Sammy Hagar Interview

Van Halen fans (as well as Sammy Hagar fans) may be interested in hearing what Sammy has to say recently about the Van Halen reunion as well as some of his thoughts about his own career and plans for the future.

Hagar says that Eddie Van Halen wanted to throw Michael Anthony out of the band back when Hagar was with the band and has no idea why Eddie would want to do that. Hagar sounds like he has very high regard for Anthony as a bass player, singer and friend.

I’ve been a fan of Van Halen from the beginning, but to be honest, I always had a bit of trouble with Diamond Dave’s king-sized ego. For me, Van Halen’s best years were the years when Sammy Hagar was fronting the band. The albums that came from the group during the years were also my favorites, with the possible exception of their very first album.

I’ve seen and heard some of the “new” Van Halen’s rehearsals and I have no doubt they can go out there and get the job done. I think Wolfgang will do just fine and although it’s kind of cool to see Eddie up there playing with his kid, I think Michael Anthony will be missed by a lot of fans.

Def Leppard’s Phil Collen In Video Interview

This time it’s a video interview that you can view below via YouTube. In this interview Collen discusses his Jackson guitar(s) and even demonstrates the sound after having some work done on his main guitar.

This interview was conducted by Brandt Bourque from ThePerfectGuitar.com and runs for about 5 minutes. I’m really not sure why all the “effects” were added to the video that kept splitting up the screen and switching back and forth between color and black-and-white, but it really doesn’t add much to the interview. I guess it is supposed to be “cool.”

Guitar players may find some of the talk about his guitars and the technical aspects of guitar innards interesting even if they are not Def Leppard fans.

Eagles To Perform At Country Music Awards

If you’re an Eagles fan, you might be interested to hear that they are scheduled to perform at the Country Music Awards Ceremony in November. This will be the first time the band has ever performed at that event.

The decision to ask the band to perform at the event is thought to have been influenced by their recent hit single, “How Long.”

It’s funny because I never really think of the Eagles as a country band, but I guess they are pretty well known as a “country rock group,” and probably always have been. Most of their stuff does kind of have that country element to it, so I can understand the label.

The Eagles are still quite popular if the statistics behind this particular web site are any indication. Most of the visitors here who arrived here after conducting a search on a search engine are seeking information regarding the Eagles new album. Pretty impressive.

Classic Rock Reunions: Is Supertramp Next?

Van Halen. Led Zeppelin. Supertramp? This is one reunion I would love to see, and, believe it or not, actually go see if a reunited Supertramp was playing anywhere near me.

That statement, admittedly coming from an 50-ish guy who does not have much patience for screaming crowds and lousy sound, is based on my experience at a Supertramp concert in Boston back around the early 1980’s.

That concert was the single most amazing concert experience of my life and that is due to one thing and one thing only: sound. The sound was astoundingly fantastic and to this day, I still can’t imagine how they pulled it off. The chance of that happening again would be enough to get me back in a concert hall to see a Supertramp show.

Roger Hodgson, perhaps the best-known member of the group and writer behind the vast majority of Supertramp’s big hits, is reported to be quite interested in a reunion with his old bandmates. Any reunion, however, would not be without its conditions.

Although Hodgson officially left the band back in 1983 to spend more time with family, it is well known that he and Rick Davies were not getting along well at that time. That was due to the fact that Davies’ wife was managing the band and certain members of the band were not too happy about those circumstances.

As a condition of any reunion, Davies’ wife would not be allowed to manage the band. With a likelihood that Davies would not approve of any management with close ties to Hodgson, they would most likely seek an neutral party to manage the band if there was any hope of them getting along.

Hodgson recently returned to his native England and is touring on his own and apparently having a good time of it. As the writer responsible for almost all of Supertramp’s hit songs, he is still performing some of them as part of his show in addition to his other material.

There is a band calling itself Supertramp that is still together and still includes Rick Davies, but without those old Supertramp classics and the fellow who wrote and performed them with the band, the current Supertramp just isn’t Supertramp to me.

You can be sure I will be following any new developments concerning a Supertramp reunion very closely and will post anything related that may come out.

For more, check out the article on the icWales website.

A Whole Bunch of Van Halen Rehearsal Photos

If you’d like to see what VH is looking like on stage these days, there are over 100 high-quality photos from a rehearsal that you can peruse at this location.

There you will see a somewhat older-looking group of rockers with the exception of the fresh-faced Wolfgang.

Seeing Diamond Dave with those sideburns called to mind visions of Elvis, although he still appears to have some of the energy of the long-haired wildman we remember from years back.

As you can see here, someone put up a nice slide show of the images up on YouTube.

Boston Rehearsal Recording Available

Posted on the official Boston Band web site is a recording from a rehearsal from the band as they prepared for the Brad Delp tribute show that took place last month.

The first part is the familiar sound of one of Boston’s best-known hits, “More Than A Feeling.” Michael Sweet is handling lead vocal duties and doing a pretty good job.

As Tom Scholz points out in his commentary, the recording is a bit rough around the edges and has not been mixed down to get that studio sound you would expect from an album. It’s still interesting to listen to and the sound is certainly not terrible.

I’m not sure what the second half of this recording is but I really got into it when I heard it. It’s kind of a heavy guitar and drums thing and I don’t know if it is something someone wrote or whether they were just jamming around with some stuff. Whatever it was, I like it.

Check out the recording near the bottom of the page on the Boston web site.

It’s Real: Led Zeppelin Reunion Show In November

After a seemingly endless flood of rumors that stretch back who-knows-how-long, the official announcement of the Led Zeppelin Reunion show on November 26 at London’s O2 arena came Wednesday.

It is estimated that 20 Million people have registered for a chance to buy tickets to the show. Considering that the O2 holds 20,000, there are bound to be a lot of disappointed fans who aren’t lucky enough to score a ticket, which are said to be going for around $250!

This event is being billed as a one-time show and there is no word of any full-fledged reunion, although the band is reported to be “bonding well together.”

Also scheduled to perform the same night is Pete Townshend of The Who fame, Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, Foreigner and The Rhythm Kings.

The Zeppelin portion of the event is scheduled to be about two hours long.

I guess the next round of rumors will be centered on the subject of whether this will be the start of a genuine reunion and reunion tour for the band. Perhaps that will depend a lot on whether they all manage to get along.

Geezers Know How To Use The Internet Too!

A recent story in USA Today reports that classic rock tunes are being downloaded at a pretty good pace these days. The story points to this as evidence that us older music fans still listening to the music we grew up.

That is certainly true in my case. Most of the stuff I listen to is from a few decades back, although some of my favorites like Rush are still cranking out new music and going on tour.

An outfit called Soundscan tracks digital music downloads and reports that classic rock tunes make up  a respectable share of the ones and zeros zooming across the net to provide music fans with a fix in the form of their favorite tunes.

Among the top classic downloads are Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and Survivor’s “Eye of The Tiger.” Trust me, none of the ones and zeros that make up that last one were destined for my computer!

And it’s not just us graying baby boomers that are loading up their hard drives with digital music. My dad, who is in his seventies, has as much digital music on his PC as I do on mine. Maybe even more. Granted, I don’t think he has any Rush or Led Zeppelin, but he enjoys his tunes as much as the rest of us and knows how to download them.

What’s really nice about this is that classic rock is picking up a lot of new fans from these downloads. The music is so accessible these days and a lot of kids are downloading some of the older music and finding out that they really like it.

Who can blame them? Unless you are a pop or hip hop fan, what is there to listen to these days? Contemporary rock bands that are any good seem very hard to find lately, so I can see why some kids are looking to the past for good music. That’s where the best stuff is.

To see the whole story, check out USA Today.

Van Halen Rehearsal Report

If you’d like to read a nice report from a recent Van Halen rehearsal that took place in Los Angeles, check it out at Blabbermouth.

The report comes originally from the VH discussion group on Yahoo! and was reproduced on the Blabbermouth site.

Sounds like a good time was had by all, and it was reported that Wolfgang did a fine job as the new bassist and backup vocalist. The author of the report did, however, mention that Michael Anthony was missed.

There were also some photos from the rehearsal that were linked at the bottom of the report as it appeared on Blabbermouth, but when I tried to view them I got a “page not found” error. Perhaps someone from the VH camp complained and has them removed or something.

Van Halen: Why Don’t They Just Grow Up?

The more I hear about this Van Halen “reunion,” the less I am interested in it. Why, you might ask? Well, it seems like there is no end to the childish squabbling with this group.

I’ve got to give some credit to former VH bass player Michael Anthony for refusing to joining his former band mates down in the mud. He’s taken a pretty mature approach to the whole situation so far and that’s pretty commendable considering some of the things that have been going on.

It became pretty well known that there was an effort to remove Anthony’s picture from the band’s website recently, which appeared to be an effort on their part to erase his history from the band’s past. Talk about childish behavior. An uproar from fans resulted in the images of Anthony being quickly restored.

That incident, besides the fact that Anthony was never invited to join the planned “reunion” (which would have made it a true reunion) and learned of it on the Internet along with the rest of us, should give Anthony reason enough to be pissed off.

It remains to be seen how well things will go with Van Halen offspring Wolfgang standing in for the discarded Michael Anthony. I’ve seen only one photo of the younger Van Halen performing with the others and it just didn’t look like Van Halen to me. At least not as much like it might have if Anthony was given the chance to take part.

Granted, I was never a huge VH fan, but I think I have listened to them enough to call myself a fan, and this particular fan would have felt better about this reunion if the core members had shown enough maturity to at least extend an invite to Michael Anthony and make it a genuine Van Halen reunion. From what he has said, I think he would have readily agreed to sign up.

Wolfgang is just a kid and has his whole music career ahead of him. That along with the blood of one of rock’s greatest guitarists flowing in his veins makes it easy to avoid laying awake in bed at night worrying about his career.

Sure, as a fellow geezer, I might be a bit biased, but I think Anthony should be up there on stage with the rest of the crew when the reunion tour kicks off.