Original Doobie Brothers drummer John Hartman was born on March 18th, 1950. He turns 70 today. There was a loose jam that got turned into an iconic Doobie Bros. song. It was "Rockin' Down the Highway" and it ended up on the album Toulouse Street in 1972. John Hartman, who drummed on all The Doobie Brothers' '70s recordings, credits producer Ted Templeman and engineer Donn Landee with turning "Rockin' Down the Highway" from an unstructured jam into a radio-ready track. He recalls how the song came about.
“Most of that stuff on Toulouse Street was basement songs. That means Tommy and I were down in the basement jamming these things and then coming up with some of the stuff. “Rockin’ Down the Highway”’s one of those songs and to see it go from a real rough cut basement jam song into a full-fledged production was a real neat experience.”
Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham celebrates his 69th birthday today (March 17th). Ironically, the American guitarist in the Irish band was the one born on St. Patrick's Day. One of their most popular songs "Jailbreak" was never a hit. It reminds guitarist Scott Gorham of strange coincidence during a contest to promote it. What comes to mind is a contest the band's label ran in connection with the song and album. As Gorham tells it, its winner was someone who was actually a prison inmate at the time. He picks up the story.
“They went through all this red tape getting this guy out of jail, so he could come and see the concert and meet us backstage and pictures taken. So they did it, the guy came back, had his picture taken, saw the concert and all that. We all met him. And we found out a week later that the guy had actually escaped custody on that trip, right? So he had a little jailbreak of his own there. I mean, it was, like, such a coincidental tie-in there. It sounds like a load of b.s., but it’s actually true.”
Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson was born on March 16th, 1954. She is the blond younger one. The song "Barracuda" despite its fishy title, makes Nancy Wilson think of a horse. the song peaked at number-11 on the Billboard Hot 100. here she is to explain:
“’Barracuda’ comes on the radio, I think ROCK! And I also think of galloping on a horse. The sound of the song is like riding a horse galloping and it feels like that on stage when you’re playing it. It’s like [sings riff]. It’s momentum. It blows your hair back.”
Here's what's NOT happening due to the Coronavirus. Mohegan Sun has postponed all live events through March 23rd. The Brit Floyd show at the Toyota Oakdale Theater has been postponed until August 8th. On a national level Live Nation and Aeg the biggest live event companies have postponed all major concert tours until at least April. More:
Styx have postponed the rest of their March concert schedule starting with tomorrow's (Friday) show in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. The dates are currently being rescheduled and will be announced in the coming weeks.
Lynyrd Skynyrd rescheduled their shows in Fresno, California from tomorrow (Friday) to August 14th. Their show on Saturday in Reno has been moved to October 2nd. Their four additional March shows will also be rescheduled.
The Eagles March 17th performance at the American Airlines Center in Dallas has been postponed. It will be rescheduled.
Billy Joel's March 19th and April 10th shows at New York's Madison Square Garden have been postponed to September 26th and October 11th after New York State ordered no gatherings over 500 people.
Bob Weir and Wolf Brothers have postponed their current tour, which was to play Chicago tonight, to the fall -- October 7th in Aspen, Colorado through October 28th in Albany, New York. They say, “The health and well being of our live music community is of the utmost importance… In the meantime, be good to yourselves -- and to each other -- and please take preventative actions as recommended by the CDC and WHO.”
Phil Lesh's 80th birthday shows at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, slated for Friday through Sunday, have been postponed to the summer.
KISS pulled the plug on their final three shows this month in the spring leg of their End of the Road tour -- in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Biloxi, Mississippi; and Lafayette, Louisiana. They have all been rescheduled for early October.
Kansas scrapped their shows for the remainder of March.
The Yes Cruise to the Edge -- of which they already jumped ship -- and Justin Hayward's On the Blue Cruise have been postponed and both will be rescheduled this year. Cruise to the Edge was was set to depart Miami on March 27th followed by On the Blue on April 1st.
Lollapalooza Argentina and Lollapalooza Chile, which were both set from March 27th through the 29th, have been postponed to the fall after local governments forbid large public gatherings to stop the spread of the virus. The festival lineups included Guns n’ Roses, The Strokes, Lana Del Rey and Gwen Stefani.
The Juno Awards, Canada's Grammys, will no longer be held Sunday night.
Sting's musical, The Last Ship, has been canceled in San Francisco through March 25th.
A documentary on the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp was set to premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival in April, but the festival has been postponed. Same with New York's Tribeca Film Festival, which was to include screenings of documentaries on Ronnie Wood and Brian Wilson.
What's left of The Allman Brothers Band came together Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden in New York to mark their 50th anniversary.
Calling themselves The Brothers, original member Jaimoe was joined by latter day members Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge and Marc Quinones, along with keyboardist Reese Wynans who was in the pre-Allman Brothers Band The Second Coming, drummer Duane Trucks from Widespread Panic, and former Allman Brothers keyboardist Chuck Leavell. (Derek and Duane are brothers and the nephew of the late Allman's drummer Butch Trucks.)
They did a 24-song set spread over two sets. The first set started with a cover of The Spencer Davis Group's “Don’t Want You No More” and closed with "Jessica."
Set two started with "Mountain Jam" and ended with "Whipping Post," the second of two encores.
The show was Jaimoe's idea -- one of only two original members left. Guitarist Dickey Betts was asked to be part of the show, but is medical issues prevented him from participating. Here is Warren Haynes on Jaimoe's idea for the 50th:
"The wheels started spinning [and] we started putting it in the planning stages, you know. But, as someone said, you only get one 50th anniversary. It is a big deal and I'm sure we were all hoping that the band would still be around to play, but this is a good way to pay tribute to what they did. When I say they, I know speaking for Derek and myself, we always felt like we were just trying to honor the original band, which we both love so much."
The Allman Brothers last show prior to last night was their 45th anniversary finale at The Beacon Theatre in New York in 2014. Original members Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks both died in 2017. The other two founding members -- Duane Allman and Berry Oakley were killed in motorcycle accidents in 1971 and '72.
The Brothers - Madison Square Garden, New York - March 10th, 2020:
Set Two:
Encores:
On March 11th, 1970, Crosby Stills and Nash won the Best New Artist Grammy, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released their debut album, Deja Vu. The song: "Carry On" came about because they needed an opener for the album. It was the last of the four singles released off it, and the only one not to make the Hot 100, though it got plenty of FM airplay.
Some songs are born out of inspiration, some out of necessity. "Carry On," which kicks off Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Deja Vu album, falls into the latter category, according to Stephen Stills and David Crosby.
Stills: “We needed an opener, basically, I think is what it was and I said, ‘I’ll think of something — a shuffle.
Crosby: ‘How ’bout a shuffle? Duh dan duh dan da dun’
Stills: And it’s like so I scratched my way through some words. It’s actually a little vague, the words to that.
Crosby: It’s good, though.
Stills: Yeah.
Crosby: A lot of the time it’s like we just made a little paper glider and threw it over the wall. We have no idea where it’s going on the other side. How it gets to you is like how it gets to you, y’know.”
Boston guitarist and sometime keyboardist Tom Scholz celebrates his 73rd birthday today (March 10th). He says he risked losing a finger to create the effect at the end of the organ solo on the song "Hitch a Ride" from the debut album. He says there's an effect on "Hitch a Ride," off Boston's debut album, that he's particularly proud of -- especially since it could have cost him a finger.
"The last chord of the organ solo the organ changes pitch. A Hammond organ won't change pitch, there was really no way to get it to do that back in 1976. So as I was holding the last chord of the organ solo, I reached behind underneath this tape deck, knowing that it had a big flywheel with spokes on it that I could have stuck a finger in. But I didn't care, I wanted to change the pitch. So I reached underneath the thing, grabbed the flywheel, it slowed the tape down and made the pitch go up on the organ solo at the end.
If you paid me this kind of money to do nothing, I would KEEP doing nothing. STEVE PERRY hasn't been the lead singer of JOURNEY for 23 years. But it turns out he still makes a ton of money when they go on tour. The current members of Journey have been wrapped up in a lawsuit. And it's brought out some details about the deal Steve made when he left in 1997.
Basically, he co-owned the rights to the name "Journey" along with guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain. And he relinquished those rights when he quit, but got a lot in return. Check this out . . .
For their first two tours without him, he got 50% of what Neal or Jon made, whichever was higher. Then he got 25% for their third tour, and 12.5% for EVERY tour after that.
That includes any profits they've made from ticket sales, merchandise, and sponsorships. And he made the same deal for any albums they release. So he still makes money on those.
Since Steve left the band, they've released four albums and an EP. And they've toured a LOT. Their "Eclipse Tour" alone ran from 2011 to 2017 . . . included 232 shows . . . and was the longest-running tour they've ever done.
20 years ago today (March 6th), Eric Clapton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, in a ceremony that also included The Lovin' Spoonful, James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt, among others. "After Midnight" was the first JJ Cale song Eric ever heard and the first one he recorded. Eric Clapton is a huge fan of the late JJ Cale. After he recorded such Cale songs as "After Midnight" and "Cocaine," the two finally recorded an album together in 2006. Clapton recalls finding out just how mysterious a character Cale -- who he calls John -- was after being introduced to his music by Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie, who would soon produce Clapton's self-titled first solo album in 1970.
“He gave me this single he had of John’s, ‘After Midnight,’ and eventually we recorded that, with Delaney producing. And I just started to hunger and need to know more. And with John being the kind of guy he was, it was a challenge. I would have to go and hunt down anything I could find out, including, I mean, I ended up getting a publicity photograph, an 8x10, of John, which was like gold dust. And even that was so poorly lit that all you could see was the outline of his hair.”
Mick Jagger has explained why he stopped taking acting roles for nearly 20 years, after appearing in a dozen movies between the late '60s and 2001.
He tells USA Today that it was due to a combination of "laziness and not getting a decent script." He says he "would like to have done a lot more," but film's "a funny world... You get a lot of rubbish offered to you that you might do if that was the only job." Jagger, of course, has plenty of "other things to do."
Jagger finally found a script he liked in Burnt Orange Heresy, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last fall. Although he only appears in two scenes, he felt he could do something with the limited role, "even though there's not a lot of screen time."
Jagger says he's already started preparing for the next leg of The Rolling Stones' No Filter tour, which kicks off May 8th in San Diego. He says he's "going to the gym, singing, [taking] dance classes – trying to get ahead of the game." He claims he's feeling fine since his heart surgery last summer, and calls his recovery "really easy."
