Good morning Radicals! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend… First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE GROHL!
Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl turns 50 years old today! Born in Warren, Ohio, Grohl grew up mainly in the Virginia area and started playing at a young age in several Washington, D.C., hardcore and punk bands, most notably Scream. While playing in Scream, Grohl became friends with Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne, who came to see the band play at a West Coast show in 1990 and brought his friends Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana.
Both were impressed with Grohl’s drumming, and Novoselic invited Grohl to come to Seattle and audition for the group. He joined in late 1990 and entered the studio with the band in the spring of 1991 to record its second album, Nevermind. The album, boosted by the anthemic single “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” became a worldwide phenomenon, opening the way for the grunge and modern alternative rock movements and making Nirvana into superstars. Grohl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the band in 2014.
Following the death of Cobain and the end of Nirvana in April 1994, Grohl took a few months off to consider his next move. He ended up recording a 15-song demo, almost entirely by himself, that was released in July 1995 as the self-titled debut from Foo Fighters. Recruiting three other band members — the lineup would change a few times — Grohl took Foo Fighters on the road and launched the band’s own path to success.
Grohl told us a while back that he was nervous about becoming the lead singer in his own band: “When the Foo Fighters started playing, it was scary, because singing upfront with a guitar in your hand and having everyone stare at you as the lead vocalist is a lot different than just chiming in backup vocals when you’re behind the drums. So I was nervous, and actually when recording the first Foo Fighters record, I had never belted it out in the studio before, so I didn’t know what my voice sounded like.”
Foo Fighters has released a total of nine studio albums, including 1997’s The Colour And The Shape, the 2005 double set In Your Honor, 2011’s Wasting Light, 2014’s groundbreaking Sonic Highways and 2017’s Concrete And Gold. Five of the band’s albums have gone platinum or double platinum. The group has had 26 Top Ten singles at Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock radio, including Number One hits “Learn To Fly,” “All My Life,” “Best Of You,” “DOA,” “The Pretender,” “Long Road To Ruin,” “Rope,” “Walk” and “Run.”
Grohl has also branched into other areas of entertainment. He directed both a documentary about the legendary Sound City recording studios and all eight episodes of the HBO series that chronicled the making of Sonic Highways, while also occasionally subbing as a late night talk show host. But Grohl told us a while back that the latter job didn’t interest him: “It’s funny because a lot of people ask, like, ‘Wow, you’re kind of a natural at that, you should do that.’ I’m like, ‘Why? I can fill a stadium in Australia — that’s fun!’”
Grohl and the Foos are next scheduled to play at the Chris Cornell tribute concert in Los Angeles this Wednesday (January 16th), as well as a pre-Super Bowl event on February 2nd in Atlanta. The group has several other headlining and festival shows on its itinerary in 2019 as well, with a new album likely to arrive in 2020.
Godsmack has released a video for the title track of its latest album, When Legends Rise, which has been the Number One song at rock radio for four straight weeks. The clip was released just before this past weekend’s NFL playoffs, mixing live footage of the band with highlights of pivotal moments in recent football history, concluding with a shot of the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl trophy.
“When Legends Rise” is the second Number One track from the album. It follows last year’s “Bulletproof,” which was also the most-played song at rock radio in 2018.
Singer Sully Erna told us that the song and title “When Legends Rise” reflected the way he was feeling about both his life and the band at the time: “It’s not an egotistical statement more than it’s a metaphorical way of kind of burning it down to the ground and building it back up — a ‘phoenix rising from the ashes’ kind of vibe. And I think that’s the thread that kind of runs through this whole album, is really just a cleansing, a rebirth.”
Godsmack will return to the road next month, first with 20 shows in Europe, followed by a North American headlining tour with Volbeat. The European swing gets underway on February 27th in London, while the North American jaunt kicks off on April 16th in Nashville.
Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis has co-written an op-ed piece for Rolling Stone calling for a push to solve what he called “the greatest threat to humankind”: climate change. In the piece, Kiedis documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy and the Malibu Foundation’s Trevor Neilson stated, “California is on the front lines of the climate crisis,” before running down the stats of the recent fires that wiped out the city of Paradise and destroyed large swaths of the Malibu area.
They continued, “These extreme weather events are going to accelerate if we don’t act now. The toll on human life and the environment is unfathomable. These events also come with a monumental price tag. New figures released this week show 2018 global disasters cost $160 billion. A third of that total came from just four events in the U.S., with California’s Camp Fire being the costliest disaster of 2018 at $16.5 billion.”
The op-ed called for support of a resolution that would declare a climate emergency for the state of California, while calling on the state to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, adopt resilience and adaptation strategies, put vulnerable communities at the forefront of climate mobilization efforts, transition from industrial agriculture to regenerative farming and overhaul the transportation system.
Kiedis and the co-authors concluded, “According to the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have only 12 years left to mitigate climate change. The clock is ticking. We need to come together and help solve the greatest threat to humankind and embrace our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet for future generations.”
The piece was published ahead of this past weekend’s “Love Sesh” benefit for the Malibu Foundation, at which Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck and St. Vincent all performed to raise awareness and funds for the foundation’s efforts to battle the growing climate problem.
Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda has tweeted his reaction to hearing “Cross Off,” the solo song from Lamb Of God guitarist Mark Morton that features a vocal performance from late Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington.
Shinoda tweeted, “I remember when Chester played this song for me in his car, almost finished. He was really happy with it. Good stuff, Mark.” Bennington recorded his vocals for the song in April 2017, just three months before taking his own life at his California home.
Morton tweeted about the song, “‘Cross Off’ was a very free flowing and natural process. Everyone that worked on it put a lot of energy and emotion into it. I feel like you can really hear that in the track, and absolutely in Chester’s performance.”
“Cross Off’ can be found on Morton’s full-length solo effort, Anesthetic, which is due out on March 1st. Other guests on the LP include singer Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach, Alter Bridge‘s Myles Kennedy, Stone Sour drummer Roy Mayorga, Korn drummer Ray Luzier, Alice In Chains bassist Mike Inez and others.
Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor revealed on the Let There Be Talk podcast that he is writing a new book in which he grapples with our culture’s addiction to both drugs and social media. Taylor explained, “There’s a flare in addiction right now and it’s one of the things I’m working on in my new book. There’s a correlation between that and social media — all of the s**t that’s been triggered because of social media, the same kind of dopamine trigger. It’s compulsion, gratification, compulsion, gratification.”
Taylor also spoke about how struggles in his personal life made his addiction to social media even worse, saying, “I had just gotten separated and I kind of went down a crazy wormhole, because I was really depressed, I was really f**king unhappy. I had just been through hell. Instagram, Twitter… it took me a while to get out of it. For about three months solid, that’s all I did, ignoring my fucking duties and s**t.”
Taylor’s new book will be his fifth, following 2010’s Seven Deadly Sins: Settling The Argument Between Born Bad And Damaged Good, 2013’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Heaven, 2015’s You’re Making Me Hate You and 2017’s America 51: A Probe into the Realities That Are Hiding Inside “The Greatest Country in the World”, all of which made the New York Times“Hardcover Non-Fiction” best sellers list.
Taylor told us that he tries to make his books sound like he’s having a discussion with the reader: “People who know me, they call me and it’s like, ‘Dude, I can’t get your voice out of my head when I’m reading this book. It’s like I’m talking to you!’ And that, that’s the best compliment I could ever get, you know, because that’s really what it’s supposed to be, is a conversation.”
Taylor will head into the studio early this year with Slipknot to begin recording the band’s sixth LP, with the effort likely to emerge this summer.
Disturbed was the musical guest on Thursday night’s (January 10th) episode of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! The band performed several songs — including new singles “Are You Ready” and “A Reason To Fight” — on the show’s outdoor stage in front of a standing-room-only crowd. Disturbed kicked off its North American tour in support of its new album, Evolution, last week and next plays on Monday night (January 14th) in Glendale, Arizona.
Ghost has released “Chapter 6: The Visit,” the latest video in the band’s narrative webisode series. In “Chapter 5: The Call,” Sister Imperator, who was recuperating from a horrible car crash, discussed the merits and failings of The Omen feature film franchise while on the phone with Papa Nihil. The story continues in “Chapter 6: The Visit.” Ghost has been on the road in support of its latest album, Prequelle, which came out in June 2018.
Faith No More singer Mike Patton has announced his participation in the upcoming benefit concert in memory of late Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell. Billed as “I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell,” the event will take place in Los Angeles on January 16th and feature performances by Foo Fighters and Metallica, plus appearances from members of Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog and other surprise guests. Patton was supposed to sing the U.S. national anthem at Saturday’s, January 12th Los Angeles Rams vs. Dallas Cowboys NFL game in Los Angeles, but bowed out due to ill health.
Finally, in addition to Dave Grohl turning the big 5-0, we want to wish a Happy Birthday to Black Label Society and Ozzy guitarist Zakk Wylde! Have a great day!
