw Kenny (Kweens) and Alex (Grossi) on the last Monsters Of Rock cruise, we ended up all onstage together playing a Beautiful Creatures tune, it was really fun – within 48 hours, all of our phones lit up. So, we collectively said – F#ck it, let’s go for it- and well, here we are!”
Beautiful Creatures Deuce Deluxe features every track the band recorded for the Japanese Release (JVC Records) as well as the U.S. Release (Spitfire/Eagle Rock), In one digital package that has been re-mixed and remastered. It will also include new album cover artwork and edits that up until now, were not included in either initial release.
, Jim Collins (Vocals) and Donnie Vito (Bass), appear on the song. Listen to the 1996 performance, below. Boston drummer John Thomas )
, re-sequenced deluxe edition of their sophomore album Deuce, which will include the brand new song Get You High - the band's ... )
