Rock 'n' Roll News

Rock 'n' Roll News

Being For The Benefit Of The Vietnam Veterans Of America Dept.: A recent gathering of some of Michigan’s finest oldsters (musicians from the ’60s), billed as the Guitar Army, brought in the bucks for the VVA and entertained a soldout crowd at Harpo’s in Detroit. The list of participants included just about everyone from the now-legendary Detroit/Ann Arbor axis of those bygone years, from Mitch Ryder to Mark Fariter of Grand Funk to Scott Morgan of the Rationale to Scott Asheton of the Stooges to Rob Tyner of the MC5 to Dick Wagner of the Frost to Jim McCarty and Johnny “Bee” Badanjek of the Detroit Wheels to Charlie Allen Martin of the Silver Bullet ; Band. The star-studded spectacular featured renditions of such timeless favorites as “Respect,” “2 + 2 = ?,” “Rock And Roll” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

Bobbing for Hope? The First Airborne Rock ’N’ Roll Division has just wrapped up their second annual concert ' tour—a swing of Europe—-on behalf of the USO. Members of the goodwill gang included musicians from Cheap Trick, Santana* Kansas, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Le Roux and Streets. “It’s not all fun and games.” remarked Rick _ JNeilson of Cheap Trick“My guitar was out of tune one night and they made me peel potatoes for a week!” Yeah,

Rick, and if you break a string, you’ve gotta photograph Soviet , installations in East Germany.

Speaking of Cheap Trick, they’ve been in the studio recently to give it another try; Jack Douglas producing...

pAnd speaking of good causes, a benefit concert for LA’s homeless attracted the following artists: Carla Olson and; Phif|| Seymour (Toxtones), Brian Wilson (Beach Boys), Susanna Hoffs (Bangles), Phil Alvin (Blasters),

Belinda Carlisle (Go>Go’s), John Doe (X), Ray Manxarek (Doors) and Jackson Browne. Olson and Seymour performed “Midnight Mission”—which is about those who inhabit L.A.’s skid row— and say they they’ve sent a copy of the song to President Reagan. “Maybe it’ll wake him up to the problems of the homeless,” said Olson, “...but I doubt it.” Who dares speak for this President?

Word is that Sting’s recording sessions in Barbados have been going better than anticipated. The sessions have reportedly “rocked heavier” than expected from his jazz pais and that the LP may be ready as soon as early summer. Tracks supposedly include such titles as “Set Them Free,”

“The Children’s Crusade,” and “Moon Over Bourban Street.”

CBS is reviving The Twilight Zone as a TV series and guess who’s been signed to do the music? Well, despite this Bureau’s campaign to enlist Ray Parker, Jr., they’ve selected the Grateful Dead, instead. We ain’t afraid of no Pigpen ..

News that affects us all: America will tour Italy. Be in Milan ASAP.

Just in from our Heee Desk:

Ike Turner reportedly called Teena Marie to ask if she’d go on a tour with him billed as “Ike & Tina.” Remember— you just can’t beat the original, Ike.

Newest veejay on the block is none other than Rita Cooiidge now appearing on VH-1. Said the enthusiastic singer of several million-selling hits: “I’m going to have the chance to play my friends’ music on the airwaves!” Those Scorpions are a lucky bunch!

Slated for a Christmas release is a Beatles album entitled John, Paul, George and Ringo. Hey, the title alone was years in the making.

’Twas Tina Turner’s final appearance on her U K. tour and the more-than-10,000 fans at the N.E.C. Hall in Birmingham, England, were stunned when the very urbane David Bowie Stepped onstage to sing a few numbers with Ms. Turner. First off was “Tonight,” a track they recorded together for Bowie’s recent album, then a duet of Chris Montez’s classic “Let’s Dance,” and finally a version of Bowie’s own song with the same title as Montez’s excellent tune. Said Bowie, after the show: “Standing next to her is the hottest place in the Universe.” Well, hell.

Congrats to guitarist Earl Slick and wife Jean Millington on the birth of their son, Lee John William Slick. Slick, of course, has recently played on tours with David Bowie and John Waite; Millington is the former bass player of Fanny, one of the “seminal” all-female rock groups.

Midge Ure (of Ultravox renown) has been working on a solo album, slated for release early this summer. According to Ure, It will probably be half songs and half instrumentals.” And you half to buy it!

And this from our Heavy Metal Desk: Ratt’s new LP, Invasion Of Your Privacy, should be out any nanosecond. In other whimsical Ratt doings, it seems the guys wanted to take a bit of a break after their recent exhaustive touring activities To be more blunt, they wanted to get away from Billy Squier & entourage, since many of their shows involved opening for the mighty Mr. S. and—heck—one does tire of seeing the same faces. So drummer Bobby Blotzer and bassist Juan Croucier took off for Midi for some Hawaiian ambience. In a bar there, someone tapped them On their shoulders and asked if they’d like a drink. The ersatz waiter? Billy Squier, of course. God bless this man!

Say what you will about Ray Davies. Really, we don’t mind. Oh, yeah, we’ve got an item on him, too: it seems that during the shooting of his Return To Waterloo film, Davies was so obsessed with authenticity that he rented a train (the story takes place on one) rather than building a set.

It turned out that shooting 157 scenes from a moving train isn’t always fiscally prudent, though: one shot of a couple waving goodbye to their daughter from the platform—about two minutes worth of work—had to be reshot, and the train (forced to comply with railway regulations) had to go on to the next town, switch lines and double back on another track to get in position to uh do it again. All this only took about an hour, or—to put it in musical terms—57 minutes more than every Dave Davies song worth listening to.

ELP is back and Polygram’s got ’em! Yep, the well-known progressive trio has reformed due to popular demand, or maybe because they want to make a lot of money. In any .. case. Keith Emerson and Greg Lake will be joined by Cozy Powell (formerly with Jeff Beck, Rainbow and ' Whitesnake),' as Carl ■Pahiier is preoccupied making money in Asia. Fear—er— expect a new ELP disc this summer, It will be an LP. He’p! We mean ’elp!

Cobwebs & Strange: production of a film based on the life of Kit Lambert, the Who’s manager, has been halted because they can’t find an actor to play Keith Moon. May we suggest the charismatic Jimmy Marinos? Also: shooting has been reportedly “jinxed” by a series of accidents “parallel to incidents in Lambert’s life.” Lambert, you may recall, died in a rather mysterious fall in 1981.

Fans of Prince will join us in bemoaning this news from his management: his appearance at Miami’s Orange Bowl will be his last concert for “an indeterminate number of years.” We’re bemoaning it

’cause they didn’t say centuries. Anyway, manager Steve Fargnoli asked the beflowered one what he intended to do, and Prince replied: “I’m going to look for the ladder.” Fargnoli asked him what that meant and the gregarious rocker said: “Sometimes it snows in April.” So short he needs a ladder, yet so deep...

The worst! How could this happen??.Billy Joel, the artist’s artist, wed Christie Brinkley, the wife’s wife, and didn’t invite Rock 7V' Roll News! He didn’t even call us!! We be hurt! Oh, well, we’ll let bygones be bygones...we’re sure that when they say vows, they say vows so fi-yi-yine...

In this month’s Ethiopian Benefit news, we’ll note that a group of celebrated Latin recording stars—including Julio Iglesias, Herb Aipert, Jose Felicianbn Sergio Mendes, Jose Luis Rodriguez, Jose Jose and many, many others—have gotten together to form Hermanos Dei Tercer Mundo (“Brothers Of The Third World”). The group will release a USA For Africastyled single and album, giving half the profits to that organization and half to impoverished Latin countries.”

Thompson Twin lead vocalist Tom Bailey recently collapsed at a Holiday Inn in Chelsea. Doctors diagnosed Bailey as suffering from “total exhaustion”—he has been

His new LP, says John Denver; “is one of the most exciting I’ve ever made. “ This in a career of giving the meaning of life new meaning, we remind you. Academy Award-winner Stevie Wonder has donated a song to the album, thinking of it “as a recording and producing the next TT album for the past several months.

Is There Still Time For A Cover Story? Dept.: This from Russell Hitchcock, lead singer of Air Supply: “Everybody wants to be wealthy.” Hey. we'd settle for x-ray vision, Russ.

One name being prominently mentioned as the producer of the next Pretenders album is Steve Lily white’s. In a way, we’re glad.

And, in what is undoubtedly the greatest news ever, Ricky Schroeder is said to be recording an album.

Having abolished our (Billy Idol Desk in favor of the much more meaningful Steve Stevens Desk, here’s the latest: Steve was not only recently named Ron Wood's favorite guitarist, the Thompson Twins have asked him to play guitar on two tracks of their new album...see “Bailey Collapses!’, Rock ’N’ Roll News, CREEM, July, 1985.

perfect tune for Denver,” which means we’ll find out if Stevie's got a sense of humor pretty soon. Also working on the disc: Roger Nichols as coproducer. You’ll recall that Nichols engineered Steely Dan’s LPs for 14 years. Some careers go nowhere but up.