Chuck D is prepping for a busy summer. Following a Public Enemy performance in Napa Valley and another at Boston Calling at the end of May, Chuck, Flavor Flav, and crew head overseas for a handful of shows in June before joining Guns N’ Roses on their Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things tour. It’s a grueling schedule, with dates peppered all across Europe. They’ll eventually return to the States toward the end of July, landing in Athens, Georgia, on July 22.
For Chuck, this is nothing new. As Public Enemy’s frontman, he’s been trotting around the globe since the 1980s, bringing the group’s politically-charged anthems and militant style of the S1Ws to audiences in every corner of the world. Now 64, Chuck is one of hip-hop’s few sexagenarians still rocking the mic, a topic he addresses on his new compilation project, Radio Armageddon. While the 14-track effort bridges the generational gap—contributions include gangsta rap innovator Schoolly D and Stetsasonic’s Daddy-O alongside up-and-comers like Miranda Writes—Chuck is laser-focused on the lack of respect given to our hip-hop pioneers.
“The ism of ageism is up there with sexism and racism,” Chuck D tells SPIN by phone. “Ageism is derailing elders.”
Chuck D and Flava Flav at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony on October 19, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Credit: Sara Jaye/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
Unlike rock ’n roll, where artists like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger are touring into their 80s, hip-hop is still a relatively youth-focused genre, so there aren’t as many older artists blazing the trail. Ice-T, Chuck, Flavor Flav, Kurtis Blow, DJ Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flash are among the hip-hop legends in their 60s, and they often have to fight for their rightful place.
“Daddy-O, to me, did the best album of 2024 and nobody covered it,” he points out. “There’s no classification for classic hip-hop. The curation of classic hip-hop has to be at least half of what classic rock has done. I’m traveling with a classic rock act this year in stadiums. Now, classic rock is made up of so many groups out of the ’90s. Green Day is a classic rock group, and they do whatever they want.
“I was with a rock group that was damn near a cover band [Prophets of Rage] that did great tours around the world, although we had original music and played Rage Against the Machine songs, Public Enemy songs, and Cypress Hill songs. When are we going to start seeing hip-hop cover bands? I think we’re right around the corner. It’s about the songs. The songs are the gods. And then the best way to turn on new generations to old songs is performers that have the passion to connect.”
Chuck D and Flavor Flav perform onstage during Jelly Roll & Friends: A Concert for All First Responders at Rose Bowl Stadium on February 1, 2025 in Pasadena, California. (Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Jelly Roll)
Despite the uphill climb, Chuck is still testing the boundaries of his musical (and lyrical) craft, as evident on Radio Armageddon. From the chaotic, Bomb Squad-flavored lead single, “New Gens” featuring Daddy-O, to the frenzied feeling of “Rogue Runnin” with Phill Most Chill, some people aren’t going to “get it,” and Chuck is at peace with that.
“It’s me doing a new style of being a master of ceremonies,” he says of the project. “You have the hip-hop god Daddy-O on ‘New Gens,’ and he’s more conventional, straight up with the rhyme on the beat. My thing was coming unorthodox from left field, and it’s not meant to be liked. Sometimes we could go on a tangent. I don’t give a fuck about likes, and I don’t give a fuck about approvals on art because I come from an art background. However, when I’m presenting an MC, it’s different. I think MCs like 1/2 Pint and Miranda Writes on ‘Is God She?’ are doing a phenomenal job and should get the look.”
As far as the production, Chuck has entrusted David “C-Doc” Snyder, who he describes as the “Brian Eno of hip-hop,” to weave supercharged sonic threads into his own slightly tattered tapestry of sound. Rough around the edges at times yet interesting enough to warrant a head nod or two, Radio Armageddon primarily relies on Chuck’s authoritative voice to command attention. Nearly 40 years after releasing Public Enemy’s rallying cry, “Fight the Power,” he continues to spotlight important issues.
“Make racists afraid again,” he raps on “Here We Are Heard.” “They wanna build a wall between us and Mexicans/Still on the outside lookin’ in/Based on the skin I’m in,” a somber reminder that the United States hasn’t made much progress in that department.
As Chuck said, not everybody is going to “like” Radio Armageddon, but for those who want an experience that equates to “listening to a radio station dipped in acid with Wu-Tang Clan fighting at the door, trying to get in”—as Chuck puts it—let the record play.
“It’s very hard to introduce a sonic audio revolution in 2025, when everybody’s addicted to their screens,” he says. “People don’t listen with their ears first anymore, they listen with their eyes, but C-Doc has invented the sudden turn production, and he’s learned from the blueprint of the Bomb Squad but has turned it into this drive into a ditch-type style that I don’t think is precedented. He’s running with the words and dancing with the beats.”
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During the 1960s, Bob Dylan was many things to many people: a folk music icon, a civil rights activist, and a singing revolutionary. He released a dizzying array of landmark albums, such as The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, making him one of the decade’s most innovative artists. But he was also one of the most controversial. He was famously called a “Judas” for abandoning folk music—a genre he helped reinvigorate—to go electric. He relished in his exploding celebrity status in the mid-’60s, only to reject it by the end of the decade. During interviews, Dylan told conflicting stories about his background and his music, not allowing anyone to truly know him. More than 50 years later, the legendary singer-songwriter is considered one of the most influential—and mysterious—cultural icons the world has ever seen.
Now, a new biography explores this fascinating period in Dylan’s fabled music career.
Decade Of Dissent: How 1960s Bob Dylan Changed The World by author and journalist Sean Egan draws on exclusive original interviews and never-before-published insights about the first 10 years of Dylan’s music career, spanning his rise as a music icon to his self-inflicted descension as a background character in the cultural zeitgeist of the 1970s.
“I think you’ll get something from this book, regardless of whether you are new to Dylan or whether you know a lot about him,” says Egan. “I hope it gives an insight into why he was so culturally important in the 1960s…he brought a political consciousness and poetry to popular music. And when you think about it, that changed the world…”
From why Dylan changed his name to his 1966 motorcycle accident to the release of his 1970 album, Self Portrait, Decade Of Dissent explores in detail the decade that solidified the artist as one of the greatest musicians of all time.
SPIN: So many books have been written about Bob Dylan. How is your book different from other Dylan biographies?
Sean Egan: Part of it was a prosaic reason, namely, about 15 years ago, I did quite a long article on the making of Highway 61 Revisited through a U.K. magazine. And I interviewed most of the musicians who played on it, plus Daniel Kramer, who took the cover photograph. He also took the cover photograph of Bringing It All Back Home. As with all magazine features, you have a hell of a lot of material left over, which you can’t include, just for reasons of space. And so it was always in the back of my mind that one day that might make the basis of an interesting book.
In terms of a book that focuses on Dylan’s career in the 1960s, that is really the crucial part of it, which is not to say he hasn’t made great albums since, but every album that he made in the ’60s seemed to be revolutionary, maybe apart from his debut album. As both an artist and a sociopolitical force, which is what he essentially became, that was by far the most interesting part of Dylan’s life and career.
I imagine if you’re going to pick any period in Dylan’s career, the ’60s would be it.
Oh, yeah. Everything he recorded in that decade is interesting, if not necessarily great. He starts the decade in 1962 in a fairly mediocre way with his debut album, which is mostly cover versions. So that’s not much interest to us at this end of history, because, of course, what is interesting to us about Dylan is his own songs. And he ends it in a curious way with Nashville Skyline, which is a very slick album, but to a great extent, an empty album, which has got none of the things that we came to love Dylan for, i.e., poetic and meaningful words and a refusal to fall into line with song convention. But in between those two albums, those two bookends, if you like, he just makes a string of revolutionary albums, full of great songs and lyrics that elevate popular songs and new plateaus of poetry. And he also puts in many great performances, as both a vocalist and on harmonica, both of which he is extremely underrated for.
Bob Dylan in 1966. (Credit: Charlie Steiner – Highway 67/Getty Images)
What was the most difficult aspect of writing this book?
I think it was simply having to sift through Dylan’s contradictory stances and opinions and recollections. In the end, very often, you simply have to either discount one contrasting point of view and say, “Well, common sense dictates that this is the real truth,” or you have to represent both points of view and leave it to the readers to make up their own minds. Dylan, I think at bottom, is an admirable person, and he’s done more good than harm in this world. But yeah, it is extremely annoying that you can’t get a definitive version of events from Dylan himself, and you have to rely on outside sources and your own intuition.
Why do you think he was insistent on creating falsehoods about his background, essentially creating, not just a stage name, but multiple personas?
There’s sort of prosaic and mundane reasons, as well as more profound reasons.
Zimmerman, which is his real name, is a Jewish name. And quite frankly, in those days, if you wanted to get on in life, especially in the entertainment business, it was considered to be necessary to downplay any ethnicity, anything that wasn’t sort of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. So, that may be the reason for him changing his name. As for Dylan itself, he’s given conflicting reasons for the choice of that name. Sometimes he says it came from Dylan Thomas. Sometimes he says it didn’t. I guess we’ll never know. But it all seems to be tied up with this discomfort about where he came from and about his uneasy relationship with his father. He just didn’t want people to know that he came from where he did. And of course, it’s much more glamorous—and this applies to everybody, not just Bob Dylan—to pretend that you came from an underprivileged background than to say “Yeah, I wanted for nothing when I was a kid.”
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan perform during a civil rights rally in 1963 in Washington D.C. (Credit: Rowland Scherman/National Archive/Newsmakers)
In the first chapter of your book, you write about Dylan’s family background and how it influenced songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Can you talk about the impact it had on him as an artist?
Dylan doesn’t come from poverty. He never wanted for anything when he was a kid, financially. Culturally and emotionally, that’s a very different kettle of fish. He comes from up on the border of Canada in Hibbing, Minnesota, which was quite a barren place culturally, and quite a very cold place as well. He once said, “Well, I didn’t rebel when I was a kid, because it was too cold to rebel.” In terms of his family background, I guess we’ll never know fully because he’s quite circumspect about it. But there seems to have been a profound problem in his upbringing. I think he got on well with his mother and with one of his grandmothers, but with his father, it was a much more complicated situation, partly because his dad was a businessman, and like a lot of businessmen do, he employed his kids in his workplace so they could earn a bit of money. And one of Dylan’s jobs assisting his father, who owned a furniture store at one point, was to repossess furniture from people who had fallen behind in payments because they’d become unemployed. And Dylan detested that job, absolutely detested it. His girlfriend at the time said it was just the thing that he dreaded most in life, and that seems to be one of the things that gave him an early sympathy for the underdog and the underprivileged. Eventually, that manifests itself in his protest songs.
It seems like he’s got to have a large amount of empathy to write such powerful anthems.
Dylan has always been happy to embrace material privilege for himself. He was driving cars and riding motorbikes when he was still a teenager. And of course, he’s been happy to be the recipient of royalty checks, which started very early on because “Blowin’ in the Wind” was covered by everybody and his uncle in the early days. But he can also see the inequities of the capitalist system. Not that he’s ever embraced socialism. He is much too intellectually acute to embrace easy answers. And so you get that line in, “It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)” where he says, “Darkness at the break of noon / shadows even the silver spoon.” If we can assume “darkness at the break of noon” is a reference to Arthur Koestler’s anti-communist [novel] Darkness at Noon, silver spoon is a metaphor for capitalism; he’s basically saying that one system is just as bad as the other.
Newport Folk Festival, 1964. (Credit: Gai Terrell/Redferns)
The Basement Tapes were an indirect result of Bob Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle crash. Some people say that his long recovery period was an excuse for Dylan to take time away from the public. Do you agree?
He wanted to get away from the pressures, and there were unbelievable pressures in his career. He’d released three albums in the space of 13 or 14 months; one of them a double album. And not just any albums, but some of the greatest music ever made to this very day. He’d been on world tours, backed by an electric band, booed to the rafters at every concert. People were actually paying so that they could boo him because it was considered to be selling out if you moved from folk to pop or rock. And the toll that took both physically and psychologically, I mean, none of us can really imagine it. And he just released Blonde on Blonde in June ’66. And he was due to go out on another world tour. I don’t know whether Dylan would’ve survived that tour because he was keeping himself going—or his manager, Albert Grossman, was keeping him going, shall we say—by artificial means, which was another thing that must have been playing havoc with his constitution. He had a motorbike accident on July 29. And there’s no doubt that was an accident. But he aggrandized it into something bigger in order to be able to say to Grossman and to the people that he was contracted to do work for, “I can’t do this.” His brain works very fast, and he realized that he could turn this to his advantage and simply get off that treadmill, which was in danger of killing him.
And The Basement Tapes, of course, are the consequence of that. While he was recuperating, Grossman said to him, “Well, can you at least write some songs so that we can get some cover versions?” Because at that point in history, everybody wanted to record a Bob Dylan song. He didn’t have many hits of his own. But other people, when they covered his songs, tended to have hits. He started writing some songs, and they were very odd songs; nothing like what he’d written before. They were quirky. They were humorous. They were quite penitent. He wasn’t this scathing East Coast hipster anymore. He was a sort of ruralized person who was contemplating what he’d done and what he’d done to other people, and what other people had done to him, such as Grossman. And this all manifests itself in some of the strangest, but also most wonderful songs that you’ve ever heard. We now refer to them as The Basement Tapes, but they were, at the time, a 12-song acetate that was circulating amongst the rock aristocracy.
By the 1970s, Dylan was no longer part of the cultural zeitgeist, no longer innovating the music scene. What do you think contributed to this?
Part of it was voluntary. He no longer wanted to be considered the leader of the counterculture or the world’s youth or whatever people considered him to be. He was being hounded by these people. One of the reasons he played the Isle of Wight Festival in Britain in 1969 is that the Woodstock festival was located there in Woodstock. Eventually, it moved to Bethel, 90 miles away, but it was going to take place in Woodstock because Dylan lived there. And it was the most ridiculous maneuver to try to coax him out of his…not quite retirement…but he kept a low profile at the time and wasn’t touring at all. So he was basically sick and tired of people trying to put him on a pedestal, although he sort of willingly occupied it back in the protest days. Then we have this culminating in Self Portrait in 1970, which was a deliberately terrible double album, which was almost designed to get these people off his back.
Do you think there is anyone who really knows Bob Dylan, the man?
I suppose it would be one of his wives rather than anybody else. But he does seem to be a very complicated, convoluted person, as demonstrated by the fact that he’ll give totally different versions of events. For instance, I mentioned Self Portrait. He’s given quotes about that album where he says, “Yes, it was a deliberately terrible album to make people leave me alone.” And then I’ve seen him give other quotes where he quite impassionately said it was a great album, and people didn’t listen to it properly, and that’s why they don’t understand it. That’s a very odd mentality, a very odd psyche that he has; almost schizophrenic. We, the general public, might think we know who Bob Dylan is, but you’d have to be one of his intimates to really understand who he is. I don’t think he even knows himself sometimes.
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With this statement, John Flansburgh—one of the two Johns of They Might Be Giants, along with John Lindell—was correct: there were an expletive-worthy amount of kids at their show on Saturday, May 17 at Los Angeles’ historic Orpheum Theatre. I don’t remember it being like this back when I last saw the band live in the ‘90s and early 2000s, but it makes sense. TMBG’s had a few children’s albums throughout their career, and I have fond middle school memories of their songs on Tiny Toons. More than that though, They Might Be Giants’ brand of funny, eccentric music is a budding music fan’s perfect gateway to the worlds of college and alternative rock.
At least, this is how it has been for my 9-year-old twins. My daughter Chloe’s supercool third grade teacher has introduced the class to several TMBG songs like “Don’t Let’s Start,” “Mammal,” and Chloe’s favorite “Doctor Worm.” She shared these with her brother Clark, who then himself got really into “Birdhouse in Your Soul” and “Particle Man.” Together, they added TMBG to our home’s regular rotation, especially Flood and Apollo 18. I was excited, but tried not to overdo it, for fear of scaring them off. So I sat back with pride as they got the humor, appreciated the eclectic styles, and even talked about how some songs sound fun but are actually sad or serious (thank you, “Dead” and “Your Racist Friend”). As an old TMBG fan and general music geek, it was the moment I was waiting for: when fan and parenting overlap.
(Credit: Sam Graff)
So when I saw the band was playing L.A. on a non-school night at a reasonable hour, I had to go for it. A chance to take the kids to their first official rock show (no offense to their prior concerts, Kids Bop and a Billy Joel cover band). Chloe and Clark loved the idea and even suggested sharing their reviews of the show with me to write up for SPIN (thankfully, my editor liked this pitch too). This was going to be a grand night out, and again, I was clearly not the only fan/parent thinking this way. Chloe, Clark, and I were so excited for this right of passage.
Until two minutes before the show started, when Clark said he needed to go to the bathroom.
Not ideal timing, but we ran down and back, returning during the opening number, the driving, full-band showcase “Subliminal.” It was an unexpected choice, for what turned out to be an unexpected evening. Back at our seats, Chloe is giddy and bopping along, but Clark…is off.
This current tour, “The Big Show,” has a standard format: two sets, each night. The first set focuses on tracks from one of their 18-plus albums, while the second set is a mix of hits, rarities, and songs that lend themselves to the tour’s horn section. For our show, set one was going to be the band’s 1994 album, John Henry, and set two “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis,” joked John Flansburgh. John Linnell corrected his partner, but later joked they’d focus on a classic album for the second set, “Maybe… [Guns N’ Roses’] The Spaghetti Incident?” These kinds of music-geek jokes killed with the adults in the audience, and led to some teachable moments for the children
Per that first set, John Henry is a fan favorite. It was the first time the two Johns recorded with a full band. When I first heard John Henry in high school, it also stood out as decidedly harder and darker than previous albums, sharpening their quirks into edges. Those edges were intact at the concert, but the songs also felt electric and fresh. The grooving bass of “Snail Shell” had the audience up and moving, and became a new favorite song of both my kids. 90’s-style rocker “Out of Jail” is a relative rarity live, but felt so thunderous and alive it should become a standard. About halfway through set #1, the Johns and their regular band were joined by a three-piece horn section, to bring even more energy and life to the show, in particular turning the expressionist anthem “Meet James Ensor” into a celebratory crowd-pleaser.
(Credit: Brendan Hay)
As hoped, the band infused their unique style into every aspect of the concert. Each song had its own enchanting lighting cues and video installations. The Johns filled the space between every song with witty banter that made adults AND kids laugh. And the audience’s energy was perfectly in sync with the band’s, ebbing and flowing in just the right way to fill the theater with an expansive wall of fun. It’s exactly what I wanted for Chloe and Clark’s first concert.
Chloe loved (and danced to) all of the above, but her favorite moment: John Flansburgh conducting the band and then later the audience for a hilariously epic ending to “Spy.”
“It made me feel like I was part of the band,” Chloe told me later. Other Chloe highlights: swaying her hands to “Dirt Bike,” and the videos that accompanied each song, “Except the one of somebody’s mouth. That was creepy.” For a band that’s been at this for four decades now, TMBG showed that they are still bringing it like this is their first tour. Only now, they carry themselves with a comfortable confidence of knowing how to keep every night on the road fun for both themselves and their fans. It was as positive a vibe as you can ask for for your kids first show…
Which is why it was terrible when halfway through, Clark had to go to the bathroom again. His stomach was hurting now. “Shit,” I thought, hoping he’d be fine after another bathroom break. But he wasn’t. We saw the rest of the John Henry songs, but during the set’s final track, the “The End of the Tour,” Clark rushed out of his seat. Chloe and I followed, getting to him just as he threw up in the aisle. We got him to the bathroom where he threw up again, this time thankfully in a toilet. I felt terrible, for both kids. Clark is inexplicably sick and Chloe is explicitly furious.
(Credit: Brendan Hay)
My dream of fan and parenting overlap had become a nightmare. I was frustrated at the situation and trying to figure out the next best step. But, to be clear, I was not mad at Clark. He didn’t mean to get sick and, hey, I’ve vomited at shows before (granted, it was my 20s). If my wife had been in town, she could’ve picked up Clark to allow Chloe and I to stay…but she was away for work. Fan Me suggested that I let Clark rest for the intermission between sets…then go back into the theater for set two. Fortunately, Parent Me knows Fan Me can be a selfish jerk. So Parent Me took over and brought both my tired, sick kid and angry, disappointed kid home.
Once we get home and they’re both asleep, I immediately can feel Parent Me and Fan Me’s judgments. Parent Me is all: “You shouldn’t have brought them.” Fan Me can’t believe I left the show early. Parent Me feels for Clark. Fan Me for Chloe. I give up and accept that this is life when you’re a fan and a parent. You want to share what you love with your kids, especially when an unforced opportunity for bonding presents itself. But life will intervene. It always does with kids. And that kind of message, plus the funny-sad dichotomy of having our big show cancelled by vomit is, well, the spirit of many a They Might Be Giants song.
Clark and Chloe outside of the Orpheum Theatre. (Credit: Brendan Hay)
So I can’t fully deliver what the kids and I pitched, two generations of TMBG fans reviewing the concert. Chloe and Clark did still want to offer their rapid-fire reviews of the first set, though:
On the venue: “Really nice! It looked like a giant mansion” — Clark
Audience: “The people who sat in our aisle and had to keep standing to let us go to the bathroom were very nice” — Clark
“Also, everyone was loud, obviously.” — Chloe
Visuals & Lighting: “From the stuff I got to see, the lighting was really cool.” — Clark
“There were some white lights flying all over the place that were like ‘Whoa.’ They did a good job.” — Chloe
Personal Experience: “Really fun. Loud and a bit overwhelming, though.” — Chloe
“I really liked the songs. I wish I did not get sick.” — Clark
Favorite song: “Snail Shell.” — Chloe and Clark
The band’s performance: “I liked how they joked a lot.” — Clark
Anything You Would Change: “I wouldn’t get sick.” — Clark
“And maybe not that mouth video.” — Chloe
Any message to the band: “I really liked the concert.” — Chloe
“I really liked the album you played. I never heard it before, but now I want to listen to it again.” — Clark
Should parents take their kids to They Might Be Giants concerts?: “YES.” — Chloe and Clark
The next day, missing the second set became an extra bummer when we learned it included all of Chloe and Clark’s favorite songs, closing with what a friend who was there told me was a fantastic version of “Dr. Worm.” But also, Clark was feeling better so we put on John Henry. Successful first show or not, the band will still be a place for us to connect.
And hey, at least now my kids have a memorable answer for “What was your first concert?” Maybe that’s the most important thing for a music fan parent to pass down.
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Pearl Jam wrapped their 2024-25 Dark Matter tour in fiery fashion last night (May 18) in Pittsburgh, blasting Donald Trump’s recent insult-filled response to Bruce Springsteen’s onstage remarks about the state of the union while also elegantly saluting late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell on the eighth anniversary of his suicide.
Fans had a sense the night would touch on Cornell’s memory before the show even began, when “All Night Thing” — from the self-titled 1990 album he made with Pearl Jam’s members under the moniker Temple of the Dog — played over the loudspeakers as part of the pre-show music.
Later, Vedder tacked some lyrics from the 2020 Pearl Jam song “Comes Then Goes” onto the end of “Wishlist,” marking the first time elements of it had ever been performed live. Although it has never been explicitly confirmed, “Comes Then Goes” is widely believed to have been written about Cornell, who took the young and inexperienced Vedder under his wing when he moved to Seattle to join Pearl Jam in 1990.
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and drummer Matt Cameron both sported t-shirts in honor of Cornell — the former urging Soundgarden’s entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the band will be inducted this fall after years on the ballot) and the latter showcasing an arty portrait of his former bandmate.
But the biggest surprise of the evening came with an encore performance of the Temple of the Dog classic Cornell/Vedder duet “Hunger Strike,” which Pearl Jam had only busted out four prior times in the past 11 years. See fan-shot video of that track below.
Throughout the show, Vedder paid tribute to Pittsburgh’s devoted fans and underdog spirit, even bringing a young fan with Down syndrome on stage to introduce “Even Flow” and dedicating “Deep” to Pittsburgh Steelers football legend Franco Harris. Before an encore run through Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” he began speaking about the 35-year back-and-forth between the band and their fans, and how it relates to the tumultuous times in which we’re living.
“I was thinking about a microphone and a guitar and a relationship with an audience and trust and reciprocal respect that is built over the years and the decades, and that we all get to be better for,” he said. “And then the people that we know because of the music. The family and the friends. I just want to say how important it is and how we’ve never lost sight or forgotten for one second the privilege that it is to stand on a stage in front of an audience.”
He continued, “when I hear Bruce Springsteen brings up issues and makes his thoughts be known, and uses his microphone to speak for those who don’t have a voice sometimes — certainly not an amplified one — I just want to point out that he brought up issues. He brought up that residents are being removed off America’s streets and being deported without due process of law. That’s happening. He brought up that we’re abandoning our longtime allies around the globe and signing on with dictators. That is also happening. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideologies, as Bruce said.
“Now, look. I appreciate you listening and I bring it up because the response [by Donald Trump] to all that, and him using the microphone, the response had nothing to do with the issues,” Vedder went on. “They didn’t talk about one of those issues. Didn’t have a conversation about one of those issues. Didn’t debate any one of those issues. All that we’ve heard were personal attacks and threats that nobody else should even try to use their microphone or use their voice in public, or they will be shut down. Now, that is not allowed in this country that we call America, am I right or am I wrong? Part of free speech is open discussion. Part of democracy is healthy public discourse. The name-calling is so beneath us. Bruce has always been as pro-American with his values of freedom and liberty and his justice has always remained intact. This freedom to speak will still exist in another year or two from now when we come back to this microphone. And what better place to have a positive response than the forkin’ fuckin’ people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”
The nearly two hour-and-45-minute show even included an 80th birthday tribute to the Who’s Pete Townshend, with Vedder folding one lyric each from “I’m One” and “Love, Reign o’er Me” into “Better Man.”
Pearl Jam’s schedule is now completely clear, although Vedder is gearing up for the June 7 premiere of the documentary Matter of Time at the Tribeca Film Festival and will also perform at the event.
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Keith Moon, drummer for the Who, sprawled across his bed atop a polar bear hide. (Credit: Shepard Sherbell/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
The Who were not the first nor the biggest of the British Invasion bands that captured the imaginations of music lovers on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-’60s. But they were the loudest of them all, and thanks to guitarist and principal songwriter Pete Townshend, the most conceptually ambitious one as well.
With frontman Roger Daltrey belting out Townshend’s imaginative and emotionally vulnerable lyrics over the thunderous rhythm section of drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle, the Who presented their fans with both substance and spectacle. On the road, the band would smash their instruments at the end of concerts and leave a string of demolished hotel rooms in their wake. In the studio, Townshend would create narratively sophisticated “rock operas” and experiment with fascinating synthesizer sounds to add texture to the band’s garage rock attack.
The Who perform in London in 1976. (Credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
Townshend and Daltrey have carried on with the Who after Moon’s death in 1978 and Entwistle’s in 2002, releasing the band’s 12th album, WHO, in 2019. They recently announced The Song is Over North American Farewell Tour, which will commence in August and September. It’s not the first time the Who have said goodbye—their first farewell tour was in 1982—but it’s increasingly likely, given Townshend and Daltrey’s age, that it really will be the last chance for American fans to see the band live.
Townshend, who famously wrote the words “I hope I die before I get old,” turned 80 on May 19, and the fact that he’s lived a long and productive life despite that lyric has been to the great benefit of rock and roll as an artform. Is the band’s best album the trailblazing rock opera Tommy, the pop art prank The Who Sells Out, or the arena rock workhorse Who’s Next?
13. Face Dances (1981)
The Who never released LPs as steadily as their peers—by the end of the ’70s they had just eight studio albums, while the Stones had 14 and the Kinks had 18. So it’s perplexing that Townshend decided to sign a solo contract in the early-’80s while also keeping the Who going after Moon’s death, cranking out two solo albums and two Who albums in the space of two and a half years. Quality was going to suffer when the songwriter spread himself that thin, and the album that really got the short shrift was Face Dances, which both critics and Daltrey compared unfavorably to Townshend’s 1980 album Empty Glass. Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones gives a solid effort in the impossible situation of taking Keith Moon’s place in the band, and Entwistle knew better than Townshend how to get the best out of Jones on “The Quiet One.” The defiant closing track “Another Tricky Day” outshines just about everything that preceded it, including the pleasantly banal lead single “You Better You Bet.”
12. It’s Hard (1982)
The thumping, ominous “Eminence Front” is by far the Who’s best and most enduring post-’70s track, nothing else even comes close. The rest of It’s Hard, however, is only a slight improvement on Face Dances. Jones in particular steps up, playing splashier and more creative fills on “It’s Your Turn” and the title track. “The generally broader, more politically minded lyrics of It’s Hard seem as straightforward as the evening news. Beyond that, however, Townshend’s renewed ties to the Who symbolize his rapprochement with the world after a period of exile in the wasteland,” wrote Parke Puterbaugh in the Rolling Stone review of the album.
11. WHO (2019)
“I don’t care, I know you’re gonna hate this song,” Daltrey snarls at the beginning of the Who’s most recent and likely final studio album. Townshend and Daltrey have nothing left to prove, but they still sound fiery and cantankerous on WHO. They’re backed by a variety of rhythm section players, including staples of the Who’s live lineup for the past two decades, Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey, and veteran bassist Pino Palladino, who plays with enough muscle and attitude to evoke Entwistle on “Detour.” WHO is a family affair for Townshend—his wife Rachel Fuller’s orchestral arrangement on “Hero Ground Zero” makes the song come alive, and his younger brother Simon Townshend wrote the stomp-clap acoustic song “Break the News.”
10. A Quick One (1966)
A Quick One is one of those experiments in creative democracy, like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Mardi Gras or Weezer’s Red Album, that mostly just proves why the band’s usual primary songwriter was its rightful creative leader. Daltrey and Moon’s rare excursions in songwriting are decent but unmemorable attempts to mimic Townshend’s sensibility, while Entwistle succeeds by playing a completely different game with the horror novelty song “Boris the Spider.” Townshend’s 9-minute mini-opera, the brilliant and uproarious “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” is a thrilling trial run for his future album-length narratives, and it towers over the rest of A Quick One. But even that song, more than almost any other Who track, was far better live, with superior versions on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus and expanded reissues of Live at Leeds. If the Who were releasing two or three albums a year like other British invasion bands, A Quick One’s shortcomings would be understandable, but it’s a disappointing weak link in the Who’s quartet of ’60s albums.
9. Who Are You (1978)
The futuristic sound the Who made in the early ’70s still felt current enough at the end of the decade that the band quite successfully returned to the aesthetic of Who’s Next on Keith Moon’s swan song. The results are electrifying on Who Are You’s closing title track, one of the band’s signature symphonies of guitar bombast and exploratory synths. But the lead up to that climax is sometimes tedious as Townshend self-consciously wrestles with the band’s place in a shifting musical landscape on “New Song,” “Sister Disco,” and “Music Must Change.”
8. Endless Wire (2006)
The Who became an oldies act after they reunited in 1989, touring many times but almost never entering the studio, with Townshend pouring his creative energies into solo work and side projects. Perhaps it was Entwistle’s unexpected death in 2002 that spurred Townshend to put together the first Who album in 24 years, a poignant affirmation of his personal and creative brotherhood with Daltrey. The best track on Endless Wire, “Mike Post Theme,” is a surprising and amusing celebration of the composer of countless great TV theme songs, from Law & Order to The Rockford Files. “A handful of cuts form Townshend’s latest mini-opera, with the highlight ‘It’s Not Enough,’ a self-contained gem that proves the guitarist hasn’t lost his knack for pop precision,” wrote Mikael Wood in the SPIN review of Endless Wire.
7. Odds & Sods (1974)
In the ’60s, the Who’s labels occasionally cobbled together stopgap collections like Magic Bus: The Who on Tour and Direct Hits that mixed non-LP singles with recycled album tracks. But with Odds & Sods, the Who created arguably the first rarities compilation by a major band that plays well from front to back like a proper album. Entwistle was given the task of assembling a record to combat bootlegs of the Who’s unreleased songs, which is why an Entwistle song, “Postcard,” got to open an album and appear on the A-side of a single for once. But Entwistle also arranged great Townshend songs like “Pure and Easy” and “Naked Eye” into a satisfying sequence, with “I’m the Face,” the 1964 debut single the band released under the name the High Numbers, providing a key piece of the Who’s early history.
6. The Who by Numbers (1975)
After years of writing songs around big, concept-heavy narratives, Townshend scaled things down and wrote some of his most intimately personal songs for The Who By Numbers. It’s Daltrey’s favorite Who album, perhaps because it’s where he most fully becomes Townshend’s second voice, amplifying and dramatizing the guitarist’s anxieties and insecurities on songs like “In a Hand or a Face” and “However Much I Booze.” The album’s only hit is its shortest and flimsiest song, “Squeeze Box,” which may be why The Who By Numbers is the band’s most underestimated masterpiece today.
5. Tommy (1969)
After he got a taste for using the Who’s songs as storytelling vehicles with 1966’s “A Quick One, While He’s Away” and 1967’s “Rael (1 and 2),” Townshend’s ambitions blossomed into the band’s fourth album. Tommy almost single-handedly introduced the idea of a “rock opera” to pop culture, and is now a franchise unto itself, adapted into a 1975 film and several stage productions on and off Broadway. Townshend’s devotion to the operatic form, and the story of Tommy the deaf and blind pinball prodigy, means that Tommy keeps revisiting the same musical and lyrical motifs over and over, making it a bit repetitive and single-minded as an album. Like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Tommy is a landmark work that expanded everyone’s understanding of what a rock album could be, but that doesn’t mean it’s the band’s best record. Still, the power and emotion that the Who puts into songs like “Pinball Wizard” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” makes it easy to understand why Tommy was a phenomenon that finally brought the band the level of commercial success they deserved.
4. Quadrophenia (1973)
The protagonist of Quadrophenia is Jimmy, a mod in the mid-’60s that Townshend based on several early fans of the Who, but the band is firmly in their ’70s arena rock mode for bombastic songs like “The Real Me” and “Love, Reign O’er Me.” With more sophisticated production, Quadrophenia is the Who’s most cinematic rock opera, with songs fitting together elegantly into a narrative arc with fewer of the meandering instrumental interludes that tied Tommy together. “The music is cluttered with horns and unnecessarily shrill, so that—despite its considerable melodic (and motivic, as they say) pizzazz—you don’t play it for fun. But if Townshend’s great virtue is compassion, this is his triumph,” Robert Christgau wrote in the Village Voice review of Quadrophenia.
3. My Generation (1965)
My Generation is the greatest debut album of the British Invasion, its title track a singular achievement that captures the spirit of rock ’n roll in three minutes as perfectly as any song in history. Nobody else was playing drums like Moon or bass like Entwistle in 1965, and the band’s “maximum R&B” cranked up the volume on two James Brown covers and one Bo Diddley tune along with nine originals that established Townshend as a giant among rock songwriters. Punk rock and heavy metal might have happened eventually if My Generation never existed, but it probably would’ve taken a lot longer for everyone else to make rock louder and faster without the Who’s blueprint.
2. The Who Sell Out (1967)
The Who Sell Out is both a cheeky pop art satire of the commercialization of rock music and a celebration of the offshore pirate radio stations like Radio London that helped make the mid-’60s such a remarkable and unique moment in British music and culture. During the summer of ’67 that the band toiled on the album, however, the U.K. Parliament passed the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act and forced Radio London off the air, making The Who Sell Out something of a real-time eulogy for the pirate radio era. The band composed fake radio jingles for real products to really flesh out the album’s concept, putting them in between great songs like “Tattoo” and the band’s only Top 10 hit in America, “I Can See For Miles.” But Townshend went above and beyond the call of duty on “Odorono,” creating a full-length song full of pathos and drama that happened to be about underarm deodorant.
1. Who’s Next (1971)
Townshend wanted to follow up Tommy with an even more ambitious rock opera, Lifehouse. But nobody else seemed to understand his futuristic narrative, or his aspirations to develop the album in a communal environment in a theater residency, integrating the audience’s lives into the songs. Townshend nearly had a nervous breakdown, and felt somewhat defeated when he consented to simply release nine songs written for the project as Who’s Next without all of the multimedia concepts he’d dreamed up for Lifehouse. Fortunately, they happened to be nine of the greatest songs the Who ever recorded, with co-producer Glyn Johns helping the band marry innovative analogue synthesizer programming to some of the most powerful hard rock ever put on record at the time. Townshend has revisited Lifehouse again and again, in a radio play, a graphic novel, and the 2000 Lifehouse Chronicles box set. But songs like “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and “Behind Blue Eyes” remain immortal anthems to millions of people who never worked out the story Townshend was trying to tell in the lyrics.
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Lauren Mayberry stirred a bit of concern among CHVRCHES fans last year when she began releasing music ahead of her debut solo album, Vicious Creature. But there’s no need to panic, CHVRCHES remain intact, with Mayberry still front and center. In the meantime, Vicious Creature captures the best of her many influences and marks her most personal, direct work yet, which is no small feat for an artist who’s never been afraid to speak her mind.
The Scottish-born, Los Angeles-based Mayberry has long been vocal about injustice, particularly misogyny in the music industry. In 2013, she wrote a widely shared op-ed for The Guardian titled “I Will Not Accept Online Misogyny.” More recently, she was the subject of the short documentaryI Change Shapes, which tracks her evolution from CHVRCHES frontperson to solo artist, confronting online abuse, and carving out space as a woman in music. The documentary, part of the BBC series Change the Tune (aimed at raising awareness of the impact that online abuse has on the lives of artists), takes its name from one of Vicious Creature’s standout tracks, “Change Shapes.”
The album sees Mayberry channeling a wide range of influences, from Sinead O’Connor, Fiona Apple, and PJ Harvey to Kathleen Hanna and British girl groups like All Saints and Sugababes. She also cites musicals like Chicago and Cabaret for their nuanced portrayals of complex women. A roster of in-demand producers and collaborators, including Greg Kurstin, Tobias Jesso Jr., Matthew Koma, Ethan Gruska and Dan McDougall, helped bring her vision to life.
Mayberry has often said that Vicious Creature explores themes she couldn’t fully express within CHVRCHES. It’s a creative rebirth of sorts. After more than a decade and four acclaimed albums with the band, Vicious Creature reveals sides of her we hadn’t seen. On one of the album’s most quoted lines: “I killed myself to be one of the boys/I lost my head to be one of the boys,” she revisits the lyrics with even more urgency in a new version of “Sorry, Etc, Etc,” featuring IDLES’ Joe Talbot.
Since 2023, Mayberry has toured throughout North America and Europe. In May, she returns for festival appearances and solo dates. An experienced road warrior, Mayberry shares her touring essentials with SPIN.
I am quite devastated because I recently learned that this company has closed down. They were a cool Scottish company who made waxed canvas backpacks and messenger bags with a sort of vintage feel to them. I use my black Bannoch bag every time I travel.
Notebook(s)
I take at least two notebooks with me everywhere I go. One for journaling, and the other for lyrics/songwriting. I sometimes brainstorm lyrics in the Notes app on my phone, but I really like physically writing things out. I think it helps my brain figure out the puzzle of a lyric better than I can in my phone, and it’s sometimes nice to look back through old notebooks and see the journey you went on to get to the final lyrics.
My friend Meagan Kong is a dancer-choreographer and personal trainer and I’ve been using her exercise program while I’m on the road. She programs strength training workouts for you in an app and there are demonstration videos of her doing each move for you to follow along. It’s nice to feel like I’m going to the gym with my buddy, where(ver) I happen to be.
I am terrible at losing Bluetooth AirPods so have reverted back to my wired ones. These ones are very comfortable and the isolation on them is really good, which is quite vital for trying to sleep on tour sometimes.
I have quite sensitive skin, especially when I’m on the road. This mask really helps with any irritation or redness I get from hotel sheets or just from putting on stage makeup every night. You mix it with a little bit of water which makes the pot last for quite a while too, which is nice because Eminence is a little spendy.
Lauren Mayberry performs in 2025 in London. (Credit: Gus Stewart/Redferns)
A makeup artist used this on me on an outdoor photoshoot once and I’ve been obsessed ever since. It’s green, which is a bit alarming to put on your face at first, but it really tones down any redness in my skin before I apply my makeup, and it has SPF in it too which is an added bonus. I am a sun cream freak so always put a separate one on after my skincare anyway but on a non-show day, I will just pop this on at the end of my skincare and it makes my skin look fresh enough that I don’t put other makeup on.
I stayed with some friends in New York for Hogmanay and their house smelled amazing because of this candle. I don’t like super floral scents but this one is really lovely. It smells like mint with a bit of smokiness to it.
I think every roadie in the universe has the same T-shirt and hoodie combination for this venue in DC. Last time we were there, I got an extra big hoodie and I’ve been living in it ever since.
A vocal coach turned me onto these years ago and they are great for when your voice is a bit tired on the road. They do good soothing teas as well. I know a lot of Americans swear by Throat Coat but I prefer this brand as it feels less harsh.
Finding straighteners that don’t need to be plugged in has been a real game changer for me on tour. I feel like a lot of green rooms are designed by straight men who don’t need to think about things like good lighting for makeup or having an electrical socket and mirror close to each other, so these tongs being portable means I can do my hair anywhere which saves a lot of time and energy.
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A month after he was fired, and then quickly rehired, following a 29-year stint filling the late Keith Moon’s shoes in the Who, Zak Starkey has been let go again — this time for good. He will be replaced by Scott Devours, the longtime drummer for Who frontman Roger Daltrey’s solo band.
“After many years of great work on drums from Zak, the time has come for a change,” the Who’s Pete Townshend wrote on Instagram. “A poignant time. Zak has lots of new projects in hand and I wish him the best.” Later in the day, the Who’s website posted a separate statement attributed to Townshend and Daltrey, whose issues with Starkey’s playing style propelled the original firing.
“The Who are heading for retirement,” the statement said, referencing the legendary band’s upcoming farewell tour of North America. “whereas Zak is 20 years younger and has a great future with his new band and other exciting projects. He needs to devote all his energy into making it all a success. We both wish him all the luck in the world.”
Starkey quickly responded on Instagram, writing, “I was fired two weeks after reinstatement and asked to make a statement saying I had quit the Who to pursue my other musical endeavours. This would be a lie. I love the Who and would never had quit. So I didn’t make the statement. Quitting the Who would also have let down the countless amazing people who stood up for me (thank you all a million times over and more) thru the weeks of mayhem of me going ‘in an out an in an out an in an out’ like a bleedin squeezebox x.”
After the original incident, Starkey said he planned to take some time off with his family, finish his autobiography (“written solely by me”) and work further with Mantra of the Cosmos, his band with Ride/Oasis member Andy Bell and Happy Mondays principals Shaun Ryder and Bez.
The Who’s tour begins Aug. 16 in Sunrise, Fl., and has shows on the books through Sept. 28 in Las Vegas. For now, no international dates have been confirmed.
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A day before the eighth anniversary of Chris Cornell’s suicide, Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd has written a lengthy Instagram post saluting the vocalist’s enduring influence and also referencing the unfinished album the imminent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees were working on at the time.
The message calls out “The Road Less Traveled,” a song written by Cornell and drummer Matt Cameron “for our album that has yet to be named. Just hearing Chris’ voice helps. I know he did that for everyone he knew. He did for me, filled with self-doubt and indebtedness. In just his tone, [he] knew what I was going through and forgave me like he always did, even when he was older. It’s at this point of recording all of our previous albums I’d get this overwhelming hit of awe, camaraderie, power of creativity — majesty even — and love, from the music, and my bandmates, and I guess just pure life force.”
“I am very blessed by my loved ones and very honored to have known or worked with each of my brothers Kim [Thayil], Matt and Chris in this path of music and life, of loves and losses, righteousness and folly, but I can tell you, it feels good and invigorating to hear Chris singing from over that horizon and hear the mighty, mighty life of souls sharing,” Shepherd continued. “To hear, as a fan and band member, a song or two Chris brought in a few years ago turn before my very ears and finger blisters into a full blown Soundgarden tune is like feeling a glacier fall away off your chest.”
Soundgarden was active from 1984-1997 but did not play again until 2010 while Cornell focused on a solo career. Following their reunion, the group toured regularly for the next seven years during breaks in Cameron’s schedule with Pearl Jam and released a comeback album, King Animal, in 2012.
After years of unpleasant legal wrangling, Cornell’s widow Vicky and the surviving members “reached an amicable out of court resolution” in April 2023, allowing for the release of “the final songs that the band and Chris were working on” before his passing. The parties had been in litigation in federal court for four years, with numerous high-level music industry managers and executives having attempted to help them broker a settlement. In 2019, Vicky Cornell sued the musicians for wrongfully withholding royalty money owed to the Cornell estate, in what she claimed was an attempt to force her to turn over seven unreleased recordings Chris made before he died.
Vicky Cornell filed another suit in 2021, claiming the surviving members offered her “the villainously low figure of less than $300,000″ for the estate’s stake in the Soundgarden catalog despite it having been valued at $16 million.
Longtime Soundgarden/Cornell producer Brendan O’Brien was rumored to be involved in the unreleased recordings that were at issue, but he denied having participated in them in a December 2021 interview with SPIN. Asked about the unfinished material, he said, “I’ve never heard it. In spite of what may have been said or written, Chris and I never talked about it. We were focused on [the covers collection No One Sings Like You Anymore, which was recorded in 2016 but not released until 2021]. Soundgarden seemed like a separate thing, which was great by me. I felt good about that. But I’d love to hear it at some point — I really would. I hope they get it figured out.”
Shepherd closed his post by saying, “we all have a lot of work to go through in this life, but we are all to a man trying our best and to do each and every one of us proud. You, Chris, are right here with us. We all miss you brother. See you when we do.” He signed off by writing, “PS, please say hey to Mark,” apparently a reference to friend and late Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, who died in 2022.
As previously reported, Soundgarden will join Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast and the White Stripes as part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2025 induction class during a Nov. 8 ceremony in Los Angeles.
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Foo Fighters have parted ways with drummer Josh Freese, who has filled that role since 2023 in the wake of band member Taylor Hawkins’ sudden death in March 2022. Freese revealed the surprising news in a social media post, which Foo Fighters themselves have yet to address in any form. A band spokesperson also declined comment.
“The Foo Fighters called me Monday night to let me know they’ve decided ‘to go in a different direction with their drummer.’ No reason was given,” Freese wrote. “Regardless, I enjoyed the past two years with them, both on and off stage, and I support whatever they feel is best for the band. In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I’ve never been let go from a band, so while I’m not angry — just a bit shocked and disappointed. But as most of you know I’ve always worked freelance and bounced between bands, so I’m fine. Stay tuned for my ‘Top 10 Possible Reasons Josh Got Booted From The Foo Fighters’ list.”
Freese, 52, is one of the most respected session drummers in rock and is a longtime friend of Dave Grohl and the Foos camp. Before a formal announcement that he was coming on board, he joined the Foos on drums during star-studded Hawkins tribute concerts in 2022 at London’s Wembley Stadium and Los Angeles’ Kia Forum.
Freese has played drums in the Vandals since 1989 and has performed for long stretches with everyone from Devo, Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails and the Replacements to Sting, Sublime With Rome, Weezer, A Perfect Circle, the Offspring, Danny Elfman and Paramore. He’s currently back on the road with A Perfect Circle for the first time in 13 years.
Meanwhile, the Foos earlier this week announced their first show of 2025 on Oct. 4 at the Singapore Grand Prix. The group canceled a number of concerts last year following the revelation that Grohl had fathered a child with a woman other than his wife.
This is a developing story.
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The lead-up to, and content of, the Pavement-focused film Pavements may have been completely baffling, but the beloved rock band is shedding some much-needed light on the proceedings by announcing a May 30 digital release date for its accompanying soundtrack.
The 41-track Matador project includes numerous live and rehearsal recordings from Pavement’s second reunion tour in 2022, as well as what is apparently the first truly new song Pavement song since 1998, “Intro for a Major Motion Picture.” The album is rounded out by dialog snippets and cast recordings from the bizarre Slanted! Enchanted! musical featured in the film. See the track list below.
The Alex Ross Perry-directed Pavements is now screening in New York and Los Angeles before its June 6 theatrical wide release through Utopia. Click here for showtimes.
To help promote the film, Pavement performed their improbable streaming hit “Harness Your Hopes” last night (May 15) on CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert as part of their first TV appearance since 2010. The Stephen Malkmus-led group played what they said was their “last show for a long time” in October in conjunctin with a New York Film Festival screening of Pavements.
Malkmus told Vanity Fair last year he actually thought the initial Pavements footage he was shown was a “prank,” but that he was “good” with subsequent edits. For his part, Ross Perry told Vanity Fair in a separate interview he thought Malkmus “was less charmed by seeing himself fictionally depicted in ridiculous cliché terms. Anyone who’s not an egomaniac or a sociopath would have to be. All I could say for two years was, ‘Guys, I really think people will see this for what it is. And I am begging for that trust.’ But I realized, oh, you guys are too cool to watch these terrible movies. You don’t watch Rocket Man or Elvis or any of these things out of even idle curiosity. You just don’t care. So the buffoonery of this writing and acting is kind of lost, because you don’t hate-watch five music biopics a year as some of us do.”
Here is the track list for Pavements:
Intro for a Major Motion Picture Our Singer (LA Rehearsal Session) Joe Keery Screen Test (Movie Clip) Angel Carver Blues / Mellow Jazz Docent (Live at Cirkus, Stockholm) You’re Killing Me/ My Radio / Nothing Ever Happens (Jukebox Musical Versions) Spizzle Trunk (Portland Rehearsal Session) It’s What I Want (Movie Clip) In the Mouth a Desert (Live at Le Grand Rex, Paris) Priceless Art (Movie Clip) Fame Throwa (LA Rehearsal Session) Song Is Sacred (Movie Clip) Here (Jukebox Musical Version) Zurich Is Stained (Live at Cirkus, Stockholm) When Songs Are Bought (Movie Clip) Witchi Tai-To (LA Rehearsal Session) Don’t Fuck With My Rolls Man (Movie Clip) Two States (Live at Cirkus, Stockholm) I Can’t Play Billie Joel / “Range Life” Theme (Movie Clips) Joe Keery Sings Range Life at Fake Lollapalooza (Deleted Scene) Serpentine Pad (LA Rehearsal Session) Stairwell Scene (Movie Clip) Fillmore Jive (Portland Rehearsal Session) Circa 1762 (John Peel Session) We Dance (Jukebox Musical Version) Unfair (Live at Cirkus, Stockholm) Harness Your Hopes (Live at Cirkus, Stockholm) Still Waiting on That Gold Record (Spiral Interview) Shoot the Singer (Snail Mail – Live from the Pavement Museum in NYC) Endless Loop of Songs (Deleted Scene) No More Absolutes / So Mind Blowing (Movie Clips) Grounded (Live at the Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles) Fight This Generation (Mud Throwa Musical – Live Mix) The Band That Ruined Lollapalooza (Movie Clip) The Infrastructure Rots (Movie Clip / Jukebox Musical Version) Type Slowly (Live at Cirkus, Stockholm) Slanted! Enchanted! Tryouts! (Movie Clip) Grave Architecture (Portland Rehearsal Session) I Heard Pavement for the First Time Six Weeks Ago (Movie Clip) Give It a Day (Jukebox Musical Version) I Just Saw a Ghost (Movie Clip) Slanted! Enchanted! Finale! (Jukebox Musical Version)
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