ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

ROCK 'N' ROLL NEWS

Two young men walk into a Cambridge record store. They stride up to the clerk, who is wearing a Richard Betts promo tee shirt, and introduce themselves as members of the Allman Brothers. They offer to buy his shirt, but he refuses. They threaten to “beat the shirt off,” but the clerk won’t give in. The two young men leave the store cursing and mumbling to themselves.

Tiny Tim’s new comeback act is a glitter extravaganza featuring dancing girls. He wowed ’em when he unveiled it at the world-famous Torrance (Calif.) Holiday Inn.

The new year will see a new album by the Faces, as well as a world-wide tour. No fufther details just yet.

Karmic Congestion: Whilst in Atlanta on his big tour, Elton John was conked on the noggin by a heavy metal pipe thrown from the audience. Undaunted, he wiped the blood from his forehead and feather boa and charged back into the song he was

playing at the time: “Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting.”

Alice Cooper’s solo LP Welcome to My Nightmare is reported to be a “serious” album. Wouldn’t you know it. The musicians are ipostly the same ones as appeared on Lou Reed’s Berlin.

Mike Bloomfield of the newlyrecharged Electric Flag says he is considering opening up a chain of massage parlbrs that cater to women.

Johnny Winter’s second guitarist is Floyd Radford, once a member of bro Edgar’s White Trash.

Hawkwind’s Lemmy has won such idolatry from three Australian phone phreaks that they plug in their blue boxes and call him wherever the band goes. Last we heard, they yacked with him for thirty minutes when he was at the Detroit Hilton.

Brian Wilson has a new song called “Ding Dang” that he is trying to convince Annette Funicello she should record.

Paul Simon and Bette Midler working (and playing...) . together? Stay tuned; there may even be an album coming eventually.

David Byron of Uriah Heep says the group members will all have solo albums this year, but there’s no thought of disbanding.

According to.an interview in the London Observer, Rod Stewart writes all his songs whilst sitting on the crapper.

Shades of Lenny Bruce. Spooky Tooth has, once again, broken up. Gary Wright, who re-organized the group and put it on the road about a year ago, pronounced the band context “too restrictive,” and has thus embarked on a solo career.

Hawkwind dancer Stacia is the latest to turn down an offer from Playboy. Her analysis of the situation? “I don’t know whether having big tits has been my fortune or my misfortune.”

Variety reports a 20 percent drop in U.S. record sales this year. Three guesses why, First two don’t count.

The Rolling Stones tour of America now looks definite for the summer.

Elton John is taking up full-time residence in Los Angeles, as yet another British tax-evader.

Jack Hammer, a Jimi Hendrix lookalike, is performing weekly at New York’s Ipanema Disco in a show based on Jimi’s life and death.

John Entwhistle’s Ox, which has so far been seen only in England, is a big ’un: a nine-piece rock band, a chorus of male and female backup singers, synthesizers, brass section, and a good $50,000 worth of musical equipment. To say nothing of the liquor bill for this hardy group.

Further research into the effects of rock and roll on living things from down under: Australian Theo Brown claims that sharks are repelled by Beatles music and attracted by the fox trot. Stay where you are, Frank Sinatra.

That tour Grand Funk Railroad began in' early January will run through mid March. We can’t help but wonder why not one of the 27 dates is in their home state of Michigan.

Bonnie Bramlett, Delaney's ex-better half, is the latest to go with Capricorn. Another artist new to that label is Dexter Redding, whose father Otis was managed by Capricorn prexy Phil Walden.

Drummer Ricky Fataar quit the Beach Boys to join a new band fronted by Joe Walsh.

Former Beach Boy Bruce Johnston has finally checked in with his long-promised California Music band, which includes Kenny Hinkle, formerly guitarist with Ian Mathews, and vocalist Gloria Grinel, who's worked with David Cassidy the last couple years. Their remake of “Don’t Worry Baby” is on Bruce’s Equinox label (under RCA’s wing), and the company has also signed Barry Mann, one of the leading writers of the early 60s.

Fresh off his biggest American tour ever, Lou Reed will bring in the new year with a full scale tour of Europe. String Driven Thing will open for him at each venue.

Ian Hunter’s breakdown due to “complete physical exhaustion” forced Mott the Hoople to cancel a 25-dpte British tour that was to unveil the new Mick Ronsoitsupported lineup.' Doctors told Hunter to take two months off. All this amongst rumors that the group is breaking up anyhow.

David Cassidy, who announced t his retirement several months back, has apparently decided that a simple, image change will suffice. Sporting a new David Bowie haircut, he showed up in London, a Cassidy stronghold, to cut a new albunrwith Bowie producing. Better late than never.

Moog whiz Roger Powell, the fellow who sat in on the last Todd Rundgren tour, is planning a solo tour with the world’s largest performing synthesizer, which will allow him to duplicate, by ' himself, a six-piece band on stage. It’ll happen as soon as he’s mastered computer programming.

George Harrison to produce, the next Frank Sinatra album? Well, when you stop and think about it, they do seem to have more in common all the time.

Sly Stone got booted out of a , New York m6vie theater when people seated near him complained that they couldn’t hear the ( film what with Sly jabbering away into his portable telephone the whole time.

The Lovin’ Spoonful is the 'latest 60s group to hop back on the merry go round. At least in the studio.

The Incredible String Band have broken up. And until the announcement, we didn’t even know they were still together.

Peter Sellers sat in on ukelele on Steeleye Span’s “New York Gals” cut off their new Commoner’s Ground album. The Pink Panther had himself such a grand time that he asked if he could join them onstage at the Rainbow.

A collection of paintings from Guy Peellaert’s Rock Dreams book were exhibited in New York’s Star Gallery, and it’s not every day that you see the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis et. al. booked into a venue like that.

Word has is that The Dictators, a New York band spotlighting the brutish ebullience of lead singer Handsome Dick Manitoba and dangerous enough to make the Blue Oyster Cult look like homebodies, were ripped out of their recent Canadian tour in which they opened for Nazareth when it was ascertained that they made the Limey sissies look like dogplop. Their first alburn, The Dictators Go Girl Crazy, was produced by BOC boohOos Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman.

A romance made in Hollywood for sure: Karen Carpenter and Mike Curb. Oo-ee-oo.

Keith Moon, on why he never sang with the Who, and in referto his solo album: “It’s difficult for a drummer to vocalize for a start. You’re moving around when drujnming, and to sing, you’d have to cut two tracks. Also, the cymbals just drown you out. I don’t want to be tied to a microphone, and if you’re drumming you really are. It doesn’t work to do both... ‘singing drummers’just doesn’t even sound right.”

Yes, that really is Dick Dale, king of the surf guitar, on the new Keith Moon LP. For the last ten years or so, Dick has been running a roadside bar near Riverside in Southern California. He keeps his pet lion on a chain out behind the bar.

Bryan Ferry finally cast caution to the winds and did a solo tour of England, his first-ever stage appearances without Roxy Music.

Roger McGuinn sat in with the Beach Boys a few times on their last tour. And California dreamin’ is becoming a reality.

American Tears is the name of the group Alvin Lee selected to back him on his solo tour.

Carmen, the flamenco-rock group discovered by David Bowie, is developing a plan to put wireless microphones into their shoes so the audience can hear them dance. As it is now, they have to carry a $50,000 miked stage arOund on their tours.

Sly Stone’s on-again-off-again marriage on again as we write this, but probably off again by the time you read it.

Fresh off a session with Mick and Bianca Jagger, ex-Hitler photog Leni Riefehstahl now wants to set her sights on Peter Wolf and Faye Dunaway.

Yes man Steve Howe claims his new synthesized guitar is capable of producing 180,000 different , combinations of new sounds.

Keith Richard went to a Switzerland studio to dub organ and vocal tracks onto a song called “Scarlet” that he said would appear on a forthcoming solo album by none other than Jimmy Page. If so, this would be the first Solo album ever by a Zep.

Jimmy Page, now living in a Scottish house once occupied by satanist Aleister Crowley, seems to be having a few problems with things that go bump in the night.

Keep your fingers crossed for the Troggs, who, after threatening to do so for months, have definitely reformed and gone out on the road.

Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant told a British journalist that he’d like to do a benefit for George Wallace.