Sammy Hagar has revealed details of his first solo acoustic record.
The Red Rocker will release Lite Roast on October 13th through Mailboat Records. He is joined on the record by Vic Johnson, guitarist with Hagar’s backing band Waboritas.
Former Van Halen and Montrose singer Hagar says, “I realize that when I played my songs acoustically, it made me sing different. It brought a new light to the lyrics that I’d written throughout my career.
It’s very live, very personal, with Vic accompanying me on guitar and singing background vocals. No overdubs. I think that my hardcore fans are really going to love it.”
Hagar decided to make the acoustic album – which features versions of tracks from throughout his career – after taking part in this year’s Acoustic-4-A-Cure concert in San Francisco.
Lite Roast tracklist:
1. Red Voodoo
2. One Sip
3. Finish What Ya Started
4. Eagles Fly
5. The Love
6. Father Son
7. Dreams
8. Deeper Kinda Love
9. Who Has The Right
10. Sailin’
11. Halfway To Memphis
Athough it was previously reported as being released on June 2nd, Gary Cherone’s (Extreme, Van Halen) Hurtsmile will be releasing their new album, Retrogrenade, on October 7th.
Charone tells Billboard,”If there was [only] one record it would seem like a Gary Cherone project, and this is truly a band.” He formed Hurtsmile with his brother Mark Cherone in 2011 and released the group’s self-titled debut later that year. “We toured the band after that first record, so it felt like a band. Joe (Pessia) the bass player was more involved. We were just looking to top the first record.”
Retrogrenade also takes a different path than its predecessor, according to Cherone. “We went in and it kind of wrote itself,” he explains. “We were in a different place. A lot of these songs are about relationships. It’s a lot more fun record than the first one — the first one was a little angry, more about what I was unhappy about that was going on in the world. This one has a little lighter fare.”
Emblematic of that is Hello I Must Be Going, which Cherone adapted from the Groucho Marx-sung feature in the 1930 film Animal Crackers. Listen to the track exclusively on Billboard here.
Cherone hopes to play some shows with Hurtsmile down the road both in the U.S. and Japan, but he acknowledges Extreme poses a formidable “hurdle.” That group is getting together in Los Angeles this month to work on a new album, a follow-up to 2008’s reunion set Saudades de Rock, and is also planning a Pornograffitti tour to showcase the group’s double-platinum 1990 album just as it did in Europe earlier this year.
“That was a lot of fun, better than I hoped it was going to be” Cherone reports. “It really revitalized the band. The band was so full of piss and vinegar it inspired us to make new music and then go back out there and do what we do. So we’ll definitely have some new music to play next year.”
On September 30th, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page sated that he ruled out any chance of the band playing together ever again.
Page was hosting a playback of his remastered versions of Houses Of The Holy and Led Zeppelin IV at Olympic Studios in London when he confirmed the news.
Asked directly by NME if remastering the albums made him want to reform the band again, he said, “I don’t think it looks as though that’s a possibility or on the cards, so there’s not much more I can say about that. I’m not going to give a detail-by-detail account of what one person says or another person says. All I can say is it doesn’t look likely, does it?”
When pressed on whether this was down to frontman Robert Plant, Page added, “I’ve just said it doesn’t look very likely.”
His comments come after Plant recently said that he felt “disappointed and baffled” after Page dropped repeated hints about wanting to play with the band again. The guitarist also said that he was “fed up” with his bandmate for delaying his plans. Led Zeppelin last played together in 2007 for a one-off tribute to Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun at London’s O2 Arena.
But Page did today confirm that he is likely to form his own band and play live material right across his whole career, including his Zeppelin work, in the near future.
He told the Q&A session, “If I was to play again it would be with musicians that would be… some of the names might be new to you. I haven’t put them together yet but I’m going to do that next year. If I went out to play, I would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with The Yardbirds. There would certainly be some new material in there as well.”
Page added, “I love playing live, I really do. Live concerts are always an interesting challenge because it means you can always change things as you’re playing every night. You can make it even more of an adventure. I would play all of the things I’m known to play – instrumental versions of Dazed And Confused etcetera, etcetera…”
The playback saw a selection of remastered tracks from the latest reissues aired in a theater against a backdrop of old tour posters and photos of Led Zeppelin.
It followed a reissue campaign earlier this year of the band’s first three albums. Various formats of ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ and ‘Houses Of The Holy’ will be released on October 28th.
“Malcolm is suffering from dementia and the family thanks you for respecting their privacy,” his family said in a statement to People.
A Young family connection said: “If you were in the room with [Malcolm Young] and walked out, then came back in one minute later, he wouldn’t remember who you are. He has a complete loss of short-term memory. His wife, Linda, has put him in full-time care.”
In April, the group announced that Young was taking a break due to ill health.
AC/DC have announced that their new album, Rock Or Bust, will be released on December 2nd. Read more about the release here.
Greg Prato for Bravewords spoke with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, who has a 392 page autobiography titled, I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax out on on October 14th and a two hour plus Swearing Words in Glasgow DVD out on November 13th via Megaforce Record. Portions of the interview appear below.
BraveWords: Was it planned that both your book and DVD would be coming out around the same time?
Scott Ian: It really wasn’t a plan. If anything, I would have thought the DVD would have been out sooner, but it just took a really long time. Production issues and just getting it done…I had no idea getting subtitles done in like, six different languages would take so long, either. I never really thought about that – getting a two-hour and something show transcribed into English and then having those all done in different languages. I’m lucky enough I have enough friends that speak all these different languages – Spanish, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese – who were able to do it for me. But it’s really time consuming.
BraveWords: The DVD reminded me a bit of Henry Rollins’ spoken word performances. Would you say you modeled your performance after that?
Scott Ian: I really had no model at all. I haven’t seen Henry do a talking show since the early ’90s, so I really don’t know what he does these days, as far as what his set is comprised of and how he does it anymore. But for me, I just got up on stage and told stories from my life. It’s not like I had videos or stuff to watch to even really be influenced by, because it’s not stand-up comedy. And there’s really not any other guys in bands out there doing it, where I can say, “I saw so-and-so.” I had all these stories in my head, and I had the opportunity to go do it in London a couple of years ago as a one-off, and I had so much fun doing that one time that I decided that I wanted to do more of it.
BraveWords: A funny story you talk about in the DVD was when someone once mistook you Anthony Kiedis. Has there ever been another celebrity someone mistook you for?
Scott Ian: There’s obvious ones, like I understand why people mistake me and let’s say, Shavo from System of a Down, because we both have bald heads and we both have beards. We don’t look anything a like, but at least that makes more sense than Anthony Kiedis. When I was younger, some people used to say I looked like Henry Winkler, which I don’t necessarily see, but I always take that as a compliment, because I love Henry Winkler. [Laughs]
BraveWords: What is Anthrax currently up to? Working on new music?
Scott Ian: Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t tell you the names of the songs, because I’m only thinking of the new stuff. We’re deep in the writing process – it’s been going really well. We’ve got 16 or 17 ideas, all in some state of construction, basically. Some more done than others. And it’s all still just a work in progress. But it’s coming along great. We’ve never written more really than we’ve needed for a record, so we just haven’t stopped ourselves this time. It wasn’t like we said, ‘OK, we’ve got ten, let’s got make an album.’ Good ideas kept coming. I think we’ll probably do another couple of writing sessions, and then maybe put a cap on it, as far as musical ideas, just because I’m pretty backlogged right now, as far as having to catch up lyrically. I don’t want to get in situation where I’ve got to write 25 songs worth of words. I have a lot to say, but not that much. But it is going really well. We’re exactly where we should be, I think. That doesn’t give you any idea what it sounds like, but it’s definitely Anthrax.
Greg Prato of the Long Island Pulse spoke with Judas frontman and Metal God, Rob Halford. Some quotes from the article appear below.
Discussing the band’s performance with James Durbin on American Idolstrong:
“We’d been following what James Durbin had been doing on the show, and James was bringing metal onto American Idol, which no other artist had done up until that point. There was some kickback from certain elements of the metal community, saying, ‘What the hell are you doing? How dare you be on American Idol?’ And our response was, ‘Who would not push back on an opportunity to be in the homes of 30 million viewers in America and beyond?’ It was firstly to do it for James, because he’s a great talent, and then secondly, it was to keep spreading the gospel of metal through Judas Priest.”
Talking about Long Island metalheads:
“I suppose it’s just the fabric of the people there. It’s extremely intense in terms of the passion of the metalheads on Long Island. I guess it’s just what makes Long Island unique, really. It reminds us a little bit of where we’re from, in the Midlands [of England]. The Midlands region is hard-working, tough people that can be in your face but have got your back. And they’re very proud of their heritage and their roots. I think that’s what we get from the Long Island crowd. It’s good to see those words on a tour itinerary.”
On whether he sees Priest continuing beyond Redeemer of Souls and its supporting tour?
“You’re inspired by the initial feedback of enthusiasm and support from your fan base, so that only encourages you to consider going through the process again. After this tour completes—we’ll be working through most of 2015—I’m sure that there will be another opportunity where we finish a touring cycle and we consider what to do next. My hope is that we’ll be making another Priest record.”
 Hurtsmile will be releasing their new album, Retrogrenade, on October 7th. Charone tells ... )
