Archive for category: Beard’s Blog

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Van Halen- Alex, David Lee Roth, Michael Anthony, the late Eddie Van Halen

The interviewsof the earliest years of Eddie and Alex Van Halen’s emigration from The Netherlands to Southern California, meeting Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth, playing Pasadena backyard parties to the Sunset Strip, and recording their January 1978 debut.
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Journey- Frontiers- Neal Schon, John Cain, Steve Perry

Jonathan Cain, band co-founder/guitarist Neal Schon, and former singer Steve Perry reveal considerable personal pathos during the Big Payday provided by  "Separate Ways", "Faithfully", and two more Journey hits which were inexplicably bumped off of "Frontiers", "Only the Young" and "Ask the Lonely".
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Alice Cooper- Billion Dollar Babies

In February 1973 when Alice Cooper's sixth album "Billion Dollar Babies" went  #1 sales, we all thought that Marshall McLuhan, Andy Warhol, and Alice Cooper were being hyperbolic with their predictions about video fame's impact on society. We laughed then, but as it turns out, the joke's on us...Alice Cooper is my fascinating guest on the 50th anniversary of “ Billion Dollar Babies”.
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Def Leppard- Pyromania- Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, Rick Savage

Def Leppard “Pyromania” interview with Joe Elliott, Rick Savage, Phil Collen In the Studio.
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Journey- Infinity- Gregg Rolie, Neal Schon, Steve Perry

With their 1978 fourth album,"Infinity", some rock writers even today  attempt to reduce the remarkable transformation by the San Francisco band Journey  as "talented veteran but commercially struggling group hires world-class singer, which anybody would recognize; shortens song arrangements; and instantly becomes the biggest band in America". "Wrong," says Journey lead guitarist/songwriter/co-founder Neal Schon ."Wrong!"
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Bryan Adams- Cuts Like a Knife

Bryan Adams interview to explore his breakthrough album "Cuts Like a Knife" from January 1983

Jeff Beck has Died After a Short Illness

"Mr. Beck could weaponize his strings to hit like a stun gun or caress them to express what felt like a kiss...". Clearly exceptional. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/arts/music/jeff-beck-dead.html?smid=url-share
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Aerosmith- Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton

This classic rock rock interview is such a treat because you hear Aerosmith founders Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, and Tom Hamilton In the Studio recalling days at Lake Sunapee NH fifty years ago before recording their 1973 debut.
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Phil Collins- Hello I Must Be Going

It happened to Elton John, Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, Sting, and most recently U2: US radio and music video outlets overplaying the hits by these most popular musicians, in the programmers' misguided attempts at gaining a bigger audience. But the unfortunate by-product is that these listeners/viewers burn out on the saturation repetition to the peril of the musicians, and the predictable backlash unfortunately is misdirected at the musicians, who had no control over how their songs were appropriated. No one on the planet knows this better now than my guest Phil Collins while sharing his second solo album,"Hello I Must Be Going.".
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Jackson Browne- Running On Empty

Jackson Browne In the Studio with Redbeard for the backstory to December 1977’s "Running on Empty", his biggest seller.