Blabbermouth and The Pulse Of Radio are reporting Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix said in an interview with @London that he did not like the band’s recent Number One hit “Help” when he started writing it — but finished the song anyway. Shaddix explained, “I think the music is very uplifting. But I didn’t like the song when we wrote it. I was, like, ‘The music is too pop.’ It’s, like, ‘Ehhh.’ And then Tobin [Esperance], our bass player, was, like, ‘Remember when we wrote ‘Scars,’ we felt the same way about that song. Approach this one in the same way — take your darkness that you’re carrying around with you.’“
Shaddix told Billboard magazine he has never been officially diagnosed with depression, but mental health issues run in his family and his mother has said that it might be why the singer had a habit of self-medicating before he got sober several years ago.
Shaddix told us not long ago where “Help” was coming from: “It’s a deep one, man. It’s that old, familiar place I find myself, I guess time and time again, in that dark place and this is for people that struggle, people that have brokenness in their lives, people that struggle with depression, people that struggle with bipolar, people that struggle just with life in general ’cause life keeps on happening, you know, and it’s definitely an anthem for the people walking through the darkness.“
Shaddix said in the @London interview, “Our fans f**king dig that song. So it went from most hated to one of my favorite songs.” “Help” is featured on Papa Roach’s ninth and latest album, Crooked Teeth, which was released last May. The latest single from the disc is called “Born For Greatness.” The band recently confirmed that it has already been in the studio writing and recording material for its next LP.
Bush‘s new single, “This Is War,” is taken from the expanded edition of its latest album, Black And White Rainbows. Frontman Gavin Rossdale told us he was moved to write the track after watching the horrific events in Charlottesville that erupted last summer when a white supremacist protest turned violent and resulted in a woman’s death: “I saw the riots in Charlottesville and was just amazed at all this level of hatred and bigotry and sort of blaming, you know what I mean? Like blaming a race of people, blaming the Jews for whatever your problem is. It just seems like medieval madness. So that song was born.”
The expanded and remastered edition of Black And White Rainbows was released digitally through Bush’s new deal with BMG, with a CD to follow. A second new song on the disc, “Alien Language,’ was inspired by Rossdale’s divorce from singer Gwen Stefani. Rossdale recently participated in Linkin Park‘s Los Angeles memorial concert for late singer Chester Bennington, performing the song “Leave Out All The Rest.”
TUNE IN! Listen for Gavin as our Featured Artist of the Week on hardDrive XL with Lou Brutus next week) Dec 11-15.)
Blabbermouth and The Pulse Of Radio also reporting Mastodon has shared a 75-minute documentary on the making of its latest album, Emperor Of Sand. The film is composed of 12 smaller featurettes released earlier this year, edited together with 30 minutes of additional never-before-seen footage. The band said, “This is a deep look into the making of the album and the inspiration behind the music. With the Grammy nominations Emperor Of Sand has received this week, we thought it was the perfect time to release it. We hope you enjoy the documentary. If you do, feel free to share it!”
Mastodon recorded most of the LP in the band’s hometown of Atlanta, as guitarist Bill Kelliher told us: “There was a studio that was just about to close like a month after we started, so we had like an end date and it just worked out great. The studio was a bit of a drive every morning, but I think we preferred to be home. We went out to the Henson Studios in L.A. for 10 days to do all the, any overdubs that needed to be finished and vocals and mixing, and got it all done.”
Emperor Of Sand was released last March and debuted at Number Seven on the Billboard 200 album chart. The disc contained two rock radio singles, “Show Yourself” and “Steambreather.” The album has also earned two Grammy nominations this year, for Best Rock Album and Best Metal Performance for the song “Sultan’s Curse.” The 60th annual Grammy Awards will be held on January 28th in New York City. In September, Mastodon released a new EP called Cold Dark Place, featuring four previously unreleased tracks.
Guns N’ Roses said so long to their Not In This Lifetime 2017 tour. The reunion tour ended with a nearly four-hour, 37-song concert at the Forum in the band’s hometown of Los Angeles last Wednesday night (Nov 29th). According to Ultimate Classic Rock, the set featured relatively rare performances of two tracks from the 2008 Chinese Democracy album, “Catcher in the Rye” and “Sorry,” in addition to tributes to Glen Campbell, Malcolm Young and Chris Cornell in the form of “Wichita Lineman,” “Whole Lotta Rosie” and “Black Hole Sun.”
Lead singer Axl Rose said near the end of the evening, “We want to take a moment to just thank our crew. We want to thank all the fans everywhere. Thank you for coming out tonight, and all around the world. I want to thank our f**king amazing crew and all of our business team and our sound man. And the band! For putting up with my s**t.”
Lead guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan — the other two original members of the group who reunited with Rose for the tour — later tweeted their own thanks.
Guns N’ Roses will return next June for a seven-week European jaunt, but the band’s plans until then, and beyond that, remain unknown for now. The three original members have not given a single interview together. The reunited trio, along with four backing musicians from latter lineups, have been on the road almost continuously since the tour was launched with a surprise show at the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles on April 1st, 2016.
Although some fans have grumbled that two members of the original lineup — guitarist Izzy Stradlin and drummer Steven Adler, the latter of whom did appear at a handful of stops on the tour — remain on the sidelines, the trek has been wildly successful, reportedly grossing more than $400 million since its launch a year and a half ago.
Finally today, Linkin Park just released a live video of “Crawling” with Chester Bennington from their One More Light Tour 2017.
