The New People's Music Champion Is Kid Rock

Kid Rock is touring with ZZ Top. That's hot. Kid Rock is printing his own tickets. That's illegal right? No! Detroit's biggest rocker since Seger has cleared a path for fans of Classic Rock to see the show for 20 bucks. Every seat. Front, lawn, to the left or perfectly in the center. Hey..he gets it. People stopped going to concerts because they can't afford them. I feel old as hell when I tell people that I saw KISS for 6 bucks. Songs were 89 cents. And local stores sold me concert beer at the age of 16 without having to do time. Kid Rock pulls into Charlotte at verizon wireless amphitheater on September 10th. Is there a political agenda behind Kid Rocks approach to getting the 20 buck tickets? Hmmmmm RollingStone Magazine lays out the digits: After much back-and-forth, Rapino and Rock came to a deal that allowed for $20 tickets for every seat in the house. "I said to them, 'Look, I'll go in as your partner. Don't guarantee me a dime; if nobody shows up, I'll lose money.' It costs us $125,000 to show up with our crew and whatnot," he explains. "I also said, 'But I want to share beer, parking, hot dogs. Let's put the money in a pot at the end of the night and figure out, based on the numbers, what I'll get paid.' Even if it sells out, I'll take a pay cut. Fortunately, I'm able to do that." However, the first two rows of each venue will not be sold to anybody. "I'm going to send my roadies to find people in the back of the place to sit there," Rock says. "I have big-time buddies that can get front-row seats for anything. They know the right people. Not my show, though. We don't care who you are, you can't get those seats unless we select you." In places where it's legal, rows two through 18 will be only available via paperless ticketing. Unfortunately, many states have outlawed the practice, which infuriates Rock. "That's one of the times I'm embarrassed to be a Republican," he seethes. "It's Republican lawmakers passing those laws, you dumbasses. They already did it in New York and they're trying to do it in Michigan. I've even called some of those guys to try and stop it." He's also livid with Ticketmaster. "They're taking a five-dollar service charge," he says. "It's 25 percent of the ticket! That's messed up, but I've beaten them up as much as I can. Then Walmart stepped in and agreed to charge just $20, and it includes parking." Many artists secretly place their own best seats on scalping sites, but Kid Rock is being transparent about the process, too. "We're doing that with 1,000 tickets to each show," he says. "The money is going into our pocket. We're going to try and combat scalpers." Rock realized his $20 plan could work a few years ago, when he lowered the prices of his t-shirts. "I realized it was highway robbery selling t-shirts for $40," he says. "I know what it cost to make those things. I said, 'This is ridiculous. Put up a banner that says 'Fuck the Economy! T-Shirts are $20.' My manager refused to do it until I threatened to fire him. We did it, and we made the same per cap by selling twice as many t-shirts." On the upcoming tour, Uncle Kracker will open each show with a brief set of his hits, followed by ZZ Top and then Kid Rock. "In the summertime, I try to play the hits to make sure everyone has fun," Rock says. "From there, I do fun stuff. I might do 'Born on the Bayou' since I recently cut that with John Fogerty, or maybe 'Rock & Roll Never Forgets' since I just did some shows with Bob Seger. I also hope to play with ZZ Top. We're old friends and I'm always down for that." Hits or not, Rock admits he has no idea whether his cut-rate plan will actually work. "I don't get nervous much in life anymore," he says, "but this one is a little nerve-racking. It could be a really rough summer if it doesn't work out. If it doesn't work out, I may have to go hide in a hole for a couple of years." If it does work, Rock hopes other artists will copy the business model. "Who doesn't want to play to a packed house?" he asks. "We all have huge fucking egos; I don't care what anybody says. Playing to a place that's half-full sucks. I'd rather take a pay cut and play to a packed house and hopefully be able to do this for many, many more years. Then after, I have a big nest egg and I can walk away with my middle finger up." On that note, many of Kid Rock's musical peers have been basically pointing their middle fingers at him since he campaigned for Mitt Romney last year. "People in this country just hate each other for voicing an opinion, especially in my business," he says now. "I'm like the fucking lone wolf. Look, I tend to vote Republican, but I don't like the hardcore views on either side and I'm not in bed with anybody. I'd probably be more Libertarian, but I'm a firm believer you have to pick a side. I can't be playing the middle. If you think differently, that's fine. I'd love to grab a beer and hear why you think that way." Unlike most Republicans, Rock supports gay marriage and abortion rights. Might he endorse Hillary Clinton in 2016 if she ran against someone as socially conservative as, say, Rick Santorum? "That's a tough one," he says with a big laugh. "Jesus. I'm not letting you snake me into that. Nice try, though."

Bernie Leadon Is Back To Being An Eagle

Getting hooked up with The Eagles. One day it'll be looked at as being just as American as packing up your mule and heading out west to Oregon. Searching for gold outside of San Fran. Hitting Yellowstone Nat'l Park and thinking, "This needs to be labeled a national treasure." Musically Glenn Frey and Don Henley are Lewis and Clark. No matter where you leaped onto their trail...pre-Greatest Hits, Hotel California or while You Tubing. One of the core chords attached to the feeding tubes of personal everyday Joe Average lives is and has always been connected to the writing and musical instruments these two men have touched. I hate to say this but I can't help but believe The Eagles are the last great American band where more than 75% of us know who is and has been a member of the playing field on display. Bernie Leadon is back to being an Eagle. Joe Walsh let it slip during an interview. According to the guitarist...the History of the Eagles Tour has been designed to take Eagles fans through multiple changes. Walsh also described the intriguing possibility of the band presenting its songs, and its lineup, more or less chronologically. “There’ll be part of the show that doesn’t involve me, but I may come out and play some James Gang stuff as part of the show just to show what I was doing when ‘Witchy Woman’ came out,” he suggested. “We don’t have that down yet.” As Rolling Stone notes, Leadon was with the Eagles for their productive four-year stretch between 1971-75, leaving because, as he put it in 2008, “I just wanted some time to regroup. I suggested we take some time off. They weren’t excited about that idea.” Whatever happens, we’ll see who’s in the lineup on July 6, when the History of the Eagles Tour is scheduled to kick off in Louisville, Ky

Metallica Rips The Volume Knob Off Pinball

Pinball once made wizards out of gamers. I didn't spend fifteen or twenty minutes popping coins into the slot at Sunset Bowl in Billings, Montana. If the parental figures wanted me they called the alley. I was born to flip. Inside a Classic Rock Nation overtaken by video...Pinball is the way Metallica thinks. Lead vocalist James Hetfield is rocked about the new game plan. Every song shattering the sound a Pinball machine makes will be new Metallica and gamer exclusive. Wait! This isn't a new way to Rock. KISS introduced their box on stilts in the 70's. I've seen TV show, movie themes and everything close to naked firmly promoting on the outside of the music maker turned mind blasting hip thumper. Fifteen months ago the company began to reveal a series of videos showing the making of the AC/DC pinball machine. In this 60-second video fans see a list of heavy hitting tracks included in the game before getting blink-and-you’ll-miss-them shots of some of the video and technology used to create the game. Some of the tracks included are ‘Fuel,’ ‘Master of Puppets,’ ‘The Unforgiven’ and ‘Enter Sandman.’ There are 12 tracks in all, many of which the band is sure to play as they headline the Orion Music + More Festival in Detroit this summer. The band is also working on new music, and has a 3D film scheduled for 2013. A book called ‘Metallica: The Complete Illustrated History’ will be released in November.

New Music From Fleetwood Mac Just In Time For Summer

How can you tell Summer's almost here! By the number of Fleetwood Mac songs on the radio. It's been that way since Say You Love Me, Rhiannon and the entire Rumors album blew up FM radio in the mid-70's. Fleetwood Mac goes great with spring rain. Fleetwood Mac floats through the air when its 97 degrees. Fleetwood Mac turns a 4 hour weekend trip down a long ass highway into a miniature concert staring you. I pop on an old episode of Don Kirshner's Rock Concert featuring Stevie Nicks on YouTube and without a doubt my imagination is basking in the rays of a summertime high. Which is why I wasn't shocked with Lindsey Buckingham announced that Fleetwood Mac will release an EP of brand new material "in a few days," Lindsey Buckingham said onstage during a show this past Saturday in Philadelphia. "It's the best stuff we've done in a long time," Buckingham said as he introduced one such new cut, "Sad Angel," that you can check out thanks to a rather impressive fan-shot video: The track opens with the guitarist picking muted notes over steady hi-hat clicks before the song opens up into driving, harmony-laden barnburner. There's no word on the exact release date for the EP, but Stevie Nicks mentioned last year that the band had been working on new material. "We actually have two new Fleetwood Mac songs that I cut with Lindsey two weeks ago we might play," Nicks told Rolling Stone in an interview about the band's current world tour. "I had a really good time working with him for four days at his house. I got to hang out with his family and his kids, his grown up kids, and really connect with him again. We’re pretty proud of what we have done, and we’re looking at it through the eyes of wisdom now, instead of through the eyes of jealousy and resentment and anger." The video

Black Sabbath Stays True To Fans On New Tour

Last month Jon Bon Jovi apologized to fans of the band for having to play new material at the Time Warner Cable Arena. He knows. We know. Music is a business and no band can afford to fork out the bucks to tour on their own time and dime. I walked out of a Tom Petty concert because the new music and I just weren't buzzing. I laughed the entire way out. I had finally felt what radio listeners experience when the jock on the air cuts into a list of favorites and shouts, "Hey I got this new song from ________." I was there when U2 and Def Leopard busted onto the 1980's music scene. Hearing new music from them came with a benefit. Then something happened to music. Albums featured more misses than hits. The invention of the compact disc gave permission to music buffs to purchase the tunes then quickly sell it back to the record store. I'm guilty of doing it with albums. A new group on the scene was Loverboy. Maybe being from Montana got in the way. I mean we were caked constantly with Canadian acts wanting to make it big. Loverboy was just another one of those bands. The song Turn Me Loose was April Wine meeting Chillawack taking on Gino Vannelli. The greatest Classic Rock come backs of all time has a new member. Black Sabbath. Not just a new collection of Tony Iommi inspired guitar riffs but a world tour. For fans that can be scary. Musicians tend to put too much focus on the new material. Not Black Sabbath. Catch em live and you're gonna get the tracks that made em your favorite. Bassist Geezer Butler says Ozzy and company are well focused of what the band is and as supposed to be about. It was great for experimenting, but we wasted a lot of time – and money – just pissing about in the studio on the later albums.” That followed Butler’s early struggle to buy an instrument, after Cream inspired him to focus on bass. “I’d never seen anyone play bass like Jack Bruce before,” he says. “Everyone would be staring at Clapton while I’d be staring at Jack. “The main obstacle was I couldn’t afford a bass. I had a Fender Telecaster guitar at the time. I was paying it off at 50 pence a week over four years, so I couldn’t sell it until it was paid for. When I got together with Sabbath, I tuned the guitar strings down to simulate a bass. “On our first gig I borrowed a friend’s Hofner bass. It only had three strings – and that gig was the first time I’d ever played a bass. I swapped my Telecaster for a Fender Precision bass, and that was that.” While Sabbath will mainly live in the past when it comes to setlists, Butler says they’ll also squeeze in a couple of tracks from the new album. And he reflects on how recording 13 was a completely different experience from those that took place 40 years ago. “These days it’s great – you can have the equivalent of a major studio on your laptop, so you can save a lot of time and heartache by recording your ideas at home and then playing them to whoever you are working with, to get instant feedback. There is nothing to replace jamming live together, but it is great to have a reference point, to give direction.” The bassist admits writing the album was a challenge: “You have to feel extremely comfortable with each other to write and record. We have seen each other almost every day for the last two years – but we persisted, and we have done the almost impossible.”

No Cheap Trick. Live From Budokan Changed Buying Habits

Depending on who you met along the record collecting path...there was never a true art to buying unless you physically hooked up with a record geek behind the counter. Before computers. Nerds loved hard to locate vinyl. Most of which was being spun into sound in faraway places like Budokan. Imports. They were expensive but exclusive. To own an import made you king for the day. Nobody else. Just you. Sporting the makings of the inside sleeve. That rare hunk of something special that pleased the innocence right out of a music fan. Whatever it took to turn a bootleg cassette banged out during weekend listening party into "Thee" must hear no matter what place you elected to party. 1978. At the time. The greatest "Import" on earth belonged to an act out of Rockford, Illinois that had been banging around for five years. It almost looks like it. But far from being it. Cheap Trick took on the role of overnight sensation. FM radio turned them into the poster child for hottest product to own no matter what the asking price. Cheap Trick are planning a pair of shows to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their concerts in Tokyo that spawned the classic live album At Budokan. The rockers will replicate history, playing the same songs in the same order they did in 1978. They'll start on April 28th at the John Varvatos boutique on the Bowery in New York (the former home of CBGB), where they'll re-create the show they performed on the same day in 1978. They'll follow up on April 30th at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles by playing the same set from 35 years ago. Fans will be able to watch the shows through live streams. The April 28th New York show will be broadcast on Livestream.com, while the April 30th Los Angeles show will air on AXS TV. For more information, visit the band's website. Cheap Trick also marked the 20th anniversary of their Budokan shows in 1998 with a string of concerts.

Van-Hager Could There Be A Reunion?

Last week's Bon Jovi/Sambora tour separation shocked a lot of fans. Within ten minutes they recovered. Why? Because hearing the news fed what we expect from everyone associated with sound. The land of musical breakups. It's nothing new. It never has been. It was alive and well before The Beatles and will continue decades after our passion for music is gone. I've stood on many stages lecturing to hundreds of potential artists and to everyone of them I firmly plant a single seed, "Where there is creativity. There will be war. Figure out the afterlife before settling in on celebrating the best of times." One of the biggest baddest Classic Rock breakups is the Eddie Van Halen/ Sammy Hagar divorce. As strained as its been. Fans of the band have given up on a possible reunion. Not so fast says Sammy Hagar... He's seeing a different Eddie on the horizon Hagar was asked by Vegas Rocks! (via Blabbermouth), what he would say to the guitar legend if he had the opportunity. Without much hesitation, Hagar spoke of his willingness to reconnect. The video is embedded below. “Well, right now I’d say, ‘Wow. Great. I’ve seen some pictures of you recently. You look like you’re healthy and doing great,” he told Sally Steele. I’m really proud of you and I’d like to see you continue doing that. Here’s my phone number. Call me up if you wanna hang and just have some fun and goof off.’” However, Hagar acknowledged that he learned his lesson from his previous attempt at reuniting with Van Halen. He said that he would be more cautious about any further projects with the band, while also practically demanding that his old buddy be brought back into the fold. “And whatever that led to,” he continued. “I wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s get together and do it again,’ because you would have to do that slow, because I would never do it again under the last circumstances. But I would do it again under different circumstances. So it’d be like that. And then I would also say, ‘And also here’s Mikey’s [Anthony] phone numbers with mine.’” Of course, Hagar doesn’t need to be in Van Halen. In addition to his work with Chickenfoot, he’s currently working on a new solo album to be released this year. Last month he reunited in the studio with his former Montrose bandmates Bill Church and Denny Carmassi. The interview