The Who Set to Record New Album

British Invasion legends The Who have some great news for their fans. For the first time since their 2006 release Endless Wire, the band will be going into the studio to record a brand new album with all new material.

Guardian reports after a press conference held in London at Ronnie Scott's club that guitarist and primary Who songwriter Pete Townshend had come up with three brand new songs that have been given the thumbs-up by singer Roger Daltrey. Townshend elaborates that portions of the material have been inspired by Daltrey's recent work with Wilko Johnson and that "we might try to make the album in a more basic way than we usually do." As for the style of the rest of the album, Townshed says it will probably be "more prog rock than pub rock".

In addition to entering the studio this summer, the band is embarking on a 50th anniversary tour that will act as what Daltrey refers to as "the beginning of the long goodbye". He says “We can’t go on touring forever. [This tour] will have a finality to it. We’ll stop touring before we stop playing as a band.” The Who intends to bring out many songs on this tour including 'hits, picks, and misses'. So far, the band has included 9 U.K. dates for the tour which are listed below.

The Who 2014 U.K. Tour Dates

11/30 – Glasgow
12/2 – Leeds
12/5 – Nottingham
12/7 – Birmingham
12/9 – Newcastle
12/11 – Liverpool
12/13 – Manchester
12/15 – Cardiff
12/17 – London

“We can’t go on touring forever,” he said. “[This tour] will have a finality to it. We’ll stop touring before we stop playing as a band.”

Read More: The Who to Record New Album This Summer | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/who-new-album/?trackback=tsmclip

“We can’t go on touring forever,” he said. “[This tour] will have a finality to it. We’ll stop touring before we stop playing as a band.”

Read More: The Who to Record New Album This Summer | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/who-new-album/?trackback=tsmclip

Three Amazing 80's Albums You May Not Know About

No matter what time period it is, there is always astounding music that for whatever sets of reasons seems to get tragically overlooked by the general public. Some times they are from well known bands, some times from not so well known. Either way, today we will be taking a brief look at three albums from the 1980's that completely rock from start to finish but have been unfortunately passed over by the masses.

1. Seventh Star, by Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi

In 1986, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi was making what was supposed to be his first solo record due to the recent departure of the band's third vocalist ex-Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan and original Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler. However, due to pressures from management Iommi was forced to have the album that would be Seventh Star billed as a Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi album. This is mostly due to the fact that the record company at the time was desperate to make some money and wanted to sell lots of something with an already famous name.For vocals Iommi recruited ex-Deep Purple and Trapeze vocalist Glenn Hughes. Seventh Star featured a more glossy pop and blues rock feel to it than previous Black Sabbath records.

That being said however, even though it sounds far different from other albums by the band, its songs are still surprisingly good in their own right. The opening track In For the Kill wastes no time telling you what the album is about. It grabs the listener and is just as good of a headbanging tune as anything else that was more popular during that era. The album also gets creative featuring instrumental tracks like the synth filled and ghostly feeling song Sphinx (The Guardian). For an 80's pop rock album it of course has a love ballad, titled No Stranger to Love, which the record company used as a single to sell the album. Be that as it may, Seventh Star is a unique adventure from an interesting time in Black Sabbath's history.

2. Slide It In, by Whitesnake

In 1984 Whitesnake vocalist and band leader David Coverdale was looking to make a change in his band's sound. For the longest time it had been mostly straight up blues oriented rock n' roll, but he wanted something more energetic and passion filled. The album Slide It In would act as a transition between the old sound and the heavy metal sound the band would later become famous for. Many line-up changes happened during this period. In fact, the British release and the U.S. release of the albums would both feature a different lead guitarist from one another. The British featured original lead guitarist Mickey Moody and the US one featured a new one: John Sykes. Both versions of the album did end up sounding quite distinctly different from one another.

The mission Coverdale set out on seemed to have been accomplished because the songs on Slide It In are in general heavier, louder, and on occasion quite faster than how the old songs had sounded. The title track Slide It In is fairly simplistic (and quite innuendo filled), but one can't help but pump their fist and dance around when it plays. Naturally there are songs that are more love ballad oriented (I know, big surprise), such as Love Ain't No Stranger and Standing in the Shadow. One song that REALLY gets the energy going though is the upbeat and uptempo song Guilty of Love. It features dual guitar harmonies and drums that are just blasting. Any 80's rock fan NEEDS this album.

3. Too Fast For Love, by Motley Crue

In the early 80's the new glam sensation was sweeping Los Angeles. Since Van Halen had taken off in the late 70's all anyone could think about in terms of music was trying to emulate Eddie Van Halen's guitar shredding and David Lee Roth's image and persona. One band that really set the precedence of the glam movement however was none other than Motley Crue. Fueled by punk and 70's glam rock, drugs and alcohol, and the desire to rise to the top they quickly gained popularity and set many of the fashion trends the 1980's would become notorious for. They put out their first record Too Fast For Love independently, but it was reprinted and remixed once they got picked up by Elektra Records.

Too Fast For Love is a unique record. Its sound is a blend of punk rock, heavy metal, and glam rock from the previous decade. It doesn't stick to one thing for very long. The album starts off with a bang with the rocket propelled tune Live Wire. Anyone who has had the good fortune to hear it cannot help but mosh and/or headbang when it is playing at top volume. Of course the album also has its more melodic sides with tunes like Public Enemy #1. Though bassist Nikki Sixx wrote all the songs on Too Fast For Love, guitarist Mick Mars definitely added his own style to them and gave everything a more melodic touch. Another unique aspect of this album is that even though love is a theme in it, it focuses more on the problems that many teens/young adults go through when they live such broken lives; which honestly for the time was a radical departure from the constant stream of commercial love songs. Though Too Fast For Love does not contain the radio hits Motley Crue is known for, it is still worth the money to buy it. It is definitely an adventure.

Eric Clapton Confirms Retirement Plans

Once again, legendary guitar god Eric Clapton has made it known to the public that retirement is very much on his mind and it may happen sooner than we think due to the road becoming unbearable and hostile to him.

Clapton said in an interview with NME:

“The road has become unbearable. It’s become unapproachable, because it takes so long to get anywhere. It’s hostile – everywhere: getting in and out of airports, traveling on planes and in cars."

He further goes on to elaborate:

"There are tons of things I’d like to do, but I’m looking at retirement too. What I’ll allow myself to do, within reason, is carry on recording in the studio. I don’t want to go off the boil to the point where I’m embarrassing myself.”

Clapton has also admitted that health reasons are also a contributing factor in his decision to quit touring. Last year many concerts of his were cancelled due to insufferable back pain. Another event that may have sparked this decision recently however was when at a show in Glasgow, Clapton had to end his set early due to technical difficulties – resulting in being booed off the stage by a rambunctious livid crowd.

In an interview with Uncut Clapton said that he would probably retire from touring for good once he turns 70 years old, which is coming up on March 30th, 2015. If fans of the guitarist want to see him play, they had better act soon if this is the case.

“The road has become unbearable. It’s become unapproachable, because it takes so long to get anywhere. It’s hostile – everywhere: getting in and out of airports, travelling on planes and in cars,” Clapton says in the interview.

Read More: Eric Clapton Says Touring Has Become ‘Unbearable,’ Confirms Retirement Plans | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/eric-clapton-retire/?1&trackback=tsmclip

Throwback Thursday: Queen's A Night at the Opera

By 1975, Queen had already released three studio albums but had very little commercial success. The single Killer Queen from their Sheer Heart Attack had gotten them a small amount of notoriety and a noticeable position in the charts, but the band still wasn't doing as well as it wanted to. Queen was coming close to calling it quits if this next album was not a success. Fortunately with the help of producer Roy Thomas Baker and an incredibly large budget (when released in 1975 it was the most expensive album ever made) Queen was able to not only make their album A Night at the Opera a success, but one of their most popular and critically acclaimed albums of all time spawning two of their most well known singles: You're My Best Friend and Bohemian Rhapsody.

A Night at the Opera features some of Queen's most complex and highly produced song writing at the time. It features much more piano than the previous albums and also has more of a pop rock feel than the heavy rock overtones of the band's previous ventures.

The recording process of A Night at the Opera was quite memorable to Queen for multiple reasons. For instance, during the operatic section of Bohemian Rhapsody the band ended up doing several takes of them all singing the parts together and would keep doing more and more recordings until they had built up enough layers to sound like an entire choir. This drove everyone in the band but lead singer Freddie Mercury nuts, but the end result was clearly worth the effort.

A more amusing anecdote from this time includes an incident involving the song I'm in Love with My Car. It was written by drummer Roger Taylor, though when he presented a demo of it to the band they didn't think he was serious about it. Soon however, they discovered that he was. When they did not want to put the song as the B side to Bohemian Rhapsody Taylor locked himself in a closet and refused to come out until Mercury agreed to do it.

A Night at the Opera features one of the most well known songs in rock n' roll to this very day. In more recent years it has even made a major comeback. This song is Bohemian Rhapsody. The song is without a doubt Freddie Mercury's crowning achievement as a musician, having penned nearly the entire thing by himself. The song is primarily played on piano softly and sung with much pure emotion by Mercury at a slow to moderate tempo with occasional drum backing from Taylor and bass backing from John Deacon. However, during the build-ups and louder parts of the song, the whole band comes in with powerful choral vocals, heavy guitar solos, and thundering rhythms to accentuate the climax of the story being told in the song. The song then winds down with the same feel and instrumental concepts as the beginning and then softly fades out right at the very end.

This album features more than just the widely played singles heard on radio, however. One of the most memorable songs from A Night at the Opera was in fact not even sung by Mercury, but by guitarist Brian May. '39 is an acoustic ballad that tells the story of astronauts traveling faster than the speed of light to find a new home for the people of their world living on a dying planet. They are gone for what they perceive is only a year, but when they return it seems they have been gone far longer due to how fast they traveled. Though the lyrical content of the song is somewhat sad, musically it is fairly upbeat and it works really well when audiences clap their hands along with it. When Queen tours with other singers these days it is just as much a staple in the set as much as any of the radio singles.

A Night at the Opera is without a doubt one of if not the absolute best albums Queen ever released. It features Queen at its most creative (even if the creativity at times involved being downright silly). It is the album that really put Queen on the map and saved them from calling it a day too early. While still having a commercial overtone to it, it also keeps to the band's progressive nature. It is an eargasm from start to finish. Anyone who has NOT heard the album all the way through is required to immediately go out, purchase the record, and then do so.

A Night at the Opera, by Queen receives 5 out of 5 stars.

Purchase the album on Amazon:

 http://www.amazon.com/Night-at-Opera-Deluxe-Edition/dp/B004UUKDHG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403844399&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Night+at+the+Opera+Queen

Ex-Iron Maiden Vocalist Paul Di'Anno Hates Sound of First Album

In a recent interview while on a tour in Greece, former Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di'Anno sat down for an interview where he was asked about his current tour and days in Iron Maiden. In the interview Di'Anno admits not only that the first album that he was involved with were more punk influenced rather than metal but also they could have sounded a LOT better.

Di'Anno recently said in the interview with Rock Overdose: “Iron Maiden was always a heavy metal band with a punk kid, that was me. But the sound — oh, God — the sound of the first album was f—ing awful. Somebody should remix that. There were some of the best songs on the first album and on the second one. Somebody should do it because then it will sound even more fantastic with a really good sound behind it.”

Di'Anno plans to release two albums this year: one with his band Killers and one with his other band Architect to Chaos, a German band. Di'Anno also makes it abundantly clear that even with his knee recently injured, he has no intention whatsoever of calling it a day and retiring.

"I’m gonna get my knee fixed up at some point, because it’s absolutely an agony everyday with my bad knee as far as the concerts, but it’s ok cause they don’t wanna fucking see me, they want to hear the voice. But right now I’m making the new album, we’ve got about six tracks released. The band is called Architect To Chaos, it’s a german band and we’re going to do the same thing we do with Sorrowful Angels, but we’ve become a band, it’s not just a project, it’s a band. We just found out we just made the EP Of The Month in Rock Hard magazine, so it’s looking great! So, one’s the album is out we’d be happy to come out on the road and tour around the world again!"

Singer Robert Plant Premieres New Single 'Rainbow'

Though legendary guitarist Jimmy Page is currently hard at work getting all the remasters of the entire Led Zeppelin catalog ready to go, singer Robert Plant has been no slouch either with his own work. He has been working with a band called The Sensational Spaceshifters and today they have released a single titled Rainbow from their album ‘lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar’ which will be released on September 9th of this year.

This will be Plant's first release of new original material since his 2005 album Mighty ReArranger. His past two releases were albums done as a collaboration with singer Alison Krauss and were filled entirely with covers. Nine of the eleven tracks written for the album were done in collaboration with the band, but two were covers of ‘Little Maggie,’ a traditional folk song, and ‘Poor Howard,’ an adaptation of Lead Belly’s ‘Po’ Howard.’

In a recent press release Plant said:

“It’s really a celebratory record, powerful, gritty, African, Trance meets Zep. The whole impetus of my life as a singer has to be driven by a good brotherhood. I am very lucky to work with The Sensational Space Shifters. They come from exciting areas of contemporary music…I have been around awhile and I ask myself, do I have anything to say? Is there a song still inside me? In my heart? I see life and what’s happening to me. Along the trail there are expectations, disappointments, happiness, questions and strong relationships….and now I’m able to express my feelings through melody, power and trance; together in a kaleidoscope of sound, color, and friendship.”

'lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar' is available for pre-order on Plant's website. The pre-order includes: a print of the cover, immediate download of the single Rainbow, and a guarantee of advance digital downloads prior to physical release. The album will also be available in lossless FLAC file format.

A US tour for the Sensational Spaceshifters will be happening this fall. Dates to be released soon.

Track Listing for ‘lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar’:

1. ‘Little Maggie’
2. ‘Rainbow’
3. ‘Pocketful of Golden’
4. ‘Embrace Another Fall’
5. ‘Turn It Up’
6. ‘A Stolen Kiss’
7. ‘Somebody There’
8. ‘Poor Howard’
9. ‘House of Love’
10. ‘Up on the Hollow Hill (Understanding Arthur)’
11. ‘Arbaden (Maggie’s Babby)’

AC/DC Likely to Tour in 2014

In recent news it came to the attention of the public that AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young had become stricken with illness due to a stroke, putting the future of the band into question and concern. However, it was then confirmed that the band was in fact working on a new album, but Steven Young, brother of guitarists Malcolm and Angus Young would be taking over rhythm guitar duties while Malcolm was away. In a recent statement from lead vocalist Brian Johnson, it now seems that it is very likely that the band will be touring before the end of 2014.

When rumor of Malcolm Young's illness first came to the press, it was then rumored that AC/DC would retire. However, the band was quick to set the record straight about what was going on and what would be happening. An official statement from them said:

“After forty years of life dedicated to AC/DC, guitarist and founding member Malcolm Young is taking a break from the band due to ill health. Malcolm would like to thank the group’s diehard legions of fans worldwide for their never-ending love and support. In light of this news, AC/DC asks that Malcolm and his family’s privacy be respected during this time. The band will continue to make music.”

Johnson said, "Hello everyone, i just wanted to thank everyone for their kind words about Cars That Rock. Your encouragement means a lot to me. This was my first ever go at presenting a TV series and even though it may not show, i was real nervous and so am very relieved that you all seem to be enjoying it. We hope to bring you more shows in the near future but, of course, there is the slight distraction of my day job with AC/DC – and it looks very likely that we will be on the road again before the end of the year. So stand by for more music – and more Cars That Rock. thanks"

That being said, hopefully fans of AC/DC will be able to see the band before the year is out despite the recent setbacks.

Hello everyone, i just wanted to thank everyone for their kind words about Cars That Rock. Your encouragement means a lot to me. This was my first ever go at presenting a TV series and even though it may not show, i was real nervous and so am very relieved that you all seem to be enjoying it. We hope to bring you more shows in the near future but, of course, there is the slight distraction of my day job with AC/DC – and it looks very likely that we will be on the road again before the end of the year. So stand by for more music – and more Cars That Rock. thanks

Read More: AC/DC's Brian Johnson: It's Very Likely We'll Tour in 2014 | http://loudwire.com/brian-johnson-very-likely-acdc-on-road-again-2014/?trackback=tsmclip

Hello everyone, i just wanted to thank everyone for their kind words about Cars That Rock. Your encouragement means a lot to me. This was my first ever go at presenting a TV series and even though it may not show, i was real nervous and so am very relieved that you all seem to be enjoying it. We hope to bring you more shows in the near future but, of course, there is the slight distraction of my day job with AC/DC – and it looks very likely that we will be on the road again before the end of the year. So stand by for more music – and more Cars That Rock. thanks

Read More: AC/DC's Brian Johnson: It's Very Likely We'll Tour in 2014 | http://loudwire.com/brian-johnson-very-likely-acdc-on-road-again-2014/?trackback=tsmclip