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Fall 2019 when I made what felt like a pilgrimage to a suburban Dallas movie theater with very dear friends to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s film of making their album, “Colorado” , I could not resist the comparisons to “Ragged Glory” three decades earlier. Neil Young joins me In the Studio.
Selecting the fifty songs over the twenty-one studio offerings for the “50 for 50” massive undertaking proved a challenge for Ian Anderson to curate, not simply for fan expectations. If there ever was a lyrical wordsmith who learned his songwriting trade in the widescreen cinematic tradition of the album format, and who is ill-suited for the one-song You Tube world he found himself in fifty years hence, it would be Ian Anderson.
Widely viewed along with Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and Gram Parsons as fathers of the Americana musical movement, The Band also may have been one of rock’s first alternative groups. In part one of this classic rock interview, main songwriter Robbie Robertson (“The Weight”,”The Night They Drove Ol’Dixie Down”,”Up on Cripple Creek”,”The Shape I’m In”) helps me make that case on the 55th anniversary of “Stage Fright”.
Queensryche co-founder/ composer/guitarist Chris DeGarmo and former singer/ songwriter Geoff Tate may be gone now ( the former pilots corporate jets, the latter heads the band Operation Mindcrime ), but they tell the story of the blockbuster four million-seller “Empire” and the amazing songs “Best I Can”, “Jet City Woman”,”Della Brown”,” Resistance”,”Hand on Heart”, even a live performance from London’s Hammersmith Odeon just weeks after “Empire” ’s 1990 release.
The World Premiere radio interview special in July 1980 for the Lynyrd Skynyrd survivors’ highly-anticipated ( and highly emotional ) return as the Rossington Collins Band on “Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere”.
Rock Hall Snubs: Ozzy Osbourne
Ten years prior to the release of “No More Tears” in September 1991, Ozzy Osbourne couldn’t get arrested outside England. Particularly in America, the former singer for heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath was perceived by US record label execs as damaged goods…Then for the whole of the Eighties, Ozzy was constantly in the press, but rarely was it for his music. Ozzy admits here In the Studio that “No More Tears” was the first album he ever recorded sober, and the results were spectacular.
In the Studio with Joe Walsh for The James Gang “Rides Again” on the album’s 55th anniversary.
Notably, like AC/DC “Back in Black” in Summer 1980, several of the best-selling hard rock albums in history also have been made under the most dire of circumstances amidst tremendous tragedy and loss. Angus Young, Brian Johnson, & the late Malcolm Young are all interviewed here In the Studio.
Proving to the whole world that day to be anything other than “Helpless”, Neil Young and a cast of a hundred thousand in Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium joined a similar group in London’s Wembley Stadium via satellite, and an estimated 1.4 billion viewing and listening worldwide, to raise money and awareness for starving residents of Ethiopia, Sudan, and sub-Saharan Africa on July 13, 1985 for Live Aid 35th anniversary.