Suzi talked to Adria Giordano from the Chrysalis Center about their response to COVID-19 pandemic, and their upcoming “Donation Creation 2020” food drive.
Eddie Van Halen could have taken the life of Fred Durst according to photographer Andrew Bennett in his new photobook, Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen,
Eddie was jamming with Durst and his band Limp Bizkit in 2001 in a house in Beverly Hills, California when suddenly someone lit a joint. Not a fan, Eddie up and left, leaving behind his gear.
He called Durst the next day to arrange a pick-up time, but Durst didn't return his call. That's when Eddie decided to pay a visit, driving over in an assault vehicle he'd bought at a military auction -- with an illegal gun mount on the back.
Bennett writes, "Eddie drove that assault vehicle through L.A., into Beverly Hills, then parked and left it running on the front lawn of the house Limp Bizkit was rehearsing in. He got out wearing no shirt, his hair in a Samurai bun on top of his head, his jeans held up with a strand of rope and combat boots held together by duct tape. And he had a gun in his hand.”
Eddie explained to Bennett, "That [a-hole] answered the door. I put my gun to that stupid red hat of his and I said, ‘Where’s my [crap], mother[effer]?’ That [stupid] guy just turned to one of his employees and starts yelling at him to grab my stuff... Eddie Van Halen stood on the front lawn of a residential home in Beverly Hills in broad daylight, smoking a cigarette while holding a gun on Fred Durst as he went back and forth from the house to the assault vehicle, lugging amps and guitars.”
25 years ago, eight and a half years after its release, George Thorogood and the Destroyers' Live was certified platinum for one million sales on April 21st, 1995. He's bad! That phrase was the inspration to his song "Bad to the Bone" George Thorogood wrote "Bad to the Bone" while on his 1981 tour, which took him to each of the 50 states in 50 days. He talks about what inspired the song.
"When I grew up in Delaware, the saying was 'bad.' Everything was 'bad.' Bad meaning hip. Bad meaning groovy. If you're from the East Coast, you'll understand that. And now it's commonplace. Everybody says it. I wanted to write a song around that, 'cause a guy told me about a song that a bluesman did named Lowell Fulson, a song called 'Stoned to the Bone.' And I wanted to get lyrics like 'Jumpin' Jack Flash,' or like 'Who Do You Love?' bad, tongue in cheek, masculine lyrics. And I was on this 50/50 tour and I put it together then. And that's it."
David Crosby says he reached out to Neil Young before the COVID-19 pandemic about reuniting Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for a get out the vote against Trump tour, but he never heard back, and he doesn't hold out hope for it happening.
He tells Rolling Stone, "I sent an email to Neil, saying, 'Listen, I know you’re pissed at me because I slagged your girlfriend [now wife, actress Daryl Hannah]. And I’m sorry.' I’ve apologized a couple of times publicly, but that’s not really relevant to what’s going on in the country... we can’t have another four years of this guy... we have a big voice, we could probably sway the outcome... I’m really sorry I shot my mouth off about your girlfriend. I really am. But we’ve all been horrible to each other over the years...
"It was a really good email, man. It was very sincere, very straightforward. I’m not buttering his toast, trying to suck his [member]. I’m just telling them what the real truth is..."
Crosby feels Stephen Stills would be on board, and, while he no longer speaks to Graham Nash, he thinks he'd be up for it, too. "There’s only one person who doesn’t want it," adds Crosby. "No, there’s two people who don’t want it. That’s Neil and the lady in question."
Of course at this point, no one will be touring, including Crosby, and that has him worried.
"I don’t want to be sitting at home, man. I’m 78. I only got a few years left. You know that. I don’t want to spend them sitting on my butt. I got a lot of music in me still, and I’m trying really hard to make music every minute I can, because it’s the one place I can contribute. [But] I’m sitting here, watching the last bits of cash that I’ve got dribble out, and I don’t have any savings. So it’s not looking good."
Crosby has had one tour canceled and his praying his run of dates in August and September happen, as well as those in November and December, which will feature Marc Cohn and Shawn Colvin.
Crosby ended the Rolling Stone interview with, "I’m gonna get in trouble for some of [what I just said], but I don’t give a [damn]."
Glenn Frey's son Deacon was born on April 17th, 1993. He turns 27 today and he now sings "Peaceful Easy Feeling" when the Eagles are on tour. That song was a big hit and Glen Frye found it in his mailbox. It hit #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and it was just sitting in the mailbox of his house in L.A.'s Coldwater Canyon, sent to him by his friend Jack Tempchin. Here is the late Glenn Frey:
“Jack was always sending me songs. And I went in the house and I put it in my cassette machine and I heard it and I thought, ‘Wow, this is it, a Poco-type song for me to sing.’ So I took the tape to rehearsal and we started working it up right away. And it’s one of Jack’s best songs. Always do I hear the line, ‘I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight with a million stars all around.’ Great line.”
The late Foghat singer and guitarist "Lonesome" Dave Peverett was born on April 16th, 1950. One of Foghat's best know songs is "Fool for the City". It was recorded in the country but Dave missed the city and that's where the song came from. In a 1990s interview, the late Foghat frontman Dave Peverett explains why he wrote “Fool for the City.”
“That was actually written while I was recording out in the country in Wales. We were out on a farm and I was born in the city, you know, and I was getting a bit tired of getting chased around by wasps and stuff. So when everybody was writing songs about getting back to the country at that time, I wrote kind of a reversal of that, about getting back to the pollution and the smog and stuff.”
On April 15th, 1972, Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan -- then better known as The Move -- unveiled their classic rock side project. Electric Light Orchestra made its first public appearance that day at the Fox and Hounds, a pub in Croyden, South London. The first song Jeff Lynne wrote that he thought could be a hit. It was called Do Ya. The Move's original recording peaked at number-93 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Five years later, ELO's reached number-24. After The Move morphed into ELO, Lynne began performing the song live with that band. Five years later, he re-recorded it and it made the Top 25. Lynne talks about the song -- although it wasn't actually quite as big a hit as he thinks it was the first time around.
“It was the first song I ever wrote that I thought could be a hit. It was so insistent, I said, ‘Wow! That sounds like a hit!’ And it got into the Top 40 in America, which is funny enough. It was the first hit I’d ever had anywhere. You know, it was just going to number-40 or something, but it did sort of make an impact on a lot of people, because a lot of people still ask me about that song.”
Ritchie Blackmore, the guitarist known for his many years in both Deep Purple and Rainbow, turns 75 today (April 14th) The song by Deep Purple: "Perfect Strangers" was recorded after Ritchie rejoined the band. Bassist Roger Glover says he's really proud to have been involved in a song he feels is "completely original." He says the roots of "Perfect Strangers" date back to long before it became the title track to the band's 1984 album, which reunited the group's best-known lineup, including guitarist Ritchie Blackmore.
“'Perfect Strangers' was a riff we had for a long time. It's Ritchie's riff. It's one of those riffs that we loved playing, but we didn't know where it was going to go. We couldn't write a song over it until the reunion, when we started jamming. Ritchie came up with a few chords, and Ritchie's got this knack of doing things that you don't quite expect. Well, 'Perfect Strangers' is one of those things. It's an arrangement that is completely original. It doesn't sound like any other song. It's unique, and to have been part of a unique song like that makes me feel really proud."
50 years ago yesterday, April 9th, 1970, and today, April 10th, 1970, it was a battle of press releases between The Beatles and Paul McCartney over the status of the group, which was rumored to be breaking up.
On April 9th, the release from their company, Apple Corps, said they weren't splitting up. While admitting that no further recordings were scheduled, publicist Mavis Smith noted that a new LP would soon be released and that she "hoped The Beatles would get together for another recording session after the summer." That night, Paul performed his new song, "Maybe I'm Amazed," on British television.
Citing "business and music differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family," he announced the break, though he was unsure whether it would be temporary or permanent. He concluded, "I don't foresee a time when the Lennon and McCartney partnership will be active again in songwriting."
Legal wranglings continued for four years until December 29th, 1974, when John Lennon, while on vacation at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, signed the papers formally terminating the band.
There were numerous reasons for the split, chief among them:
On April 17th, a week after Paul's announcement, he released McCartney.
Allen Klein was named the band's manager, and on May 8th they released their final studio album, Let It Be.
Paul McCartney on The Beatles break up.
"We'd been having a lot of troubles and the group had been breaking up, but I made a last ditch attempt to try and save things and said to John at a meeting we were having, I said, 'I think we should just go back to being a little touring band. We should just get back on the road and we should just do some little gigs and just get out there and rock. And John just looked at me and said, 'Well,' he said, 'I think you're stupid.' He said, 'I wasn't gonna tell you this, but I'm leaving the band. And that was it."
John Lennon on the end of The Beatles.
“It takes a lot to live with four people over and over for years and years, which is what we did. And we’d call each other every name under the sun. We got to blows. We’d been through the mill together for more than 10 years, you know. We’ve been through our therapy together many times, you know.”
Paul McCartney on the tension caused by John and Yoko.
“When John hooked up with Yoko so sort of intensely, it was kind of obvious that there could be no looking back after that. I always felt that he had to clear the decks of us in order to give her enough attention.”
Paul McCartney on conflict regarding Allen Klein managing The Beatles.
“I’d put forward Lee Eastman, Linda’s dad, as a possible sort of lawyer. But they said, ‘No. It would just be too bias for you and against us,’ which I could see. And in The Beatles, if anyone doesn’t agree with the plan, it was always vetoed – very democratic that way. So the three-to-one thing was very awkward. And we were supposed to be doing something on Abbey Road I think and we all showed up at the studio ready to record and Allen Klein showed up and they said, ‘You’ve got to sign a contract.’ I said, ‘We could easily do this on Monday. Let’s do our session now. You’re not gonna push me into this,’ you know. They said, ‘Oh, you’re stalling.’ They said, ‘He wants 20-percent.’ I said, ‘Tell him he can have 15-percent. We’re a big act.’ I remember the exact words, ‘We’re a big act.’ But for some strange reason, I think they were so intoxicated with him, that they said, ‘No, he’s got to have 20-percent.’ I said, ‘Right, that’s it. Well I’m not signing now. So there was a big argument and they all went, leaving me at the studio.”
George Harrison on the end of The Beatles.
“The thing that it started out being [was] it gave us a vehicle to be able to do so much, and we were younger and we grew right through that. But it got to a point where it was stifling us. There was too much restriction. It had to self-destruct.”
Ringo Starr on the end of The Beatles.
“We weren’t sitting the studio saying, ‘Okay, this is it. Last record. Last track. Last take.”
The news that The Beatles had broken up appeared in newspapers on April 10th, 1970, although the press release announcing it was actually serviced the day before. Ironically, "Let It Be" hit number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 where it stayed for 2 weeks. Paul McCartney explains that he wrote "Let It Be" at about the time The Beatles had begun the contentious recording sessions for the album of the same title. And he tells us that it was literally inspired by seeing his late mother, Mary Patricia Mullen McCartney, in a dream.
“We were all getting a little crazy, and I’d gone to bed one night well crazy and had a dream. And she’d been in the dream, which is always lovely, you know, when people who’ve been long gone come in dreams, ‘cause you actually meet them again, even if it’s just within the confines of your own head. And she said, ‘You’ll be alright.’ She was very sort of calming and I woke up thinking, ‘I feel better about things.’ As I usually did, I started writing a song. And because she was my mother and her name was Mary, I said, ‘Mother Mary comes to me.’”
