ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

ROCK'N' ROLL NEWS

Reports have Rod Stewart's next solo album being his last, with all. future energies being directed toward the Faces. How this will affect Rodney's contract with Mercury is uncertain, but it's believed that Mercury and Warners are working out some kind of arrangement whereby one would distribute the records and the other the tapes. Supposedly this arrangement will begin with the next Faces album, a live set.

No comment necessary: certain New York record stores are filing David Bowie albums under the "Female Vocalist" category.

Jack Jones has replaced Tony Bennett as Frank Sinatra's favorite vocalist. Also on the list were Enzo Stuarti, Sam Ervin,

. and Iggy Pop.

Jackie Lomax has joined Badger, the band formed by ex*Yes keyboard man Tony Kaye.

Lomax will sing and play rhythm guitar, and his addition also marks a reunion with lead guitarist Paul Pilnick, with whom he previously played in a mid-Sixties Liverpool band called the Undertakers.

Hot hew single of the Christmas season in England: "Window the In Doggie That Is Much How." That's right, the old Patti Page hit sung backwards, promulgated by Tim Rice, whose last biggie was something called Jesus Christ ' Superstar,

Radio Luxembourg held a contest in which first prize was Donnie Osmond's wirecutters.

So what dept: Keith Richard always checks into hotels under the name Crystal Palace.

Meanwhile, Bob Dylan is producing a solo album for Barry Goldberg! (yawn...)

Quoth the Guru: "Augment!" And augment they did, namely

Blue Aquarius," the'perfect master" Guru Maharaj" It'S 56-piece band. Organized by" Bhole Ji,.Guru-Ma's 20 year old brother,this veritab1e "supergr'oup includes recycled members of.the Bee Gees, the Foundations, the Soul survivors (yesl), Dando

Shaft (huh?) Lother & the Hand People, The Tingling Mother's Flying Cyrcus, the Carpflepters, Amon Duul II, the Fat Dutchmen, and "many well known

jazz and symphony orchestras."'TheAir'music is, uh,"a blend of all different stytes hard

rock, mid-fifties, classical, and jazz." All you jivesters will also wanns slap your jukes with their first piktoclik single "At the Feet of the Master" (not Holland-

Dozier-Holland, but what the,,,) b/w "Know Him While You Can," a raveup on a doctor's Speech to the children of a termibnal cancer patient .Zomb on.

Look for Ringo Starr and Nicky Hopkins to give David Cassidy a helping hand with his next album. And Bill Wyman will do the same for Donovan.

According to our sources, Carl Wayne (ex-lead singer of the Move) is still trying to establish himself as the next Englebert Humperdinck on the British cabaret circuit.

Dana Gillespie, the Tony DeFries*managed songstress who'll release her first album in a matter of weeks, has been signed for a major role in the Ken ussell film of composer Gustav

Mahler's life Gillespie, who's previously been featured in the

London caompany of jesus Christ Superstar ,will play Mahler's mistakes

The wild Angels, notorious English & roll throwback, will be making their first assult on America not long from now, when they back up Leon Rusell on a twenty city tour.

.The groundwork has been laid by producer Thom Bell for Dionne Warwicke and the Spinners to record together in the near future.

The Rock Has Many Uses Dept: British TV, in a never-ending search to find an angle, has come up with a highly unlikely pairing for one of its specials: Marc Bolan and Adolf Hitler. All we know about it is an ITV press release which reads (in part), "Two superstars of their time. Marc Bolan, idol of today's youth, and Adolf Hitler, hero of a revitalized nation a generation ago, Two people, totally different but both subject to mass adulation." Huh? Soon to follow: Alice Copper and Or was that David Winston Churchill?

Anthony Newley, the man that David Bowie may admire (and have stolen from) more than any other, is soon to have a new album, written, arranged and produced by Jimmy Webb.

Rink Floyd are reportedly toying with the idea of abandoning any kind of standard musical instrumentation on their next album, and instead piecing it together out of "taped household effects."* -

Refugee is the name chosen for the new group put together by former Nice members Lee Jackson and Brian Davison. Jackson (bass) and Davison (drums) will be joined by Swiss keyboardist Patrick Moraz, giving them the same instrumentation as their Keith £tnerson4ed former

calling the hew band the Nice for a time, and are expected to perform material from the old repertoire.

' Sign of the times: one of Our correspondents reports hearing the full 17 minute neural explosion of the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" on the mu2ak in Macy's the other day.

Meanwhile, latest word out of New York has it that in the aftermath of his divorce Lou Reed has lost about fifty pounds and isdooking healthier than he has In a long time. All rightl y

Even better than that: Nico (pictured above with Lou Reed at a 1972 Paris concert) is actually finally gonna get to make another album! It'll be recorded in England in January, possibly produced by Mike (Tubular Bells) Oldfield, Also, she may be lending her talents to Magma, Giorgk Gomelski's German space-rockers who previously had only d" * guiahed themselves by making up their own language.

For their next album, Slade are reportedly considering a version of "Don't Lie To Me," the Alex Chilton-penned song that highlighted Big Star's first album Big Star, by the way, are now a trio and will have a new album on the racks soon.

John Fred, of "Judy In Disguise" fame is cutting new sides at the Fame Studios in Memphis. But without, alas, the Play boy Band.

Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine recently played ajoint benefit concert at London's Rainbow Theatre, the first time those two acts have shared a bill since their parallel emergence in the late

Sixties. Proceeds from the show went to Robert Wyatt, former Soft Machine drummer who has been paralyzed from the waist down since an accident earlier in 1973. ^

Focus were staying at a Holiday Inn in Indianapolis, and heard that Sam Ervin was staying there, too. So guitarist Jan Akkerman was walking down the hallway one night when he encountered Loudon Wainwright III (crowded hotel) standing in front of somebody's door singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at the top of his lungs. Jan asked Loud what in tarnation (as those Scandinavians talk) he was doing and Wainwright told him that Ervin was in the room balling a 20 year old girl. Akkerman started singing along with him.

In. other Focus follies, a recent Melody Maker readers* poll voted . Akkerman number one guitarist in' the world, beating out even el grey eminence Eric Clapton* They also voted Focus the number two group after Yes, jesus mother what's this world coming to,

Focus and Yes beat out even the Rolling Stones, even-the obvious best group in the world the Stooges. Not only that, but they -tied with Yes for number of

awards received - 12 times each!

Late flash,; the Rolling Stones should have a new album out not long after you read this, consisting of live material from their recent Engiish-European tour, and studio covers of songs by other people, including "I Wish It Would Rain."

Chattanooga radiostation WFLI . recently held an ""Elvis Escape" contest and the prize according to the ad placed in the Chattanooga Times was this; "Some lucky couple will spend the most amazing week ever, three days in Las Vegas.., climaxing with Elvis onstage at the Sahara Hotel " Anyone with pictures of said perversion should contact CREEM immediately. W