Today's Day in Rock News!

Today's Day in Rock


Scott Weiland Tells His Side Of Stone Temple Pilots Breakup
As Scott Weiland released his new album "Blaster" from his new solo band Scott Weiland and The Wildabouts, he revealed his side of his departure from Stone Temple Pilots.

"It's just a shame how it happened," Weiland says about the breakup with Stone Temple Pilots in a new interview with QMI Agency. "I said I needed six months off. I felt we needed six months off in order to do a 20th year anniversary tour and that 20th anniversary tour didn't end up happening and I said, 'Okay, then we need to make a new record because we can't go on just playing the greatest hits set. It's not going to work. We're losing fanbase. Our guarantees are starting to go down.'

"So I assumed we were all on the same page when we left tour and it turned out not so and they got different management and things just soured. (I've known them) since I was a teenager.

"Crazy things happen especially when you end up getting different management. People see things one way and a lot of times how things are portrayed to the band members are through the goggles of the management and filtered through that and that's what you end up hearing."

Weiland also discussed the musical direction of the new Scott Weiland and The Wildabouts album. "I think we fit in somewhere between Queens of the Stone Age and any Jack White sort of project, but with my melodies. Rock 'n' roll, but garage indie rock 'n' roll..."Read more here.



Video of Van Halen's David Lee Roth Stage Injury Goes Online
(hennemusic) Video of Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth injuring himself during the opening number of the band's performance on ABC-TV's Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday has been posted online.

Hitting the stage to perform their 1984 hit, "Panama", Roth cut his nose with the microphone sometime during the song's first verse. The singer could be seen wiping blood away as the song continued, with Roth eventually going sidestage to grab a towel in an attempt to clean it up and prevent further bleeding.

The singer left the stage during the track before returning to advise the crowd of his injury and apologized as the group took a short break before restarting the performance after Roth was outfitted with a bandage across his nose.

Van Halen then ran through a greatest hits set that included "Panama", "Runnin' With The Devil", "Hot For Teacher", "Eruption", "You Really Got Me", "Dance The Night Away", Unchained" and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love.." Watch the video here.




Led Zeppelin Release Interactive Video
(hennemusic) Led Zeppelin have released an interactive video for the previously unreleased rough mix of "Trampled Under Foot", as featured on the recent expanded reissue of their 1975 release, "Physical Graffiti."

The band hooked up with media and technology company Interlude for the project, which allows users to click on any of the album cover's 16 windows to unlock footage of events that pay homage to the window illustrations on the original artwork.

Billed as "Brandy & Coke (Trampled Under Foot - Initial Rough Mix)", the track is included on the companion disc of bonus material - which also includes a recently-debuted rough mix of "Houses Of The Holy."

The expanded reissue "Physical Graffiti" debuted at No. 11 on the US Billboard 200 and at No. 6 on the UK charts. Check out the video here.




Rolling Stones Including Unreleased Music On Sticky Fingers Reissue
The Rolling Stones long awaited North American tour wasn't the only news that the band revealed this week. They also announced that their classic 1971 album "Sticky Fingers" is being reissued.

The classic album, featuring the hits 'Brown Sugar,' and 'Wild Horses,' will be reissued by Universal Music on May 26th in a variety of formats with a deluxe and box set editions featuring previously unreleased studio outtakes and live recordings from the time period.

The band is giving fans an early taste of the bonus material with the release of a lyric video for an acoustic version of their classic ballad "Wild Horses". Watch it here.

As we reported yesterday, the band will be hitting the road this summer for the Zip Code tour which will be kicking off on May 24th in San Diego, Ca and concluding on July 15th in Quebec. See the tour dates and details for the various editions of the reissue here.




Marilyn Manson and The Smashing Pumpkins Announce Summer Tour
Marilyn Manson and The Smashing Pumpkins have announced that they will be hitting the road together this summer for a North American co-headlining tour.

The End Times Tour will be kicking off on July 7th in Concord, CA at the Concord Pavilion and concluding on August 8th in Cincinnati, OH at the Riverbend Music Center.

Manson will be embarking on the tour in support of his latest album "The Pale Emperor" and The Smashing Pumpkins will be supporting their latest "Monuments To An Elegy." See the dates here.




Gov't Mule Streaming 'Dub Side Of The Mule' Album
(The Blues Gov't Mule have released a stream of their live album Dub Side Of The Mule, featuring Toots Hibbert of Toots And The Maytals. The album is released on April 6 via Mascot Label Group in 3CD+DVD, standard CD and double-vinyl editions.

Mainman Warren Haynes' hopes the release will demonstrate another facet to his band's musical output, after recent title Dark Side Of The Mule and Stoned Side Of The Mule saw them covering Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones respectively.

Haynes said recently: "Each song on our 2013 album Shout! has its own personality - it sounds like Gov't Mule but doesn't sound like anything we'd ever done. These archive releases further that concept. They allow us to highlight some of our influences as well as how far we've come since the first album." Check out the album stream here.




Failure Releasing First Album in 19 Years, Streaming New Song
(Classic Rock) Failure have announced that their first album since 1996's Fantastic Planet will be released in June. They've have also released a stream of the song "Hot Traveler" from the record.

Ken Andrews, Greg Edwards and Kellii Scott split in 1997 amid drug issues, but reformed in 2013. They'll launch fourth record The Heart Is A Monster on June 30 after a successful PledgeMusic campaign.

Frontman Andrews tells Noisey: "One thing Greg and I agreed on early is that we didn't want to reform for nostalgia tours. We wanted to come back as a full-functioning musical force, and creatively pick up where we left off with Fantastic Planet.

"That meant we needed to start experimenting in the studio, which we did in late 2013. The results were definitely Failure - we've been chipping away at a new album this whole time." Read more and stream the new song here.



Iron Maiden and King Crimson Stars Lead Prog Orchestra Album
(Classic Rock) Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith and King Crimson's Gavin Harrison are among the big-name musicians who appear on an orchestral prog album released this week.

The guitarist and drummer are joined by ex-Yes and Moody Blues keyboardist Patrick Moraz, guitarist Guthrie Govan and late Three Dog Night keyboardist Jimmy Greenspoon in collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The album, entitled The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Plays Prog Rock Classics, features tracks by Pink Floyd, Crimson, Rush, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull and others. Read more and check out a video here.




Neurosis Frontman's Wife Hospitalized With Undiagnosed Illness
(TeamRock Radio) The friends of Neurosis frontman Scott Kelly have launched a donation appeal after his wife Sarah lost the ability to see and move as a result of an undiagnosed illness.

She's been in hospital since March 24 after waking up with the symptoms. While her vision has returned, she's still not able to walk, and tests are continuing.

Over $35,000 have been donated via the Kellys' GoFundMe page to assist with medical bills. Karrie Morton, who's running the campaign, says: "Doctors are still not able to identify an exact diagnosis. She has begun rehabbing in the hospital, but it's slow going." Read more here.



Tesla's Jeff Keith Recovering From Hip Replacement Surgery
(Classic Rock) Tesla mainman Jeff Keith has undergone successful hip replacement surgery and is resting at home, it's been confirmed. And the band say he'll rejoin them for rehearsals for their upcoming live commitments next week.

They say in a statement: "JK has made a full recovery from his hip replacement surgery and is enjoying some much needed rest and relaxation at this time.

"The band will resume rehearsals for the Monsters Of Rock cruise next week and run through a set of songs from their latest album Simplicity." Read more here.




Global Record Release Day To Begin In July
(Classic Rock) The International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry has confirmed that singles and albums will be released on Fridays across the globe starting from July 10.

Fridays are currently the day when music is issued in countries including Australia and Germany, with Monday being the day in the UK and Tuesday in the US.

It was previously reported that the IFPI were looking to secure a global release day as a result of trade being busier at the start of the weekend. Now Music Week have confirmed an international agreement has been reached.

And while the move has been welcomed by retailers, distributors and digital services, some have expressed their concerns. Read more here.


Van Halen Rock Classics On Jimmy Kimmel
(hennemusic) Van Halen delivered a trio of classic tracks - "Hot For Teacher", "Eruption" and their supercharged cover of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" - on the second of two nights of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday.

The band shut down Hollywood Boulevard on Monday to perform an 8-song greatest hits set for the late night program as they launched their latest album, "Tokyo Dome Live In Concert."

During the band's opening number, "Panama", frontman David Lee Roth injured himself when his martial arts stick/baton cut his nose, forcing the singer to stop the event while he was treated. The injury was originally believed to have been caused when Roth bumped his nose on a microphone.

On Tuesday, Kimmel revealed slo-motion footage of the incident and that Roth received 14 stitches at hospital following the performance. Watch all of the videos here.




AJ Pero Was Twisted Sisters' John Bonham Says Bandmate
(Classic Rock) Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French has described late drummer AJ Pero as the band's John Bonham or Keith Moon. He passed away earlier this month at the age of 55, while on tour with Adrenaline Mob. It's suspected he suffered a heart attack.

In an emotional interview with Eddie Trunk, French says: "What John Bonham was to Zeppelin, what Keith Moon was to The Who, AJ was to us. I just mentioned two legends - and AJ's up there with them."

He continues: "We've been together longer and spent more time together than we do with our own families. I think metal's the only genre where that happens." Read more here.




Billy Joel Celebrates 'Glass Houses' 35th anniversary In The Studio
The latest episode of the syndicated radio show In The Studio: The Stories Behind History's Greatest Rock Bands celebrates the 35th anniversary of Billy Joel's "Glass Houses" album. The show sent over these details:

Billy Joel took a big risk in March 1980 by following blockbusters The Stranger and 52nd Street with the surprisingly stripped down garage rock arrangements of Glass Houses. But lest you get the wrong idea, it was the approach that was lean, not the material. Some of Joel's best songs are here including "You May Be Right", "Sometimes a Fantasy", "Don't Ask Me Why", "Close to the Borderline", the under-appreciated "All for Leyna" and the timeless "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me".

In a rare conversation, Billy opens up to InTheStudio host Redbeard about his musical influences, seeing the Beatles perform on TV's Ed Sullivan Show, the British Invasion bands that followed, garage rock, and the New York City punk scene which inspired his approach to the making of Glass Houses.

"I think what I was doing with the Glass Houses record in the studio when it came time to get together with the band was becoming a garage band all over again. I wanted to have fun ,and I wanted to make music that all the musicians enjoyed playing, as if we were in a bar." - Billy Joel





Vince Neil Sings Anthem at Las Vegas Outlaws First Game
(hennemusic) Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil performed the National Anthem at the Las Vegas Outlaws first game on Monday at the Thomas & Mack Center as the team hosted the San Jose SaberCats in Arena Football League action.

The SaberCats spoiled the Outlaws debut by winning the game 59-41. Neil and his company, Rockstar Sports Group, were awarded the new AFL franchise last September.

The ownership group includes former Florida Gator and Tampa Bay Buccaneer's quarterback Bob Hewko, aviation businessman Mark Daniels, and technology businessman Sohrob Farudi.

Neil and Motley Crue recently completed a 5-date tour of Japan and announced a series of Australian concert dates in May. Watch Neil's anthem performance here.




Bernie Marsden Wrote Some Shine Songs For Whitesnake Reunion
(Classic Rock) Bernie Marsden has revealed some of the material on solo album Shine was written with a Whitesnake reunion in mind. The co-founding guitarist wrote the band's early material with David Coverdale, and brought his former colleague back to guest on Shine, which was released last year.

Marsden tells UCR: "I'd written a bunch of songs - not everything on the album, but certainly half a dozen. In the back of my mind I thought there might be a Whitesnake reunion or something.

"David and I had reconnected and I'd been playing with Whitesnake in 2011 and 2012. So that's where songs like Walk Away come from, and a couple of other things."

A reunion did take place of a form when Coverdale recorded lead vocals for Marsden's track Trouble. "I thought, 'If you're going to ask people to sing, go for the top of the mountain,' says the guitarist. Read more here.




Tool Play April Fool's Prank On Fans
(Prog) Tool have played an April Fool's joke on fans by pretending that a track from their long-awaited fifth album has leaked online. The band - who are currently working on the follow-up to 2006's 10,000 Days - claim to be furious in a Facebook post, and link to a YouTube track that's really by Mexican folk-pop outfit Hechizeros Band. Then they suggest that Hechizeros Band actually ripped them off.

Tool say: "This music leak is unsettling on many levels. First off, it truly sucks to have your unfinished music available on the interweb without your consent. And second, to have it immediately picked up by someone and released as their own work is infuriating.

"We don't encourage anyone to listen to this leaked clip because it's far from finished and it will spoil what's to come. But if you absolutely must, then listen to both clips. These are practically identical. It's a clear cut case of copyright infringement and plagiarism." Read more here.




The Tangent Reveal New Song 'San Francisco'
(Prog) The Tangent have released a lyric video for their track San Francisco, taken from eighth album A Spark In The Aether - The Music That Died Alone Volume Two.

The promo, shot in the style of a 1970s TV show credits, follows the launch of the title track earlier this month. The album is released on April 20 via InsideOut and sees mainman Andy Tillison joined by Jonas Reingold, Theo Travis, Luke Machin and Morgan Agren.

Tillison says of San Francisco: "It's part of a long piece about the way we view America from other parts of the world. Inspired by theme tunes shows like Kojak and films such as Shaft and Bullit, the song takes an affectionate, tongue-in-cheek look at the sheer number of times San Francisco has been destroyed on screen."

He adds of the musical style: "Funk and prog are like two estranged sisters. They existed side by side in the early 70s. Both forms relied on precision musicianship and embraced the emerging synthesiser technology. Anyone who's into 70s progressive rock bands must have experienced the funk stuff as part of their musical soundtrack.

"Where there was a Zappa there was a Bootsy. Where there was a Daevid there was a George Clinton. If it had all happened now the forms might have been closer to one another." Check out the video here.




Black Sabbath: Symptoms of the Universe Set For U.S. Release
Music journalist and former Black Sabbath publicist Mick Wall's new book "Black Sabbath: Symptoms of the Universe" is scheduled to be released in North America by St. Martin's Press on April 14th.

Here is the synopsis: Decades before his MTV reality show The Osbournes, Ozzy Osbourne was the dark, subversive lead singer in Black Sabbath, the band often credited with creating heavy metal.

Selling more than 75 million albums worldwide, an induction into the prestigious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and hitting #1 on the Billboard 200 chart in 2013, Black Sabbath has had lasting effect on music, influencing many bands along the way.

But their journey wasn't always easy. BLACK SABBATH takes us through the height of their fame, when the band discovered they'd been so badly ripped off by their managers that they didn't even own their own songs and they looked for salvation from Don Arden-a notorious gangster figure and father of Ozzy's wife Sharon- who resurrected their career but left them indebted to him, financially and personally. And into the 15 year war after the group broke up between the post-Ozzy Sabbath and Ozzy himself, whose solo career overshadowed Sabbath so much that a reunion was entirely on his terms.





Magenta's Christina Booth Releases Video For Solo Album Title Track
(Prog) Magenta vocalist Christina Booth has premiered her video for The Light with Prog. It's taken from her solo album of the same name, which is available now via the band website.

Released under the name Christina, it features guest appearances by Andy Tillison, John Mitchell, Theo Travis, Andy Edwards and Dan Nelson, along with Magenta bandmates Robert Reed and Chris Fry.

Booth tells Prog: "The Light is a song about man's constant search for enlightenment - how we seem to need to know that there is something else after we are gone from this life. The video represents our search for the truth and the idea that we all have a 'guardian angel' leading us through dark times into the light."

She adds that the album explores the concept of coming to terms with mortality and continues: "On a personal level, it's letting out the last few years of frustration, guilt and anger at losing those closest to me.

"But ultimately it represents our capacity to carry on - no matter what life throws at us." Watch the video here.




Slipknot Guest Edit New Issue Of Metal Hammer
(TeamRock Radio) Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has taken over the new issue of Metal Hammer as Editor and he's enlisted the Walking Dead's Charlie Adlard to help him.

The Slipknot frontman is now in charge and he's brought a load of the Knot with him to help out, including Chris Fehn who reveals why he loves Venom and Mick Thomson who goes through his Discs Of Doom - from Electric Six to Deicide.

But that's not all, Charlie Adlard - acclaimed illustrator from the Walking Dead comics - has designed our special gatefold front cover with EXCLUSIVE artwork of every member of Slipknot. Check it out and more previews and details here.




Lesoir Release 'Single-Eyed' Video
(Prog) Lesoir have premiered their video for Single-Eyed with Prog. It's taken from the Dutch quintet's third album Luctor Et Emergo ("I Struggle And Emerge"), which was released this week.

They say of the promo: "We put all the creativity of a few crazy souls in the blender and shot in a most awesome church in Maastricht. We borrowed some wooden beams, and put five frames together, bought some white sheets, and this is the result."

Lesoir - who cite Anathema, Tool and Karnivool among their influences - tour Europe with Evergrey in May, including three UK shows. See the dates and watch the video here.



Minimation: Ron Wood Recalls Mick Taylor Quitting the Rolling Stones
(Radio.com) On Radio.com's latest Minimation, where they animate classic interviews with legendary artists, they look back at an interview from 1977 where Ron Wood talks about a party that he attended with future bandmate Mick Jagger, and Mick's soon-to-be-ex-Rolling Stones bandmate, Mick Taylor.

One of the highlights of the most recent Rolling Stones tour was the nightly jam with former guitarist Mick Taylor. Taylor, of course, replaced founding member Brian Jones in 1969, and was with the Stones for some of their greatest albums, including Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street.

Taylor decided to leave in 1974, informing Mick Jagger of this en route to a party that they were attending for Eric Clapton at mogul Robert Stigwood's house. Taylor went to the party with Jagger, Marshall Chess (who ran Rolling Stones Records at the time) and Ron Wood. Wood recalls Taylor was acting like something was up on the ride to the party, but it wasn't until later that he found out that Taylor was vacating his pretty sweet gig, and setting up Wood to be a Stone for the next four decades or so.

Elsewhere in this segment, Wood gets distracted and tells the origin of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' "Glimmer Twins" handle. Check out the video here.




Singled Out: Gentlemen Rogues' Mocking Love Out Of Nothing At All
Today Gentlemen Rogues' Danny Dunlop (vocals, guitar) tells us about the song "Mocking Love Out Of Nothing At All" from their forthcoming EP "A History So Repeating," which comes out next week. Here is the story:

I like to think of "Mocking Love Out of Nothing At All" as an "anti-love song," coming from the perspective that love only ends in failure, tragedy, and despair, but also with a longing for a different outcome. It's a declaration to wipe your hands clean of any future involvement in romantic endeavors, but deep down, knowing that this hard stance is only temporary. "I can't commence to live with no risk to life and limb, but at present tense, I won't let my heart be stolen again." I like that closing line of the chorus, as it says: For now, I'm done, but I know I won't always feel this way. There's a little bit of hope in there.

The title of the song is a play on the Air Supply power ballad, "Making Love Out of Nothing At All." Air Supply only seemed to write songs that included the word "love" in the title. I wanted our song to be the antithesis to that...high energy, slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not a "joke song."

The music to "Mocking Love Out of Nothing At All" was written right around the time of the release of Gentlemen Rogues' debut EP, but the lyrics weren't finalized until much later. I wrote a few different versions of the lyrics before I really figured out what I wanted the song to say. Initially, the song was called "Thermal Wars." I'd had a conversation with a friend, and he was talking about how he and his wife were always "battling each other" with the thermostat - she liked the apartment warmer, and he liked it cooler. When she got her way, he was sweating his ass off, and when he got his way, she was a Popsicle. This couple got along swimmingly in every other regard, so I thought it was funny how something so trivial (temperature) would make one person legitimately aggravated with the other. The original pre-chorus lyric said, "So, this is what we call war?" Once I figured out what I wanted the song to be about, this lyric was changed to "Didn't your mama say there'd be days like this?" The final lyric is a paraphrased play on The Shirelles 1961 hit, "Mama Said." Lyrically speaking, this Shirelles' tune and "Mocking Love..." share a similar theme...at least that's my interpretation. I just thought it "worked." Still do.

The recording of the track was done very quickly, and with the exception of the vocals, it was done completely live, all in a room together. We recorded it with Kevin Butler, at Orb Studios, on the outskirts of Austin, TX. I think we recorded the song in three takes, if memory serves me correctly? Overall, we are happy with the way it turned out, and are proud of the song. It's fun, a little challenging to play live (in a good way), and is a good representation of what Gentlemen Rogues do as a band.