Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler says he was sober when he suffered a nasty fall in Paraguay earlier this week. As reported previously, the 63-year-old singer broke two teeth and required stitches to his face after toppling in his hotel-room shower. Aerosmith postponed a scheduled show for 24 hours while Tyler received treatment.
In a chat with NBC’s Today, Tyler said he had stomach flu when the accident occurred. “I was in the shower and I got nauseous, and I started to get sick and I fell on my face,” he said. “I just passed out.” Tyler went on to say he “woke up … wondering where he was.”
Asked if he was under the influence of alcohol, he added, “No, it’s not the issue, [but] I get that people think that.” Tyler said he “pulled [himself] up by [his] boot heels” to take the stage the following night. He added that his injuries would not affect the remainder of Aerosmith’s tour.
KISS frontman Paul Stanley underwent successful surgery on Tuesday (October 25) to address “recurring vocal cord issues.” According to Stanley’s publicist, doctors say the 59-year-old singer will make a “swift and complete” recovery.
Stanley explained his motivation for the surgery toCNN. “I hold myself to a higher standard than others do,” he said. “With that in mind, I wanted to remedy a few minor issues that come with 40 years of preaching rock and roll.”
As reported previously, KISS are working on a new album that’s slated for release in mid-2012. Bassist Gene Simmons has said the album, to be titledMonster, will be similar in spirit to previous KISS fan-favorites Destroyer, Revenge and Sonic Boom. Confirmed tracks include “Out of This World,” “Born to be a Sinner,” “Are You Ready,” “Wall of Sound” and the title track. Stanley is co-producing the album with veteran soundman Greg Collins.
1936: Charlie Daniels, vocals, guitar, fiddle, The Charlie Daniels Band
1941, Hank Marvin, guitar, The Shadows
1945, Wayne Fontana, vocals, Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders
1948, Telma Hopkins, vocals, Tony Orlando and Dawn
1957, Stephen Morris, drums, New Order, Joy Division
1958, William Reid, guitar, The Jesus and Mary Chain
1969, Ben Harper, singer, guitarist
1972, Brad Paisley, country singer, guitarist
1958, Buddy Holly appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, where he lip-synched “It’s So Easy” and “Heartbeat.” It would be Holly’s last major TV appearance.
1961, Raymond Jones went into Liverpool’s NEMS Record store trying to buy Beatles records that had been released in Germany. Shop manager Brian Epstein promised to investigate further.
1964, The first of two nights billed as The TAMI Show took place at the Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica with Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes and The Rolling Stones.
1974, David Bowie played the first of seven sold-out nights on his Diamond Dogs Tour at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
1978, Queen played the first night on their 79-date Jazz Tour at the Dallas Convention Center, Dallas, Texas.
1982, The Jam announced they were splitting up at the end of their current U.K. tour. For more on this story, see This Day in Music Spotlight.
1989, Janet Jackson started a four-week run at #1 on the U.S. album chart with Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. At the time it was one of only three albums to produce seven Top 10 U.S. singles (the other two being Thriller by her brother Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA).
1997, R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry announced that he was leaving the group after 17 years to become a farmer.
2006, Rod Stewart was at #1 on the U.S. album chart with Still the Same… Great Rock Classics of our Time, the singer’s fifth U.S. #1 album.
2007, Country musician Porter Wagoner died in Nashville, at age 80, from lung cancer. Wagoner helped launch the career of Dolly Parton and had his own U.S. TV show, which ran for 21 years. Wagoner signed his first record deal in 1955, and had hits including “Carroll County Accident” and “Green Green Grass of Home.”
Remaining Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor are working on a new album, with vocals by the late Freddie Mercury. How is this possible? May said the musicians are going through a ton of unreleased demos to put together a slew of new tracks, according to Ultimate Classic Rock.
It will be the first Queen album with contributions from Mercury since 1995’s Made in Heaven, which also was assembled using recordings Freddie had made before his death in 1991.
In addition, May told the Daily Star that he and Taylor are preparing a new Queen musical to follow-up 2002’s We Will Rock You. “The songs are there,” May said, “it’s just a question of finding time to get the right production.”
And that’s not all that’s going on with Queen. On November 6, the rock legends will receive the Global Icon award at the MTV European Music Awards. It’s not clear who will sing with the band, although May has suggested that he’d love to work with Lady Gaga.
How did high school dances end before November 8, 1971? That’s the date that Led Zeppelin released a promotional disc to FM rock stations that would become the world’s most-played radio hit and cross over to teen-packed auditoriums everywhere.
“Stairway to Heaven” was an unlikely on-air success at eight-minutes long, but in the early ’70s, FM DJs still could play the full-length version of “In-A- Gadda-Da-Vida,” Iron Butterfly’s 17-minute bathroom break anthem. And “Stairway”’s length, plus the song’s long, quiet build-up, made it perfect for slow dancing until the explosive finale, which provided an outlet for the hormonal energy that the slow dancing generate.
The song that Gibson Les Paul legend Jimmy Page described as “crystallizing the band” started taking form in 1970 during Page and Robert Plant’s famous songwriting vacation in rural Wales at a cottage called Bron-Yr-Aur. Page developed the acoustic opening section there, and Plant wrote the initial verse. By the time the entire band re-grouped at the Headley Grange rehearsal and recording building in East Hampshire, England, Page had several distinct pieces of electric and acoustic music that he felt were related to that initial theme. While Page tried to weave the sections together with drummer John Bonham and bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, Plant sat in a corner, writing. When he stood up and started singing, about 80 percent of the lyrics for “Stairway to Heaven” were complete.
Led Zeppelin cut the basic rhythm tracks for “Stairway to Heaven” in December 1970 at Basing Street Studios in London. Plant cut his vocals in early 1971 at Headley Grange. Then Page retuned to Basing Street to cut his solos. Initially, it went poorly. Page couldn’t quite hit the mark after a number of passes. According to Jones, he could see concern in Page’s eyes, so Jones broke the tension by turning toward the guitar wizard and declaring, “You’re making me paranoid!” Page shot back, “You’re making me paranoid!” And with the air cleared by laughter he nailed the solo’s elaborate architecture in a few more passes.
Page saw “Stairway” as a successor to “Dazed and Confused,” an epic musical adventure in several movements. As for Plant, he’d drawn on Scottish folklorist Lewis Spence for his lyrics.
The song got its first live airing on March 5, 1971, well before the album Zoso, a.k.a. Led Zeppelin IV, was released in November. It reportedly took a few weeks for the tune to win fans over, but by the time the group appeared at London’s Paris Cinema on April Fools’ Day 1971 for a concert recording by the BBC, it was in full bloom and drove the audience mad.
One of the song’s visual signatures is Page standing in the spotlight with a Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck guitar strapped over his shoulders. More important than the guitar’s striking looks was its functionality. The EDS-1275 saved him the trouble of switching between six and 12-string necks in concert. In 2007 the Gibson Custom Shop built 250 Vintage Original Spec Jimmy Page Signature EDS-1275s, modeled after his red 1971 original.
Atlantic Records pressured the band to edit “Stairway to Heaven” down to a more traditionally radio-friendly length for the November 1971 release of Zoso/IV, so it could be pitched to programmers as a conventional single. But Led Zeppelin were staunch in their refusal. “Stairway to Heaven” was a fully realized work of art, they contended, so Atlantic had to be content with servicing radio with an EP – an amazing EP. Side A was “Stairway”; side B was “Black Dog” paired with “Rock and Roll.”
As of the year 2000, “Stairway to Heaven” had scored more than 3 million radio plays and remains the most popular piece of sheet music in rock, selling 15,000 copies annually. (Take that, “Free Bird!”) Nonetheless, it scored a mere 31 on Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of “The 500 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time,” although Gibson fans ranked Page’s stunning solo #1 in Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitar Solos of All Time in 2010 (a ranking Guitar World agreed with in its list of the “100 Greatest Guitar Solos in Rock and Roll History”).
“Stairway” wasn’t the only epic number on Led Zeppelin IV. Their definitive cover of Memphis Minnie’s blues chestnut “When the Levee Breaks” also clocked in at more than seven minutes and featured blistering sequences of guitar and harmonica. Another song, “The Battle of Evermore,” also captured the idyllic influence of Bron-Yr-Aur. And “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Four Sticks” added to the album’s visceral side, while “Going to California” displayed their mastery of blues dynamics. Zoso/IV reached #2 on Billboard’s top albums list, but “Stairway” dominated the radio charts for a triumphant 44 weeks.
Page still considers the song a milestone. “Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold up for a long time,” he told filmmaker and music journalist Cameron Crowe in 1975. “I guess we did it with ‘Stairway.’”
U2’s Achtung Baby is now acclaimed as U2’s finest achievement, but the 1991 album nearly didn’t get made. In fact, its beginnings nearly split the Irish band apart.
By the turn of the ’90s, U2 were at a crossroads. They were a major stadium act, but creatively they were faltering. The band had been stung by media criticism of their half studio/half live double albumRattle and Hum. That “toying” with Americana certainly delivered some hits (“Angel Of Harlem,” the Bo Diddley-esque “Desire,” the B.B. King duet “When Love Comes to Town”) but many found the album too much of a pastiche. U2 suddenly became the most loved/hated rock band on the planet. What to do? As Bono told a Dublin crowd in the late ’80s: “We have to go away and dream it all up again.”
As guitarist The Edge later reflected, the “traditionalism” of Rattle and Hum was the exception in the U2 canon. “My view,” he told this author in 1996 “is that Rattle and Hum, for all its traditionalism, is actually our “experimental” record. Achtung Baby got us back to our normality – making dark, very European music with experimental sounds.” Famously, U2 decided to impose new rules forAchtung Baby, the band’s rebirth.
Bono: “Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockist and linear (all bad).”
But the sessions, in Berlin’s Hansa Studios, nearly collapsed completely. U2 had booked Hansa hoping to capture the “greatness” of two of their favorite albums: David Bowie’s Low and “Heroes” that were recorded there. But when they turned up, they couldn’t even write a song. “The greatness,” Bono laughs on the new U2 documentary From The Sky Down, “had left the building.”
Bassist Adam Clayton admitted in Bill Flanagan’s biog U2At the End of the World, constant touring in each other’s pockets had taken its toll: “We had to decide how much we liked each other… I’m not saying that was easily resolved.”
But “One” rescued them. U2 were struggling to come up with anything all four felt was good enough. Bored of hammering at a demo called “Sick Puppy” (that later morphed into “Mysterious Ways”), Edge hit on an off-the-cuff chord progression that would become “One.”
“At the instant we were recording it, I got a very strong sense of its power,” Edge told Irish journalist Neil McCormick. “We were all playing together in the big recording room, a huge, eerie ballroom full of ghosts of the war, and everything fell into place. It was a reassuring moment, when everyone finally went: ‘Oh great, this album has started.’ It’s the reason you’re in a band – when the spirit descends upon you and you create something truly affecting. ‘One’ is an incredibly moving piece. It hits straight into the heart.”
“One” is atypical of Achtung Baby in sound, but it did kickstart U2’s creativity. Some think the lyric is schmaltz: but the “one life, with each other, sisters, brothers…” line was later voted the greatest ever song line by VH1 viewers in 2006. “Earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, and linear?” “One” is all those, but if U2 hadn’t dreamed that song up, Achtung Baby may have collapsed into nothing.
But after “One,” other songs soon formed. Maybe as a reaction to “One,” U2 felt free to get more aggressive. Lyrically, Achtung Baby was a volte-face for U2. Bono, for all his ’80s piety and flag waving, came to realize: “Rock ’n’ roll is ridiculous,” he told Rolling Stone on Achtung Baby’s release. “In the past we were trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a big kiss.”
Achtung Baby was hardly pop frivolity, though. Many of the lyrics centered on love, sex and betrayal. It was certainly not wished for, but Edge’s divorce at the time proved a catalyst for many lyrics. Bono’s invention of alter ego The Fly allowed him also to be less chest-beating and subtler. Despite that, Achtung Baby is one of U2’s most baldly religious records. On “Until the End of the World,” frontman Bono takes the role of Judas Iscariot betraying Jesus Christ. Not long before, the religious band would never have dared such a “heretic” curveball.
Daniel Lanois was the main “sonics” producer (though Brian Eno was co-credited) on Achtung Baby, and the Canadian told Sound on Sound magazine: “When I started work on Achtung Baby, U2 were interested in creating a more hard-hitting, live-sounding record. I myself had also grown rather tired of polishing details on records and pursuing the kind of perfection that has become commonplace in much rock music today. So what I did was push the performance aspect very hard, often to the point of recklessness. I think that musical recklessness goes a long way on records. You don’t hear enough of it.”
Even so, U2 still gave themselves maximum options – throughout the sessions, they’d play relentlessly and kept tape running constantly to capture spirited moments. Yet despite the connotations of the title, U2’s Hansa studio sessions barely lasted two months: most of Achtung Baby was eventually recorded in Ireland, in a rented house by the sea, then Dublin’s famed Windmill Studios.
The demos on the new Deluxe Edition of Achtung Baby show how much U2 actually change songs in the studio. Lanois recalled: “They continuously experiment and try different ways of playing and arranging the songs, until the very last moment. The guitar overdub on ‘Mysterious Ways,’ for example, went down after the mix was finished.”
The guitar on Achtung Baby was key. Edge’s search for darker, more sinister sounds saw him increasingly move away from his Gibson Explorer and repeat-delay Fenders in favor of Gibson Les Pauls. The change of tools gave his guitar tracks new weight, be it on “The Fly,” “Until the End of the World,” or “Love is Blindness” where he pushed a Les Paul through eight chain-linked Vox AC30 amps.
Edge was no stranger to Gibson Les Pauls. He bought his famed white 1975 Les Paul (later auctioned forMusic Rising) in 1982, inspired by Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols. A 1983 Gibson 30th Anniversary Les Paul Standard Gold Top stars on “Until the End of the World.” Other Gibsons added to Achtung Baby’s darker mix – anES-330 for the “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” and “One,” and Adam Clayton played a Gibson RD Artist bass on for “Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World.”
Many other makes and models are part of Achtung Baby’s sonics, of course. And perhaps the key, as always, were Edge’s FX. He bought two Korg A3 multiFXs to record Achtung Baby, and it is at the heart of many guitar sounds on Achtung Baby: “Mysterious Ways” showcases the Korg A3 to the maximum, and Edge admits he could not have written the song without it.
“Rockist=bad” may have been a U2 mantra of the time, yet, ironically, Edge’s guitar on Achtung Baby packs the most aggressive rock guitar of U2’s 35-year career. “Ultra Violet (Light My Way)” is played like “old” U2, but is much heavier. And from “Zoo Station” to “Until the End of the World,” to “Acrobat” and beyond,Achtung Baby arguably boasts Edge’s darkest yet greatest guitar work.
Of all U2’s releases, Achtung Baby is “the Edge album.” The guitarist put aside his personal strife and threw himself into work. Adam Clayton remembered: “When Edge gets on a roll, he gets on a roll. He’s always been happy to keep going. I think his process of keeping going, although damaging on a personal level, has allowed him to make great strides, has been the right thing for his career. He’s made tremendous progress, he’s a great guitar player.”
Is Achtung Baby the most coherent and consistent of any U2 album? Is it U2’s best? It probably is.
Edge still sounds like Edge, but he coaxed new, darker tones that released U2 from the chiming echo of The Joshua Tree and before. Achtung Baby’s harder sound and lyrical playfulness not only saved the band. It laid the path to U2’s future.
What’s the perfect gift for the metal man who has everything, Ozzy Osbourne? Breakfast cereal.
That’s right! The “Crazy Train” vocalist has simple taste when it comes to dining and, apparently, he’s a mega fan of the honey-coated British breakfast food Sugar Puffs. Sugar Puffs aren’t available in the U.S., where he usually lives, so Osbourne reportedly orders boxes and boxes of the cereal on a regular basis, just to stock up. Who wants to be without their favorite wake-up food, right? Now, now the cereal’s manufacturer has sent Osbourne 50 boxes of a new kind of cereal, Spooky Puffs, for Halloween.
A spokesperson for the brand, in a release, stated that, “We made sure he has enough to go around at Halloween.” The special edition, Halloween-themed breakfast delicacy – represented by a fuzzy, yellow beast called, the Honey Monster – has a toffee apple flavor. Looks like we know what kiddies who arrive at Ozzy’s mansion to trick-or-treat are going to get in their pillow cases and Halloween baskets this year.
1942, Lee Greenwood, singer
1949, Gary Tallent, bass, E Street Band
1951, K.K. Downing, guitar, Judas Priest
1958, Simon Le Bon, vocals, Duran Duran
1967, Scott Weiland, vocals, Stone Temple Pilots, Velvet Revolver
1957, After a show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, local police told Elvis Presley that he was not allowed to wiggle his hips onstage and the local press ran headlines saying Elvis would have to clean up his act. The next night, the Los Angeles Vice Squad filmed his entire concert, to study his performance.
1957, The Crickets started a three-week run at #1 on the U.K. singles chart with “That’ll be the Day.” It was a #3 hit in the U.S. where it went on to sell more than a million.
1970, Black Sabbath played their first-ever live show in the U.S. when they kicked off a 16-date tour at Glassboro State College.
1973, Gladys Knight and the Pips started a two-week run at #1 on the U.S. singles chart with “Midnight Train to Georgia.” It was the group’s 18th Top 40 hit and first #1.
1973, Mott the Hoople supported by Aerosmith appeared at The Orpheum Theatre, Boston. For more on Mott the Hoople, see This Day in Music Spotlight.
1975, The relatively unknown Bruce Springsteen had the rare honour of simultaneous covers on both Timeand Newsweek magazines in the U.S.
1980, Former T. Rex member Steve Took choked to death on a cherry stone, after some magic mushrooms he had eaten numbed all sensation in his throat.
1984, Big Country went to #1 on the U.K. album chart with Steel Town, the bands only #1 album.
1984, During a U.S. tour, The Grateful Dead allocated a specific recording area for fans to bootleg the show. This day’s gig was in Berkeley, California.
1988, U2’s film Rattle and Hum, received its worldwide premiere in the group’s hometown, Dublin.
2007, Former Moloko singer Roisin Murphy was recovering in hospital after damaging her eye socket during a show in Russia. The singer hit her head on a chair during the show at Moscow’s Ikra Club and was rushed to hospital for surgery. A spokesman said she lost “a lot of blood” and had severe concussion, but her vision was unaffected and she was “recovering well.”
2009, Eric Clapton pulled out of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert in New York City after he underwent an operation to remove gallstones. His place at the Madison Square Garden gig was taken by Jeff Beck.
During a new interview with Attention Deficit Delirium, Sammy Hagar (Van Halen, Chickenfoot) offered his thoughts on a reunion of the classic lineup of Guns N’ Roses.
“The amount of money they could make if they got it all back together, made a great record and toured the world would probably be as much as The Rolling Stones, and for them not to do it, it obviously ain’t about the money. Because they could do it. I would manage them.
“I’d be their manager and make sure they got the right deal from all the promoters. They could be the biggest band in the world if they wanted to.”
The Metallica and Lou Reed album Lulu is not even released yet, but Metallica are already writing and recording their next album.
The metal vets played in Abu Dhabi for the very first time on October 25, and GulfNews was told by Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo: “We’ve been busy writing and recording. We’ve got a couple of new songs we have been working on the past couple of weeks. The writing process for the new Metallica album has begun. We’ve been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we’re going to be recording during the most of next year.
“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. But the great thing is that we have sort of already jumped off the launch pad and we’re swimming. It’s happening. It’s reality. It’s a lot of fun, there are a lot of ideas, and we’re really excited about the new record.”
Trujillo concluded, “For me, personally, Death Magnetic was the launch pad for the next record. This is the beginning of something very, very cool.”
Luluwill be released in North America on November 1 and worldwide on October 31.
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler says he was sober when he suffered a nasty fall in Paraguay earlier this week. As reported previously, the 63-year-old singer broke two teeth and required stitches to his face after toppling in his hotel-room shower. Aerosmith postponed a scheduled show for 24 hours while Tyler received treatment.
KISS frontman Paul Stanley underwent successful surgery on Tuesday (October 25) to address “recurring vocal cord issues.” According to Stanley’s publicist, doctors say the 59-year-old singer will make a “swift and complete” recovery.
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It will be the first Queen album with contributions from Mercury since 1995’s Made in Heaven, which also was assembled using recordings Freddie had made before his death in 1991.
Plant sat in a corner, writing. When he stood up and started singing, about 80 percent of the lyrics for “Stairway to Heaven” were complete.
By the turn of the ’90s, U2 were at a crossroads. They were a major stadium act, but creatively they were faltering. The band had been stung by media criticism of their half studio/half live double albumRattle and Hum. That “toying” with Americana certainly delivered some hits (“Angel Of Harlem,” the Bo Diddley-esque “Desire,” the B.B. King duet “When Love Comes to Town”) but many found the album too much of a pastiche. U2 suddenly became the most loved/hated rock band on the planet. What to do? As Bono told a Dublin crowd in the late ’80s: “We have to go away and dream it all up again.”
That’s right! The “Crazy Train” vocalist has simple taste when it comes to dining and, apparently, he’s a mega fan of the honey-coated British breakfast food Sugar Puffs. Sugar Puffs aren’t available in the U.S., where he usually lives, so Osbourne reportedly orders boxes and boxes of the cereal on a regular basis, just to stock up. Who wants to be without their favorite wake-up food, right? Now, now the cereal’s manufacturer has sent Osbourne 50 boxes of a new kind of cereal, Spooky Puffs, for Halloween.
1942, Lee Greenwood, singer
“The amount of money they could make if they got it all back together, made a great record and toured the world would probably be as much as The Rolling Stones, and for them not to do it, it obviously ain’t about the money. Because they could do it. I would manage them.
The metal vets played in Abu Dhabi for the very first time on October 25, and GulfNews was told by Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo: “We’ve been busy writing and recording. We’ve got a couple of new songs we have been working on the past couple of weeks. The writing process for the new Metallica album has begun. We’ve been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we’re going to be recording during the most of next year.