ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

The Who will be releasing four albums in the next four months: A Peter Townshend solo (which may be out by now), a double live set, another studio release, and possibly a John Entwistle record.

Keith Moon will me “Good Vibrations ’72 from London,” which airs July 18 on NBC-TV. It’s a live concert filmed in front of about 15,000 people in London’s Crystal Palace Park.

The event was also recorded by Rolling Stones Mobile, and the concert is supposed to be simulcast on FM in major cities. Among the acts appearing on the hour long special will be the Beach Boys Joe Cocker, Sha Na Na, Melanie, Richie Havens and others.

Byron Lee and the Dragonaires will do a U.S. tour soon. You’ve never heard them, but you’ve heard OF them. They are the reggae group on “Me and Julio Down By the School Yard” and several other Paul Simon tracks.

Two early Sly Stone tracks will come out on Loadstone, a small San Francisco-based label, shortly.

Motown is leaving Detroit for good. Over a hundred people were fired from the Detroit office, late in May; about a dozen employees remain in Detroit, with the rest moved to other parts of the country. Even Smokey Robinson will head to L.A., after he has some time alone with his family — which will be after his early summer retirement from live performances.

Nick Grillo, the Beach Boys’ ex-business manager (pre-1968) is suing the group for $87,000 and their current manager, Jack Riley, for a million bucks for alleged breach of contract. But, according to another suit filed by the Beach Boys (this one in Delaware, which has notoriously easy corporate laws) Grillo’s firm, American Recreation Corp., is misrepresenting itself as the parent company of Brother.

Terry Knight’s latest move in the Grand Funk split is a further suit against publicist Robert Zarem and the L.A./N.Y.flackery Rogers, Cowan and Brenner. The suit asks $14 million damages.

The lawsuit charges that, in a press release about the GFR/TK split, RC&B (and Zarem in particular) termed Knight Grand Funk’s “Former Manager” and that the release “falsely” stated that “Knight... in collusion with Beldock and Kushnick, made a record deal and took 66 2/3% of all the record royalties for himself... the net result was, of approximately $2,500,000 of record royalties paid by Capitol Records for Grand Funk records, Knight, it is believed, kept for himself in excess of $1,700,000.”

Look for Cameo/Parkway oldies to be reissued by ABKCO, with one of the lead-off packages a pre-Funk album entitled, Mark, Don and Terry. It consists, of course, of old Terry Knight and the Pack sides. Also in the series: a lot of Philadelphia stuff and plenty of pre-MC5, white, Detroit rock too. Even ? and the Mysterians.

Speaking of whom: they’re supposedly recording again. Mr. Mark says that he is back with the entire old group and with the same manager as well. No label deal yet, but we have heard that several companies are interested, -including, possibly, Apple. United Artists is putting out a recording of a 25 foot Wind Harp. The Harp sits on a hill in Massachusetts, playing the environment. The Ventures and Don McLean wrote songs for its first album.

It’s back to Malibu for Alice Cooper. They’ve got a house that used to belong to Mae West.

GE has devised an earplug it claims will save the hearing of rock; musicians. Called the Peacekeeper, the plug is hyped to allow musicians “to hear their own amplified live performances more accurately.’’ It retails for $10. The device consists of a packet of soft claylike plastic, which hardens to a rubbery consistency after 20 minutes exposure to the air. The plastic is then placed into the ear (takes two people) and forms itself in an “individually shaped re-usable earplug that blocks out extra-loud noises.”

An addendum to our Beat Goes On report on Stones ticket hassles: WCF.L, in Chicago, got 100 tickets to give away to their listeners. They did not get them directly from Ticketron. They had an in with a record distributor who had an “in” with Ticketron or its employees.

Meanwhile, a record distributor in Los Angeles walked into what he thought were Sarah Vaughn albums, turned around and the next thing that he knew, there was a fight going on over them. Pretty strange.

Not at all. The boxes actually contained Exile on Main Street, the new Rolling Stones record, which wasn’t supposed to be released yet. A couple of copies found their way to radio stations, which freaked Atlantic. They immediately sent pressings to other stations but the damage was done. Ominous, ominous.

While Elephant’s Memory were finishing up their album at the Record Plant in N.Y., with John and Yoko producing, guess who visited them? Jackie Onassis. Honest. People in the studio reportedly thought they were “just another pair of groupies.”

Does Anybody Really Believe The U.S. Army Asked the Rolling Stones To Do A Command Performance For President Nixon? Tune into R.F.K. Stadium on the Fourth of July.

From a press release: “The names Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, Superstar, have become synonymous with Yvonne Elliman.” Oh yeah?

Christie and Edison Lighthouse, a pair of British groups, were stranded (but not in the jungle) during a ten-day tour of Zambia. During the group’s fourth concert, in Lusaka, rain put their sound equipment out of commission. The bands were reportedly attacked, assaulted by bottles and bricks as they tried to escape by car.

The two groups headed for the Rhodesian border, but there the authorities refused to allow them admittance. Brian Longley and four members of the group had been injured, with Longley spending four days in the hospital with a dozen stitches in his head from being hit with a thrown bottle.

The British Musicians’ Union stepped in and said that if the groups played dates in Rhodesia, the groups would be expelled from the Union and not allowed to work in Britain. (The Rhodesian government is under U.N. embargo because of its racist policies.)

Longley borrowed money for his return to London, where he obtained permission for the bands to play enough dates in Rhodesia to earn their return fares.

But even that wasn’t enough, apparently. Failing to make their nut that way, the group headed for equally racist South Africa, set up in Johannesburg for a week, played five concerts and returned home.

James Taylor will record his new album for Warners this August if he can stay awake.

Be A Star: Blood, Sweat and Tears are once again looking for a lead vocalist. Blind Texas singer Bobby Doyle walked out over what has been described as “conceptual differences in the presentation of music.” Which probably means just what you think it means ...

Laura Abrams’ father owns Schwab’s Drug Store in Hollywood but you won’t see her sitting around the counter with a tight sweater on, waiting to be discovered, as so many starlets in the ’40s and ’50s did. No sir, Laura’s a child of the Aquarian Age, and she’s just signed with Mishawaka Records.

Well, well, here’s a Dutch rock quartet called Supersister. And they’re all men...

It didn’t work out with old man Harrah, so Bobbie Gentry’s next husband is due to be Jericho James lead singer with her nightclub act.

Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley will record at the Montreaux Jazz Festival this summer. Seperately.

The latest fac’s on Wolfman Jack’s booming career are that he has signed with Wooden Nickel Records and that his first single (he sings!) is to be Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

Yogi Ramu Michael Adonaiasis the so-called “spiritual warden” of the Universal Awareness Foundation, will appear nude at Carnegie Hall next November, he has announced. “Clothes,” claims the giggling guru, “are a barrier between ourselves and the infinite.” Yeah, and so’s Carnegie Hall. Arthur Lee has signed with the only label he hasn’t been kicked off of. A&M hopes he’ll do better with them than he did with Columbia, who had him last. Seems he sat around in the studio, spending all his advance money, and never managed to finish the first track of the album he was working on. Good luck, A&M. Oh, you too, Arthur...

Lucky Mrs. J. O. Moore, of Pasadena, Texas! The Wilburn Brothers, a country act, just gave her a five acre ranchette in Hardy, Arkansas. She won a contest they ran to promote their new hit single, “Arkansas.” Wonder what’s in Hardy, Arkansas? Featured acts: Andy Williams and Henry Mancini.

Will ex-Rolling Stones session man Jack Nitzsche produce David Cassidy? omigod.

A&M is readying a Groucho Marx album. It will consist of excerpts from six Groucho appearances plus music from Marx Bros, flicks.

Cindy Birdsong is officially gone from the Supremes. Her replacement will be Linda Tucker, daughter of gospel singer Ira Tucker. Linda has been appearing with Stevie Wonder’s groups. Cindy is leaving because she’s expecting. (Birdsong replaced Florece Ballard in the Supremes; whe was previously a member of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles.)

The OZ obscenity trial is supposed to be made into a Broadway musical. Writing the tunes? Mick Jagger with Lisa Lerner (daughter of Alan J. Lerner, of Lerner & Loewe).

The BBC won’t play Commander Cody’s “Hot Rod Lincoln.” They say it’s a commercial.

If you’re as dissatisfied as we are about the current crop of pseudorock movies, you might be interested in one that you can’t see but then,..

The feature is called London Rock, it runs 50 minutes and it includes Faces, Marc Bolan, Fairport Convention, Ian Mathews and Linda Lewis (an excellent young black singer from Britain). It was made in July and August of ’70, long before any of the groups mentioned in it had become popular on a wide scale.

The scenes with the Faces are the most effective. At one point, Rod sings “Nobody Knows” to acoustic accompaniment by Ian MacLaglen, while a dog howls randomly in the background. Lawrence Moore produced (he’s a well-known tv man in Britain) and it was produced by a London group called Transatlantic Films.

C’mon! We wanna see this! Pleeeeeeeeeeese!

Kim Fowley, the king of rock bizzaritude, and master of the record biz, has once more conned a lable into signing him. This time it’s Capitol, and the album — Bad Boy — should be out soon. We hear it’s fahn, supah-fahn.

Richard Nader’s Rock & Roll Revivals are running into their Ninth Series, and they’re flying higher than ever. A special package, which includes Chuck Berry, the Shirelles, U.S. Bonds and Bo Diddley, has been put together for two weeks at Las Vegas’ Flamingo Hotel. A movie of the standard concert format Rock & Roll Revival has been shot, and the Ninth Series Rock & Roll Revival features a special gathering together of Dion & the Belmonts.

The Vegas Revival is, by the way, the first time that dancing has been allowed in a Vegas main room.

What do Rolling Stone, John Sinclair and Jerry Rubin have in common with Teddy Kennedy?

ERRATUM

We failed to give credit where credit was due in the July issue.

The incredible “Festival of Life” poster on page three was designed by Tom Roy, and the fantastic Jerry Lee Lewis photos in the record review section were obtained from the Michael Ochs Archives, Venice, California.