Today's Day in Rock Stories

Spencer Sotelo Leaves From First To Last Amid Skrillex Rumors

The Not In This Lifetime run sees the trio of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan perform with a lineup that includes guitarist Richard Fortus, keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Melissa Reese, and drummer Frank Ferrer.

The expanded 25-song set featured the "Chinese Democracy" rarity "Sorry", which was first performed by the reunited lineup in Philadelphia, PA on July 14th.

"Oh man, I was just so ecstatic," Brendon Urie said to Zane Lowe of being asked to be part of the soundtrack. The film's producers had asked Urie to come to the studio and watch a few pieces of the movie after asking him to take part in the soundtrack. Urie explained that he watched about half of the film which pumped him up to record "Rhapsody."

The series of shows will kick off on September 2nd in Crystal Bay, NV and also includes several additional stops in California including performances in Santa Cruz, Mill Valley, Napa and Sebastopol.

Earlier this month, Newtsted explained via an online video his change in musical direction from metal to acoustic. He said via Metal Hammer, "After 30 years of playing heavy music, I've been around the globe about five times. I've already climbed that mountain. We got Grammy awards, the Hall Of Fame and all those different things. That's as far as you can go in that kind of music. It's someone else's turn to have fun in that music now."

The 36-year-old Taylor is still unconscious, with medical staff particularly concerned by bleeding on the brain and a blood clot in his carotid artery. An operation to repair a number of broken bones in Taylor's arm was a success, Lehmann says.

But when asked what he really feels about rock stars getting involved in politics, Cooper tells the new Metal Hammer: In Residence On Spotify: "I absolutely hate it. It's the worst idea ever.

"First of all, why do people think rock stars know more than they do? That is the biggest fallacy in the world - if anything we're dumber. We're not smarter than anybody else. I mean, why do you think we're rock stars?

"Trust me, we don't read magazines you don't read. Nobody calls us up and gives us as inside information on politics. We know less than you do. If I watch TV it's Family Guy.

Bowie released Blackstar - his 25th album - on his 69th birthday this year. He died two days later, on January 10, of liver cancer which he kept secret from everyone but his family and closest friends.

Williams has had to step back from live duties due to unspecified health issues. He says: "Due to some recent very important health issues I am dealing with, I would like to announce that Philip H Anselmo will be filling in for me at two special Eyehategod gigs.

The band say: "Being involved with No Man's Sky is as unlikely as it is exciting. Two years of our lives have disappeared into a black hole and we've been spat out into another dimension.

"The project has pushed us to explore new processes and techniques, to rethink our relationship with our own music and to essentially soundtrack every narrative thread of a 'choose your own adventure' novel that exists only in our minds.

The hoax reportedly began when a Reddit user posted a doctored image that was claimed to have come from Kobalt Music Group's database showing a September 16th release date for the track.

Kobalt also addressed the rumor by telling Billboard, Kobalt Music dismisses any claims related to a recent hoax where falsified information and images of a fictitious Nine Inch Nails release were posted on the web."

Of Mice & Men also want seven fans to be professionally filmed holding their signs at the upcoming video shoot in Portland, Oregon. Candidates are asked to send a recent photo of themselves with their name and age to [email protected] and the successful candidates will be contacted about the shoot.

Slayer guitarist Kerry King recently admitted that the future of the band is "very unclear" as frontman Tom Araya appears to be considering retirement.He said: "He's very unclear. That's just how he is. I don't know if he likes holding his cards in his pocket or what.

Haynes tells UCR: "We had no designs on being a real band that stays together and makes a second record and a fifth record and a 10th record and tours year after year. We were just doing something for the fun of it.

"Our intention was to put out a really inexpensive, experimental low-budget record. We went into the studio with our own money and recorded these nine songs, which were virtually the only songs we knew at that time.

"There was starting to be an audience and more of a demand for what we were doing, and the feeling within the band was really strong. We were creating all of the time and I was writing more and more new material.

Townshend has also shared a teaser clip of him performing the title track alongside David Gilmour, Peter Hope-Evans and his Deep End band on German TV show Rockpalast.

In a new interview with Ultimate Guitar, Vig said, "They called me at the 11th hour to go out to LA so I didn't really have any preproduction time." Having worked with the band a year prior before Grohl joined the band, he was familiar with how they operated. But things all changed with Grohl in the picture.

Nevertheless, Weir will release a solo album--of all new material--titled Blue Mountain on September 30th. The project has been gestating for a while. Last year Weir discussed his collaborators:

"The idea came from Josh Kaufman and his circle of friends, particularly Josh Ritter," Weir told Relix. "It's, for the most part, all new songs. I've been working with Josh Ritter a fair bit on some ideas, and I'm going to also drag in John Barlow and Gerrit Graham as well."

Moonbathers features a guest appearance by Arch Enemy singer Alissa White-Gluz on opener Hands Of Gold, and also includes a cover of Queen's Scandal. The album artwork and tracklist can be viewed below.

The band said: "We have never had so many milestone events in one year. The release of our EP Lunar Prelude, our fifth studio album Moonbathers, our upcoming 10 year anniversary celebrations and there is still more to come.

Just two appearances have been confirmed under the banner of 'The Original Misfits,' at Denver's Riot Fest on September 2-4 and Chicago's Riot Fest on September 16-18.

He says the feature Scooby-Doo And KISS: Rock And Roll Mystery, featuring the members' own voices along with a brand-new track, did a better job of extending their audience than recording a follow-up to 2012's Monster might achieve.

Thayer tells I'm Music: "That's the unfortunate state of the record business these days. It's harder to make the decision to record, because with all the time and effort and resourced that go into doing it, in almost all cases, it doesn't pay off any more. People aren't buying music in a general sense. It becomes kind of a waste of time."

He adds that "it's nice to have an outlet" for creativity, but continues: "It's almost like there are more important things to spend your precious hours of the day doing.

Those dates have been cancelled, but Yashin say a handful of farewell shows will be announced soon. The band had this to say: "This is a moment in time we never wanted to come but unfortunately it has arrived, which means Yashin is no more.

"The music industry is a cut-throat business at the best of times and despite our best efforts, passion and commitment it has dissolved everything we used to love about being in this band.

"We'd like to take this opportunity to thank every person who has ever been a fan of our band and everyone we have worked with, because of you we have really lived our dream and accomplished some incredible things.

He remembers being dressed as a "stoner" while his future bandmates "looked like they were from Skid Row." The encounter took place after he saw a notice in a Chicago music publication.

Draiman says: "I went to an audition for a band whose ad I'd seen. I walked into their rehearsal spot on the south side - and the guys looked like they were from Skid Row.

"All wearing faded, drayed, acid-washed jeans, flannel shirts - halfway open, of course - long, feathered and flowing hair, and Converse All Stars no laces, with the tongues out.

The trio previously launched an Abbey Road performance video of Graffiti, which followed an official video that was also filmed in London. Drummer Neil Mason recently said of the follow-up to their 2012 self-titled debut: "It's just real songs - I try to write about what nobody else is writing about at the time. I'm real proud of it."

Overseen by director Andrew Dominik, the project has grown from a performance-based concept into a movie partly inspired by the death of Cave's teenage son Arthur after he fell from a cliff last year. It includes interviews and footage which "delve into the tragic backdrop of the writing and recording of the album.

The collaboration previously resulted in jewellery showing Eddie's Powerslave and Piece Of Mind guises, with the latest version based on Derek Riggs' cover artwork from Maiden's 1981 album Killers.

Designer and The Great Frog owner Reino Lehtonen-Riley tells TeamRock: "Killers is arguably one of the most recognised heavy metal album covers of all time. A truly sinister depiction of Eddie at his gruesome finest, brandishing a blood-soaked axe has always been my favourite of the maiden album covers.

Wilson is seen solving a Rubik's Cube while asking the audience a series of riddles via placards, including: "What kind of room has no doors or windows?

Without trying create any pomp or circumstance, I would just like to say that "Generation, Love" is about current prejudice. Once upon a year and a half ago, my wife worked for unnamed company in a suburb city of Nashville. At the time, I was attempting to develop a blues-rock sound for my first solo project. That project game to a grinding halt when my wife had to report sexual harassment from one of her co-workers, who happened to be the top sales rep in her company. My wife's job was to maintain the accounts he had gained, so her job was heavily reliant on his opinion of her. Over a two-month period, my wife went from feeling sexually harassed, to being forced to confront the man by her boss - without HR - to being told she just misunderstood the man, to being demoted, to being put on probation - still having to work with the man who harassed her.

All the while, I spent many hours sitting in the car outside of her office waiting for the bad news that inevitably would come at 5:00 PM sharp. After months of stress and frustration, my wife was more or less forced to quit. It was relieving, but still incredibly unfair. She was forced out because her boss (who was a female) didn't want to risk losing her star salesman over sexual harassment and was willing to ignore it in order to protect profits. Although the immediate problem was solved, I felt like something had to be done to seek justice, and a lawsuit could have taken up to two years.

However, something I could do was to write about it. I ditched the blues-rock idea. I chose a more soothing, innocent sound. Why? Most evil in the world doesn't announce itself. Most prejudice doesn't come in bright, white sheets or with burning crosses. It looks normal - many times innocent. That thought reminded my of the early '60s pop melodies from bands like The Zombies. Those songs had such an ethereal, sweet sound to them, you would have never guessed most the time they were about sex. I wanted that misdirection in my music. It reflected reality.

But my topic, my lyrics, my actual content - I wanted that to be hard-hitting truth. "Generation, Love" talks about how our generation, and the generation before us, regularly chooses hate and prejudice as their "go to" reaction in conflicts and interactions. I chose to broaden the topic from just sexism to racism as well since the two are undeniably related and because I had seen such racist tendencies throughout my time in the South. We still see walls. We still see prejudice. We still see hate.

My message is clear: it is time for this generation to step up socially, because the last generation has failed. We risk allowing the same prejudice tendencies to rule our point of view if we do not take an active, aggressive stance to stomp out prejudice first in our own lives, and second throughout our culture. My wife and I cannot change what happened. But, I can try to use that experience to stop it from happening again. We live in a world of prejudice, sexism, and racism - fact. Either we actively fight it, or we subconsciously allow it to spread. This song fights it.