Ten things you probably didn’t know about classic rock

4 08 2008

From Fizzlechat.com…

1. The mighty final chord of The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” was played by ten hands in three pianos simultaneously: Lennon’s, Mc Cartney’s, Starr’s, Martin’s (their manager?) and Evan’s (their roadie).

2. In 1968 Jimi Hendrix bought a studio located in the 52 West Eight Street, Greewnwich Village, New York, with the idea of transforming it into a nightclub. His sound technician convinced him of turning it into a studio and in August 27th 1970 “Electric Ladyland” officially opened it’s doors. Both recording rooms haven’t changed a bit since Jimi jammed there (one still has the same paints hanging on the walls and sofas, and the other -Purple Haze- still has the purple console). When The Clash recorded “Sandinista!” there, they swear Jimi’s spirit added an extra guitar line in the album. That may sound weird (and stoned) but the truth is that doors close on their own, floors creak and a magic can be sensed in the air (or so they say).

3. Slash’s favorite song is “Nobody’s Fault” by Aerosmith. As he said, “first heard it at the house of a girl I wanted to date. I went to her house, talked for a while, smoked a joint, and then she put the CD (Rocks), it hit me like a ton of bricks…and I totally forgot about her”.

4. Black Sabbath’s guitarist, Tony Iommi, lost part of two fingers at age 17 in an accident. However, he managed to continue playing using a device which made his two stump fingers “longer”, and tuning the guitar three steps down in order to loosen the strings and bend them more easily. His first song with his new “style” was a damn good one: “Iron Man”.

5. Once, a treasured Les Paul Standard that originally belonged to Aerosmith’s Joe Perry came into Slash’s possession. Joe had had this guitar (his favorite) taken by his ex-wife or stolen (depending on which story you read), and a dealer eventually got hold of it and offered it to Slash. He snapped it up since it symbolized the influence Aerosmith had had on him. Joe pleaded with Slash to have it returned, but he didn’t – until Joe’s 50th birthday when he presented it as his birthday present.

6. During the recording of “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, the guys from Pink Floyd wrote on little papers questions like “Are you afraid of death?” and gave them to everybody that was working at Abbey Road studio at the time. This included all the roadies, sound technicians, the Irish doorman, and even Paul McCartney (who was recording a solo album at the same studio). The answers to the questions were recorded, and the best ones were put on the disc. However, Paul’s answers weren’t put on the disc because “he tried to be funny”.

7. At age 47, the Rolling Stones’ bassist, Bill Wyman, began a relationship with 13-year old Mandy Smith, with her mother’s blessing. Six years later, they were married, but the marriage only lasted a year. Not long after, Bill’s 30-year-old son Stephen married Mandy’s mother, age 46. That made Stephen a stepfather to his former stepmother. If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father’s father-in-law and his own grandpa.

8. Unlike pretty much every rock star, Frank Zappa didn’t like beer. He used to say his body “gets along better with pepper, tobacco and coffee”. This is kinda contradictory because Frank said “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.

9. Ummagumma (a Pink Floyd album) is a British slang term for sex.

10. There is an ongoing battle within the Classic Rock world between the influences and plain superiority of the Northern Vs. Southern States. This is first evident in Neil Young’s Southern Man criticizing southern slavery. This is responded to by Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama. This timeless battle again continues with Warren Zevon’s Play It All Night Long. Go ahead and have a listen to these. It really is quite interesting. The song “Alabama Getaway” by The Grateful Dead was also involved in the said North vs. South battle. (Thanks Adam for the tip!)





FBI Pays a Visit to the Leaker of New Guns N’ Roses Album ‘Chinese Democracy’

24 06 2008

From NME.com
June 24, 2008
Click here for the original article

Kevin Skwerl, the blogger who last week leaked nine tracks from forthcoming Guns N Roses album ‘Chinese Democracy’, was visited by two FBI agents yesterday (June 23) and questioned about the source of his files.

Skwerl last week posted nine songs from the album on his blog Antiquiet, but immediately erased the tracks after Axl Rose’s attorneys got in touch and requested the removal.

Skwerl, a former employee of Universal Music, was visited at his office by two FBI agents who questioned him for 15 minutes about the source of the files and scheduled a house call to Skwerl’s house this morning, asking to see the original files. Skwerl did not have the files.

After posting the files last week, the blog crashed from the sheer number of visitors to the site and Skwerl was contacted by “a really cool guy from the Gn’R camp that was a middle man between someone who was very angry and me. He was trying to reach out and see if I’d go without a fight, which is more or less what I did,” he told rollingstone.com.

Skwerl is not stressing about any possible legal action that may be taken saying:

“I’m not so worried about that. It’s a legal grey area since it wasn’t for download, it wasn’t a finished product. We aren’t sure who owns the recordings. I feel like I might survive this.”





New Guns N’ Roses album ‘Chinese Democracy’ leaked by an American blogger

22 06 2008

roses Nine ‘mastered, finished’ tracks from Chinese Democracy, the album that Axl Rose has been working on for the past 14 years, were posted on a little-known rock website, http://www.Antiquiet.com.

The infamous album is reported to have cost in excess of $13million (£6.5million) to produce but its release is said to have been held up by discussions between Rose and the band’s record label Geffen Records, over rights.

A poster calling themselves Skwerl made the nine songs available on Wednesday, without revealing their source, but the tracks were removed hours later.

The poster wrote: “I always said that the more that Axl and Geffen jerked around trying to figure out how to release this finally finished album that we’ve all been waiting over 13 years for, the greater the chances would be that it would slip out of a pressing plant or office somewhere and wind up in the hands of some asshole with a blog. So…”

Despite the hasty removal of the songs, reportedly after a call from the band’s lawyers, they soon spread throughout the internet, appearing on filesharing sites as well as YouTube.

Once released, the album will be the first original recording from Guns N’ Roses since the 1991 releases of Use Your Illusion.

It is rumoured that a Guns N’ Roses reality TV show is set to be broadcast to coincide with the official release of the album.

In reference to the lengthy wait for the album, the California pop-punk band The Offspring announced in 2003 that their next album would be entitled Chinese Democrazy (You Snooze, You Lose).