Good morning Radicals, one more day until Friday! You can make it!
Who the heck doesn’t think the Foo Fighters are cool!? Frontman Dave Grohl said in a new interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that he stopped doing drugs by the time he was 20 years old and didn’t believe in the rock myth of “live fast, die young.” He explained, “I’ve read millions of those biographies, I’ve seen friends fall victim to it. It sucks. If I could grab every person who thinks that’s the way you should live your life and sit them down and say, ‘listen to these horror stories,’ they’d maybe think differently. But who I am to tell anyone else how to live their life. All I know is from my own personal experience and I choose life each and every time.”
Grohl also pushed back against people who have said Foo Fighters are over the hill, saying, “People say the Foo Fighters are old and we should stop doing this. We have never been a cool band, we have always been on the outside of what is going on — when there was nu metal, we weren’t cool, where there was a buzz for skinny-tie New Wave rock from New York, we weren’t cool, when it turned to computers, we weren’t cool. To me, we do what makes us jump out of our skin and feel alive. We have fans who feel the same.”
The Foos are likely to be on the road for the next 10 months, but Grohl told us a while back that the band takes care to pace itself: “We have a way of doing this that we’ve always done. We try to keep things very simple. We try to do it as much as we can without burning it out, and if it gets to the point where we’re, where we don’t enjoy it, we just sort of stop. That’s what’s kept us around this long and we can always say, ‘Nope, stop.’”
Grohl told the Morning Herald, “We know when it’s time to stop and when we need to hit it hard . . . I do it on behalf of all the guys. I have to take care of them.” Foo Fighters are touring in support of their ninth studio album, Concrete And Gold, which debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 album chart last September. The band will tour Australia, New Zealand and South America before launching a North American tour on April 18th in Austin, Texas. Check the dates on the Road Rage page!
The Beastie Boys will publish their long-awaited memoir later this year, according to Rolling Stone. Beasties member Mike “Mike D” Diamond told Beats One about the yet-to-be-titled book, “We’re actually going to finish it, and it’s going to come out finally. Like many things we embark on, there are many false starts and, honestly, directions we went in that we realized were not the directions we should be going in, but it’s gonna be coming out in the fall of this year.”
Diamond and the group’s other surviving member, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, have been working on the memoir since 2013. Their publisher said at the time that the pair wanted to make the book a “multidimensional experience.”
Diamond said that the time and setting of the Beasties’ formation is an important part of the book, explaining, “To tell our story, we have to give the cultural history of where we came from. So New York City in the ’80s, you had all this incredible, exciting music, art, film. All of that sort of has to converge to be able to explain.” He added that the memoir will be “unlike any other music book.” The Beastie Boys were formed in 1981 and disbanded in 2012 following the death of member Adam Yauch from cancer at the age of 47.
Lou Brutus with Tim McIlrath of Rise Against
Despite its reputation as a politically oriented punk act, Rise Against frontman Tim McIlrath said in a new interview with Total Guitar that the group is not just about politics. McIlrath explained, “Rise Against is a reflection of who we are as human beings, so there are things that are political and there are things that are personal. There are songs and records that reflect both of those things. We have songs that have nothing to do with politics.”
McIlrath added, “Not every band has to be a political band. If you don’t want to write about politics, that’s fine. If you are harboring sentiments and want to speak out but you’re afraid of alienating an audience then I would encourage you to speak out in your songs.”
McIlrath told us a while back that Rise Against has always tried to find the right mix of message and music: “It’s a delicate balance, that’s for sure. When you take on a cause or you want to communicate how you feel about something — especially something controversial — you’re walking a fine line between like bringing about some awareness or shoving something down someone’s throat. I guess we’ve kind of led by example in a lot of ways and presented it as something that, you know, we feel strongly about, and if you also feel strongly about it, then we want to let you know that you’re not alone.”
McIlrath said that there was a “lot of low-hanging fruit” when it came to lyrical themes for the group’s latest LP, Wolves. Wolves is the Chicago punk act’s eighth studio album and arrived last June. The latest single is “House On Fire.” Rise Against will tour Australia and New Zealand in February, followed by a European run in June. Before heading to Europe, the band will headline the Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival, held May 26th through the 28th in Las Vegas
The original lineup of ’90s grunge rockers Candlebox will reunite for a one-night-only special concert at the Paramount Theatre in the band’s hometown of Seattle on July 21st. Singer Kevin Martin, guitarist Peter Klett, bassist Bardi Martin and drummer Scott Mercado will perform their debut album in its entirety from start to finish at the show to commemorate its 25th anniversary.
Kevin Martin said in a statement, “I can’t believe its been 25 years. It seems like yesterday we were playing the first of three sold-out shows at the Paramount and to be able to come back 25 years later to that same magical venue to play these songs for our fans is truly overwhelming and humbling.” Joining Candlebox at the Paramount will be Seattle staples and longtime friends Sweetwater and Green Apple Quick Step.
Candlebox’s self-titled debut album sold more than four million copies in the U.S. and featured the hit singles “Far Behind,” “You” and “Cover Me.” Kevin Martin remains the only original member in the band’s current lineup, whose most release was titled Disappearing In Airports. The current lineup of Candlebox will kick off a North American tour on January 25th in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Finally celebrating life today, Jonathan Davis of Korn and Quinn Allman of The Used! Happy Birthdays!
