News

A rare, eight-page draft letter John Lennon wrote to Eric Clapton in 1971, pitching him on a new musical project at one of the most tumultuous times in Clapton’s life, is headed to auction.

This copy of the missive is dated Sept. 29, 1971 and it contains various deletions and corrections, including some in a different hand, possibly Yoko Ono’s. Lennon retained this copy of the letter and the exact contents of the final version sent to Clapton are unknown. (If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, the same letter was...

In 1973, the world saw George Harrison as the Beatle who was winning the break-up. He became a solo superstar with All Things Must Pass, his big triple-vinyl extravaganza, then his noble and star-studded Concert For Bangla Desh. He’d finally broken free of the Fabs and gotten everything he’d ever wanted. Right? Well, not exactly. George turned his spiritual crisis into Living in the Material World, his slept-on masterpiece — the most profoundly weird album of his life.

It might seem strange they didn’t think of doing this new...

The haunting intro on the Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man,” the galloping keyboard solo on the Beatles’ “Revolution,” the piano that anchors the Who’s “The Song Is Over,” and countless other indelible classic-rock moments were all the work of one man: session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins. A classically trained player from Middlesex, England, who somehow also played like he had been raised in churches in the American South, Hopkins performed on nearly every Stones album from 1967 to 1981, was a founding member of the Jeff Beck Group, and played on solo albums by all four Beatles,...

The Who have announced a new, 155-track compilation boxset, titled Who’s Next/Life House, complete with a full graphic novel based on the band’s long-shelved science-fiction concept album, Life House. The massive offering is due September 15th.

Among the various packages offered, Who’s Next/Life House arrives as a 3xLP, 4xLP, or 2xCD set including a newly remastered version of the band’s seminal 1971 fifth album and remixed acetates of Pete Townshend’s Life House demos. A 10xCD Super Deluxe edition boasts 89 unreleased tracks, studio session demos and singles taken from 1970 to 1972, and two 1971 concert recordings from London’s Young Vic Theatre and San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium as well as various tour paraphenalia, a band T-shirt, and posters from performances in Sunderland, England on May 7th, 1970 and Denver Coliseum in Denver on December 10th, 1971.

The boxset also provides hefty reading material with a 100-page hardbound book...

In 1973, the world saw George Harrison as the Beatle who was winning the break-up. He became a solo superstar with All Things Must Pass, his big triple-vinyl extravaganza, then his noble and star-sudded Concert For Bangla Desh. He’d finally broken free of the Fabs and gotten everything he’d ever wanted. Right? Well, not exactly. George stripped it all down for his sleeper masterpiece: Living In The Material World, released 50 years ago at the end of May 1973. It’s the most profoundly weird album of his life.

Over the years,...

In the summer of 1989, Paul McCartney hit the road for the first time as a solo artist. The Wings tours of the Seventies had featured only a smattering of Beatles songs, but this time around he was going to play nearly 20 a night. Pulling this off would require a guitarist who was capable of re-creating some very famous parts originally played by George Harrison and John Lennon. McCartney had his choice of big-name players for the job, but he went with Robbie McIntosh.

“That tour was the high point of my life,...

Jeff Beck, one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century, died Wednesday at the age of 78. The cause was bacterial meningitis. Beck had been in good health recently, touring with Johnny Depp following the recording of their (mostly) covers album, “18.”

While Beck himself never achieved the household name status of his peers like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, those in the know would cite him as just as foundational. He also spanned genres, from British Invasion pop to hard rock to jazz fusion to whatever kind of jammy six-string concrète was laid down on the 1989 “Guitar Shop” album or 1999’s “Who Else?!”

In 1965, at the age of 21, Beck joined The Yardbirds, a blues-y pop-rock outfit, replacing the exiting Eric Clapton. There could be no bigger shoes to fill at the time, as British fans of the period idolized Clapton to the point of public nuisance—the phrase “Clapton...

He never had a signature song the way his peers and sometime bandmates Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton did, but the genres that Jeff Beck explored throughout his career chart the changes in rock — and rock guitar — over decades. One of rock’s most physical technicians, seeming to enjoy wrestling with his instrument, Beck made his name with British Invasion pop. But not content to stay there, he moved into the in-vogue blues-rock of the late Sixties and then the harder boogie and fusion of the next decade. The settings changed,...

Jeff Beck, the blues-rock innovator and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who revolutionized how the guitar is played, died Tuesday at the age of 78.

Beck’s family confirmed the former Yardbirds guitarist’s death Wednesday. “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing,” Beck’s family said in a statement. “After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family asks for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.”

Beck, an eight-time Grammy winner,...

The news about Charlie Watts, who died yesterday at 80, deeply impacted the Rolling Stones drummer’s colleagues and peers — but also subsequent generations of rockers. Like the Stones, the Black Keys cut their teeth on blues songs and went on to write their own material, songs that never lost sight of their gritty origins.

For the last show of their 50th-anniversary tour, at Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center in December 2012, the Stones invited the Black Keys to join them onstage. (Other guests: Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, and John Mayer.

Apple TV+’s docuseries 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything makes it seem like The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street album was more fun to record than listen to, and that sets a high standard. The record distills the band’s sounds, from acoustic world music political ballads, through deep heartfelt blues, to honky tonk so funky you have to shake your ass. The group plays country, Southern blues, R&b, and the almost-punk-before-punk “Rip This Joint.” “Tumbling Dice,” is a radio staple. Keith Richards even took the lead vocals on a track to keep you happy. There was so much material, it came out as a double album. What could be more fun than that?

Richards’ Nellcôte mansion, on the Côte d’Azur in the South of France, was the hardest rocking musical getaway paradise in 1971. It was a Rock and Roll Main Street, and even the...

Mick Jagger got a call from his label recently with some news: While working on a reissue of the Rolling Stones’ 1973 album Goats Head Soup, the crew found some unreleased tracks. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, no,’” Jagger says. “Unreleased tracks, to me that always means a lot of work. It’s like, ‘Things that you didn’t like and didn’t finish!’”

Jagger’s mind changed when he heard the music. “Actually, it’s not bad at all,” he says. Soon, isolating at his home in the European countryside, he...

The past few months have seen several artists covering John Lennon from home in quarantine, most recently with Bille Joe Armstrong’s Generation X–inspired rendition of “Gimme Some Truth.” Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck covered “Isolation,” while the Dirty Projectors offered their own take on the song. Gal Gadot also led a group of celebrities through “Imagine,” which, really, no one needed.

Yet no major artist has covered “How Do You Sleep?” — the late Beatle’s bitter Imagine track aimed at Paul McCartney. Things had grown tense between Lennon...

The Rolling Stones went into 2020 thinking they’d once again be playing to sold-out football stadiums across North America on their ongoing No Filter tour. It’s still theoretically possible that they’ll find a way to squeeze in those dates before the end of the year, but it’s far more likely that they’ll have to wait until 2021 or even 2022 to play make-up shows.

Fans did get a brief chance to see the Stones play live over the weekend when they appeared at Global Citizen’s “One World: Together at Home” event.

“Yoko and I always live about two-thousand light years’ speed when we’re working,” John Lennon says in one of the 1971 interviews unearthed on the new box set Imagine: The Ultimate Collection. “It’s usually moving very fast and there’s always a small hurricane around us.” But John was kidding about the “small” part—in 1971, he was caught up in a full-scale creative hurricane. His solo classic Imagine is an experiment he only tried once, making a state-of-the-art professional rock album with a rotating cast of top-notch studio hired guns.

Tony Sokol Sep 23, 2018

John Lennon's Imagine album wasn't all peace and love. "How Do You Sleep?" woke up a tug of war.

Imagine all the Beatles living life in peace. Except Paul McCartney, of course, who spent quite a few restless nights after using his McCartney album to announce the breakup of the band before its leader and founder John Lennon got the chance to break the news. Oh boy. Universal Music is releasing the Imagine: The Ultimate Collection reissue on October 5. As a teaser, they dropped a never-before-seen footage from the Raw Studio Mixes disk Lennon and George Harrison recording "How Do You Sleep?"

"Imagine you are at the Lennon’s home, Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, England," reads the official description on YouTube. "It’s night. It’s the last week in May in 1971 and you are their special guest, sat in a chair in the very center of the their recording studio,...

On September 7th, 1968, Led Zeppelin played their first live show ever in, of all places, a converted gym in Gladsaxe, Denmark. They weren’t yet billed under their soon-to-be world-famous name but were instead performing under the guise of the New Yardbirds, a relaunch of the British Invasion blues rockers who’d imploded just months before. The only known quantity among this new lineup was guitarist Jimmy Page, who’d funded the tour through Scandinavia out of his own pocket, but that was enough draw a young crowd to the venue,...

When John Lennon headed into the studio in 1971 to make his solo classic Imagine, wth Yoko Ono and Phil Spector, he had a lot to prove. He wanted to shake off the shadow of the Beatles, yet also build on the band’s legacy. He was itching to leave his ex-bandmates in the dust — Imagine has his notorious attack on Paul McCartney, “How Do You Sleep?” But he also wanted to come to terms with his past and embrace his future with Yoko. He wanted both raging protest songs and tender love ballads.

The film Imagine, which John Lennon and Yoko Ono codirected and costarred in, will return to theaters this fall with extra footage. It also features restored footage and a newly remastered soundtrack mixed in Dolby Atmos by Paul Hicks, who has won Grammys for his work on the Beatles’ box set and Love soundtrack. The screenings will take place around the world on September 17th.

The couple made the film, not to be confused with the similarly titled 1988 film, in 1971 at their home in Ascot, England and released it the following year.

The much-discussed Space Jam 2 now has a director (Justin Lin) to go along with its star (LeBron James), and fans of the original (well, me, anyway) have just one question: How will the sequel's soundtrack ever live up to the original? You know, the Space Jam soundtrack. The one that gave the world "I Believe I Can Fly" and eventually went platinum six times over? That soundtrack. Released on Nov. 12, 1996, below please find a celebration of the singular piece of art that is the Space Jam soundtrack. "Fly Like an Eagle" In 1996, Seal had just won three Grammys for "Kiss From a Rose,...

New York — An upcoming auction of over 300 historical documents includes rare letters written by Vincent van Gogh, George Washington, John Lennon and other iconic figures.

The property of an anonymous American collector is being offered by Profiles in History in an online and phone auction on Dec. 18.

Among the highlights is a two-page letter from Washington to an Anglican clergyman.

Another top item is a signed van Gogh letter, written in 1890, to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, who were proprietors of the Cafe de la Gare in Arles, France, where the Dutch post-impressionist artist lived for a time.

Each of those letters is estimated to bring $200,000 to $300,000.

A handwritten letter from John Lennon to Eric Clapton has a pre-sale estimate of $20,000 to $30,000.

The collection will be exhibited Dec. 3-9 at Douglas Elliman's Madison Avenue art gallery.

Washington's letter was written on Aug. 15, 1798, to the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, amid an undeclared naval war with France.

Ronnie Wood turned down the chance to join Led Zeppelin. The Rolling Stones guitarist was once managed by Peter Grant who helped turn the 'Stairway to Heaven' band into one of the world's biggest music acts but Ronnie admits he was unimpressed when he first heard them and was asked to join them. Speaking on his Absolute Radio show, Ronnie said: 'Peter Grant, used to manage myself and Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart and Mickey Waller and Nicky Hopkins back in the good old days. He was behind a band that was going to be called The New Yard Birds, which I had an offer to join, and I said 'I can't join that bunch of farmers'. Anyway,...

Re-release of 1972 classic Exile on Main Street wows fans all over again

You can't always get what you want, but if you wait 16 years, you just might get what you need…

The Rolling Stones may find themselves back at the top of the album charts this weekend, bringing them their first number one album since 1994.

The rereleased Exile on Main Street – which contains remixed tracks such as Rocks Off and Tumbling Dice – topped the midweek charts today.

Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company, said the Stones faced stiff competition from Faithless, whose album the Dance was only 1,000 copies behind, and might yet pip them to the post. But the reissue, which includes a mixture of unreleased outtakes and incomplete tracks, was proving attractive to Stones fans of a certain age, he said.

"The Stones may not be at their creative peak any more, but this album is...