JOHN MELLENCAMP: Rehearsing For the Dance
John Mellencamp and his band started rehearsals Monday for his Dancing Words Tour - The Greatest Hits. They're taking place at his Belmont Mall Studio, a tiny nondescript house on a country road just outside Bloomington, Indiana, where he's been recording and rehearsing since the mid-'80s. He posted two videos on Instagram -- one showing the rehearsal space, and the other in which he talks about the tour. "We’ll be playing 27 songs and every one of them was a hit that you’ll be able to sing along with. This will be the last time I play some of these songs, and the first time I’ve played some of ’em in decades. So, hope to see you all out there. And, oh, by the way I’m still working out and I’m still smoking.” Mellencamp will play 19 amphitheater shows between July 10th in Grand Rapids, Michigan and August 12th in Mountain View, California.
GUNS N' ROSES: Legendary Doc Leaks
Part of a legendary unreleased Guns N' Roses documentary has made it to YouTube. Perfect Crime documents the band's 1991 to 1993 Use Your Illusion tour but was shelved after beiing completed in 1994. The orginal film is reportedly about 90 minutes, and what has popped up on YouTube is a 38-minute rough cut. This leaked version includes footage of after-show parties with waiters dressed as Roman legionaries, fans in various states of undress, a pig served on a platter and lederhosen-clad dancers. There's also a scene of Axl Rose receiving treatment from an osteopath on an airport taxiway. Overall, the 38-minute film is a fascinating document of that era. (Note: some parts of this film are NSFW, so it's definitely not safe for air.)
PAUL McCARTNEY: Not Even When He's 84
Paul McCartney will celebrate his 84th birthday on June 18th, but he tells NME he has no plans to retire. "I never know, you know. I remember when I was 50 years old, my manager at the time said, ‘Well, so you're thinking of retiring are you?’ I went, ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’ But he obviously thought, 50 … which, I get it, because we thought, you know, 30 was like really old 'cause we were 20. So 30 was like that’d be unseemly. But it came, and it went, and people were still playing, and audiences like the music.” And, with his 84th birthday just over two weeks away, he shared a humorous story on a new episode of the YouTube series, Chicken Shop Date, about a fellow senior citizen telling him she performs his 1967 Beatles' song, "When I'm 64," but with a twist. "I work in an old people's home and I do one of your songs. I said, 'Oh yeah. Which one?' She said, 'When I'm 64.' She said, 'I have to change the word 'cause that's too young for my people. So I have to change it to 'When I'm 84.'" McCartney just released a new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.
Mick Jagger Teases Return To Touring With The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger is opening up about when the band could tour again. The musician recently told the BBC that he'd love to go on tour again. However, he did echo a previous statement made by Keith Richards saying he doesn't think a tour will happen in 2026. Last month, Richards confirmed that the group didn't have plans to hit the road anytime soon. Although it won't happen this year, Jagger did hope they'll hit the road "as soon as possible."
TOM PETTY: A Longer "Girl"
The Tom Petty estate has shared a new extended version of Petty and the Heartbreakers' "American Girl." The track, which is on streaming services and YouTube now, also comes in a HiRes spatial mix done from the original multi-track tapes by Petty's long-time engineer Ryan Ulyate. This version features a never-before-heard outro that was recently uncovered in the Petty archives. The Petty estate says that with "the 50th anniversary of The Heartbreakers later this year, we are opening the archives to release some treasures from the white hot ‘70s era of the band." This extended version is being used for Major League Baseball's campaign around America's 250th birthday. And along with America turning 250 on the Fourth of July, "American Girl" turns 50 on that date. Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded the track with producer Denny Cordell on July 4th, 1976, at Shelter Studios in Hollywood. It was released on their self-titled album on November 9th, 1976.
RUSH: Five Days to Go
While Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were humble about the overwhelming response to them reuniting as Rush for a tour that starts this Sunday at The Forum in Inglewood, California -- where they did their last show on August 1st, 2015 -- it came as no surprise that the original schedule of 12 dates would be all they would do, which Geddy alluded to just days after the tour was announced. "Just to say to go back on the road is a huge effort. It's a huge amount of work to put all those things back together and we are in the heat of rebuilding everything and putting a show together. And I was very happy to see that [our] fan base responded so overwhelmingly and they've accepted Anika. You know, she was a bit nervous. That's big shoes to fill, but it's all been kind of an incredible week for all of us coming to terms with the response to our announcement." The Fifty Something tour has since ballooned to 58 shows through December followed by 30 more next year in South America and Europe. Tomorrow, Geddy talks about why they chose Anika Nilles to fill the drum seat left open by the late Neil Peart.
One Musician Thinks Eddie Van Halen Was "One Of The Worst Guitar Players In The World"
Eddie Van Halen receives almost universal praise as being one of the most influential and skilled guitar players in music history, but one fellow musician thinks quite the opposite. In an interview with "Stereogum," The Jesus And Mary Chain guitarist William Reid says Eddie "ruined rock guitar," calling him one of "the worst guitar players in the world." "I think guitar players should never learn scales. I think the worst guitar players in the world, like Eddie Van Halen…I can’t stand Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing. I think he ruined rock guitar all through the ’80s and ’90s ’cause so many people copied him." He went further: "I just couldn’t get any of that playing as fast as you [ ] can and cramming as many notes in one second as you could. And I listen to Peter Hook’s bass riffs, and I think that’s a thousand times better than anything Eddie Van Halen could ever conjure up."
QUEEN & BLACK SABBATH: Become One
Longtime friends Brian May of Queen and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath have long talked about making some music together, so while we wait, someone went ahead and whetted our appetites. Mash-up artist Bill McClintock, in arguably his finest work, has combined Sabbath's "Paranoid" with Queen's "We Will Rock You" to create "Rockanoid." Making many of us think, "How come I never thought of this," when you listen to Queen's fast version of "We Will Rock You," it also features snippets of:
·Metallica's "Sad but True" (Kirk Hammett guitar solo)
·Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages" (background vocals)
·DIO's "We Rock" (vocals)
·AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock" and "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)" (vocals)
·Judas Priest's "Rock Hard Ride Free" (vocals)
·Ozzy Osbourne's "Rock 'n' Roll Rebel" (vocals)
·Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" (Neil Giraldo guitar solo)
·Helix's "Rock You" (vocals)
Check it out on YouTube. It's absolutely brilliant.
IN OTHER NEWS
David Lee Roth has added five more shows in July to his Don't Love Me, Rent Me... tour. The first two are in Canada: the 10th in Edmonton and the 13th in Vancouver. The other three are in the U.S.: the 21st in Salt Lake City; the 28th in Louisville, Kentucky; and the 31st in East Moline, Illinois. Roth takes the tour to Port Chester, New York this Wednesday.
You can watch the trailer for Peter Frampton’s documentary, Frampton, on YouTube. The film features interviews with Bill Wyman, Roger Daltrey, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Tom Morello, Tommy Shaw, Nancy Wilson and many others. Frampton premieres this Thursday at the Tribeca Festival in New York.
Kirk Hammett of Metallica, Mikkey Dee of the Scorpions, and Phil Anselmo of Pantera join Accept members Wolf Hoffmann and Mark Tornillo on a new version of the band's 1982 song "Fast as a Shark." Check it out on YouTube. The track appears on the Accept tribute album,
Teutonic Titans 1976-2026, which is due out September 4th.
The renaming of West 8th Street at Sixth Avenue to Jimi Hendrix Way, postponed from February 24th due to a storm, will take place Wednesday, June 10th at 11am. The Greenwich Village street is home to Electric Lady Studios, which Hendrix opened in 1970. The ceremony will also launch a national education partnership with Stevie Van Zandt’s TeachRock, expanding its library of free, standards-aligned lessons with a new multimedia Hendrix curriculum for middle and high school students.
Billy Idol has released a video for "John Wayne" off his last album, 2025's Dream Into It. Check it out on YouTube.
Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Sting, Willie Nelson, Peter Gabriel and many others are featured in Leonard Cohen: If It Be Your Will, a documentary by his son Adam Cohen. It’s available now on the Marquee TV streaming service.
Sting is moving his show on November 24th from the Hard Rock Event Center in Tampa, Florida to Hard Rock Live in Orlando on the same day due to renovations at the Tampa location. All ticket holders will receive comparable seating for the Orlando show at no additional cost. For those unable to go to Orlando, refunds will be honored upon request through July 1st at 5 p.m. ET. Please contact your original point of purchase to request a refund.
R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck is headed back on the road with Drink the Sea, the group he started with ex-Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. They’ll get going on August 30th on Vashon Island, Washington and will wrap up on September 24th in Kirkland, Washington. The group's as-yet-untitled third album will be out on October 2nd.