We Will Rock You

FROM WWW.SPINNER.COM:

When your main gig involves playing with Steven Tyler, finding a vocalist that measures up for the follow-up to a Grammy-nominated solo album is no easy task. Luckily for Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, he found a singer for his new solo album, ‘Have Guitar, Will Travel,’ in an unconventional way. His wife Billie came to him one late night and suggested he check out a German singer she’d come across on YouTube. The dude was simply called “Hagen.”

“I listened to it, and I was knocked out,” Perry tells Spinner in an interview taped in our New York City studio. “I said, ‘This guy’s really got it, if this is the real deal.’ You really don’t know, once it’s gone through the internet. You don’t know how he’s recorded it or if it’s been manipulated.”

Perry contacted him, first through e-mail and then through a series of phone calls, and determined that he indeed would be someone he wanted on his record. With that settled, the guitarist ponied up for a plane ticket and Hagen came over. “You know, I didn’t think he was going to be some kind of axe murderer, or whatever they use in Germany for that kind of thing,” he says.

Luckily, Hagen wasn’t any sort of internet weirdo; he’d sung vocals in cover bands for years, honing his voice, which compared to Tyler’s, is radically different. He takes lead vocal duties on four of the 10 cuts on ‘Have Guitar, Will Travel,’ and sounds reminiscent of a young David Johansen. But bringing Hagen into the studio isn’t all Perry had in mind. He wanted someone he could take on the road and help him tackle a handful of covers, some Aerosmith tunes and the Joe Perry Project material. Which is good for him because, as he says, Aerosmith can’t really keep up with his output.

“I realized that a lot of these songs I was writing, I was going to be able to either just release the records, maybe tour behind them. I needed to have that outlet,” he says. “The amount we were putting out just wasn’t equal to the amount I was writing.”

Progressive rock progenitor Gentle Giant is finally starting to release its catalog in digital format November 3rd through iTunes, Amazon, and all the other major web providers.

Some of the band members will be participating in a “blog tour” consisting of e-interviews in which bloggers and their readers will send in questions to Kerry Minnear, Ray Shulman, John Weathers, and Derek Shulman about Gentle Giant. Each day in November a different blogger will post the questions and answers on their site.

In other Gentle Giant news, guitarist Gary Green and drummer Malcolm Mortimore are now performing with John Donaldson, Andy Williams, Roger Carey and Mick Wilson in a band called Three Friends performing the music of Gentle Giant. The band was named Three Friends in reference to the Gentle Giant LP of the same name, and the fact that originally keyboardist Kerry Minnear had initially joined Green and Mortimore in the project. Minnear has since departed for personal reason, but Three Friends is planning a schedule of performances for 2010. For more information please visit www.threefriends.info.

AN EXPANSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF ONE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY’S GREATEST MUSICIANS AND INNOVATIVE CULTURAL ICONS

BOWIE

A Biography

By Marc Spitz

“A breezy, well-lit portrait of the ever-enigmatic rocker . . . Spitz’s encyclopedic knowledge and obvious appreciation for Bowie’s work separate this book from countless cookie-cutter rock stories.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Spitz concentrates on the complex evolution of Bowie’s music to deliver an evenhanded, critically thorough, while still reverential, life of the Thin White Duke.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“BOWIE is inspired, edge-worn, loud, quiet, observant, humble, gorgeous, and humane. If the record business loved music as much as Marc Spitz does, there would still be a record business.” —Dan Kennedy, author of Rock On: An Office Power Ballad

New York, NY (October 5, 2009)–He is a style icon and music legend. A master of reinvention. An innovator whose absence from the rock scene for much of this decade has left a void—a void that proves how vital he has been for these past forty years. To fill that void comes BOWIE: A Biography (Crown; October 27, 2009), a David Bowie biography like no other.   
 
Rock ’n’ roll journalist Marc Spitz charts the long and storied arc of Bowie’s life, from his childhood in postwar England as David Jones—an R & B–loving kid torn between suburban comfort and the fast and rough London of the sixties—to his reincarnation as a utopian hippie mime, to his ascent in the seventies as one of the most influential cultural figures of the last half century.
 
In a major work that was years in the making, Spitz not only recounts Bowie’s career, he also reveals how much his music has influenced other musicians and how his life and style influenced the times in which he lived. BOWIE takes a fresh and in-depth look at the decades that formed the artist, from postwar England to the advent of rock ’n’ roll, as well as the times that Bowie shaped so powerfully, from the seventies “me decade” up until the information age.
 
With more than one hundred original interviews with those who knew him best, BOWIE offers fresh insight and unforgettable stories about the rock legend. Interviewees include childhood friend George Underwood, Peter Frampton, Angie Bowie, former manager Kenneth Pitt, mentor Lindsay Kemp, author Hanif Kureishi, Siouxsie Sioux, Dick Cavett, Jon Savage, Steve Strange, Camille Paglia, guitarist Reeves Gabrels, filmmaker Todd Haynes, and Ricky Gervais. Little known details about Bowie include the rock legend’s strange fascination with speaking in riddles, his refusal to use elevators, his insistence on hiding knives under his bed, and his secret friendship with Frank Sinatra.
 
Spitz reflects with humor and infectious energy on how growing up with Bowie and writing this exhaustive history changed him in ways that he never expected. Never before published photographs complete this inspired exploration of a true rock ’n’ roll revolutionary.
 
About the Author
Marc Spitz’s writing on rock ’n’ roll and popular culture has appeared in Spin, the New York Times, Maxim, Nylon, Blender, and Uncut (UK). He is the author of How Soon Is Never?; Too Much, Too Late; and Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day and coauthor with Brendan Mullen of We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk.  
                                                                                                                                                          

 Los Angeles, CA - After a successful summer festival tour, classic AOR band ASIA Featuring John Payne is scheduled to release their Military Man EP in the USA via Voiceprint Records on October 27th, 2009. The 5-song EP features new versions of “Military Man” and “Long Way Home” as well as the song “Neurosaur”, penned by Asia Featuring John Payne keyboardist Erik Norlander. Along with Payne (vocals and bass), and Norlander (keyboards), the EP features Guthrie Govan on guitars and Jay Schellen on drums.

FROM WWW.CLASSICROCKREVISITED.COM:

This news is brought to you by VH1 Radio’s Dave Basner

As we previously reported, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will release a 48-track Live Anthology on November 24^th.  Long before then though, the band is giving fans a unique opportunity to hear half of the tunes on the set.  In what they’re calling their Superhighway Tour, the group is offering folks a chance to immerse themselves in all things Petty.  For 25 dollars, fans will not only receive the Live Anthology when it comes out, but over a period starting eight weeks before its release, they’ll be able to hear 24 tunes off the package and have access to exclusive online content including memorabilia, vintage photos, videos, merchandise and classic reviews.  Learn more at TomPetty.com

FROM WWW.CLASSICROCKREVISITED.COM:

This news is brought to you by VH1 Radio’s Dave Basner

Friday, Sting turns 58.  During his lifetime, the legendary singer has accrued many accolades and made quite a name for himself.  But did Sting ever expect to be where he is now while he was growing up?  He explained. 

“I couldn’t possibly have imagined my life now, really, but I did have a fantasy about making a living playing solely music, that really was a desire of mine.  I wasn’t sure how you do it, how you ended up doing that and I’m very fortunate that I’ve managed it, largely by accident though I couldn’t have predicted this life, at all.”

Sting isn’t slowing down either.  His latest album, If on a Winter’s Night, comes out on October 27^th and is currently available for pre-order.  Learn more at Sting.com. 

FROM WWW.CLASSICROCKREVISITED.COM:

FROM WWW.CLASSICROCKREVISITED.COM:

Fourteen years have passed since Lita Ford released a new studio album, but today, that all changes.  That’s because the rocker’s latest effort, Wicked Wonderland, is coming out.  So is Lita nervous about how her new music will be received?  She told us yes and no. 

“I always have anxiety.  I always do.  I always wonder about this or that but never like it really is.  I mean, I see a tidal wave coming at me and I like it, it’s a good thing.  Just the welcome back at Rocklahoma, which was one of the first shows that we played, was huge.  It was like somebody’s here from a higher level.  God has sent somebody here. And I’m thinking, ‘Wow, who’s here?’ And it’s like, you Lita, you idiot, it’s you!”

You can pick up your copy of Wicked Wonderland today.  You can also catch Lita on tour.  She’ll be on the road with Queensryche starting on October 15^th in Louisville, Kentucky.  Head to MySpace.com/LitaFord for all her dates.

FROM WWW.CLASSICROCKREVISITED.COM:

Even though the Kansas City Chiefs lost to the New York Giants on Sunday, before the game the fans were cheering for a pretty famous New Yorker.  Former Kiss axeman Ace Frehley played the National Anthem on his guitar at KC’s Arrowhead Stadium. 

FROM WWW.CLASSICROCKREVISITED.COM:

Joe Perry’s latest solo album, Have Guitar, Will Travel, comes out today.  There are plenty of impressive riffs on the record but how did the guitarist decide what he’d put on his solo effort and what he’d contribute to the upcoming Aerosmith album?  Joe first joked about his decision process, then he revealed how he figures it out.   

Well obviously, I save the best ones for me.  Sometimes they’re neutral, they could go either way.  And then I’ll usually play some of that stuff for the other guys in the band and right away I can tell how it strikes them, if they hear something there they go, ‘Wow, we could really do that one.’  So I just know kind of instinctively what’s going to end up on an Aerosmith record and what’s going to end up on one of mine.” 

Find out what Joe decided to keep for himself by picking up your copy of Have Guitar, Will Travel.  The disc is out now.  Meanwhile, Joe will be playing with his Joe Perry Project tonight at L-A’s The Viper Room.