Badlands of Indiana (October 6, 2020) - British rock band Led Zeppelin on Monday effectively won a long running legal battle over claims it stole the opening guitar riff from its signature 1971 song, “Stairway to Heaven.”
The band, one of the best-selling rock acts of all time, was handed victory after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, meaning that a March 2020 decision by a U.S. appeals court in Led Zeppelin’s favor will stand.
Lead singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page had been accused in the six-year long case of lifting the riff - one of the best-known openings in rock music - from a song called “Taurus”, written by the late Randy Wolfe of the U.S. band Spirit.
Wolfe, who performed as Randy California, drowned in 1997, and the case was brought by a trustee for his estate. It has been one of the music industry’s most closely watched copyright cases, potentially exposing Plant and Page to millions of dollars in damages.
Led Zeppelin was the opening act for Spirit on a U.S. tour in 1968, but Page testified in a 2016 jury trial in Los Angeles that he had not heard “Taurus” until recently.
The Los Angeles jury found the riff they were accused of stealing was not intrinsically similar to the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven.”
Lawyers for Wolfe’s estate and for Led Zeppelin could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
Badlands of Indiana, USA (March 29, 2020) WHR - The music show must go on and at the School of Rock, nearly 40,000 students worldwide will keep jamming with remote music lessons.
Currently, there are a growing number of families being asked to remain in their homes or limit travel. At School of Rock, the health and safety of our students is their top priority. As part of this commitment, they have launched a virtual, one-on-one music education program that allows students to take music lessons remotely.
School of Rock Remote will further your child’s musical journey in a way that prioritizes well-being through social distancing. Weekly one-on-one instruction is conducted by their expert School of Rock instructors in a safe virtual lesson room.
Students will receive their training using their proprietary education program, The School of Rock Method™, which couples virtual lessons with our proprietary Method App™, SongFirst Approach™ and Method Books™. This new offering results in a comprehensive music experience that is fun, educational and safe.
School of Rock uses a performance-based approach to provide students of all ages guitar, drums, bass, keyboard, and singing lessons.
“At School of Rock, the health and safety of our students is our top priority, which is why we have rapidly adapted our operations in order to meet students’ needs,” said Rob Price, CEO of School of Rock.
“School of Rock Remote along with our School of Rock Method App is a fantastic way to provide continuity and connection. Our instructors are gigging musicians, and they have shown their flexibility to make sure the music goes on.”
ABOUT:
All of their music programs for kids, teens, and adults are designed to help students gain amazing musical proficiency. School of Rock Remote is no exception. Students in the Remote program have access to all major elements of their industry-leading education approach, but are able to take lessons from home.
Online guitar lessons, online piano lessons, online drum lessons, online singing lessons, and online bass guitar lessons are all offered through the School of Rock Remote online music lesson program.
Badlands of Indiana, USA (February 29, 2020) WHR — Told from the perspective of drummer Artimus Pyle, the film centres on the tragic Mississippi plane crash on 20th October 1977 that claimed the lives of legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his backing vocalist sister Cassie Gaines, road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray.
Powered by Artimus Pyle’s first-hand recollections of the crash, the film focuses on the hours leading up to the crash in the rented plane, and the aftermath.
The film premiered at 7.30 pm on Sunday 16th February at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival before hitting select cinemas Stateside this spring.
Artimus Pyle says of ‘Street Survivors: The True Story Of The Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash’: "This film's story — MY story — is not just about the plane crash but also about my personal relationship with the genius that was Ronnie Van Zant — whom I loved like a brother and still miss to this day."
Watch the trailer below:
Named after Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1977 album of the same name, ‘Street Survivors…’ is directed by Jared Cohn and features Cleopatra Records founder Brian Perera on production duties.
The cast includes Ian Shultis as Artimus Pyle, Taylor Clift as RonnieVan Zant, Samuel Kay Forrest as Steve Gaines, Rich Dally III as Allen Collins, Hudson Long as Billy Powell and Nick Cairo as Leon Wilkeson. Neill Byrnes and Anthony Rocco Bovo play Aerosmith rockers Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.
Principle photography on the film began in April 2017 in Los Angeles, however in August of that year, sole original member Gary Rossington and heirs of Van Zant and Gaines successfully won a court injunction to halt production of the film.
The judge decided that the film violated a “blood oath” consent order Pyle signed with his band mates in 1988, that allegedly gave individual band members permission to tell their own life stories but not exploit the Lynyrd Skynyrd name after the crash.
However, in October 2018 the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, New York overturned the permanent injunction and Cleopatra Records Inc. were free to distribute the film.
“That crash is part of the history’ of the band, but it is also an ‘experience’ of Pyle with the band, likely his most important experience,” the ruling read.
“Provisions of a consent decree that both prohibit a movie about such a history and also permit a movie about such an experience are sufficiently inconsistent, or at least insufficiently specific, to support an injunction.”
Badlands of Indiana, USA (January 17, 2020) WHR — Chris Darrow, a country-rock pioneer who made his mark over the '60s and '70s, most notably as a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, has died at the age of 75. No cause of death has been released yet.
Darrow was born in South Dakota in 1944, but grew up in the Southern California suburb of Claremont, where he first honed an interest in folk and bluegrass music. He formed the Dry City Scat Band in 1964 while pursuing college and graduate school, and during this time became acquainted with Chris Hillman of classic rock legends the Byrds, who had a profound influence on his transition from bluegrass to rock music.
Darrow went on to form the genre-bending rock band Kaleidoscope, recording several albums before his joining influential country-rockers the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1967. He worked with the band on two albums, and also appeared in the Clint Eastwood musical, Paint Your Wagon.
In1969, he formed the Corvettes, which became the touring band for Linda Ronstadt, who herself was quickly exploding as an influential artist in the country-rock scene.
Darrow also had a prolific solo career, releasing a total of 10 records between 1972 and 2006. He worked with such notable artists as Leonard Cohen and James Taylor, and mentored younger singer-songwriter and fellow Southern Californian Ben Harper.
Information on Darrow's passing and survivors is limited.
Badlands of Indiana (July 14, 2019) WHR — The year was 1988 and in Indianapolis, Indiana, the musicians Steven David De Leong (vocals), Jon Huffman (guitar), James Thunder (guitar), Jim Quick (bass) and Tricky Lane (drums) joined forces to form the American hard rock band SWEET F.A. These Midwestern boys played their first gig on November 21, 1988, and had a major label deal a mere eleven months later.
In late 1990 Sweet F.A. left MCA Records to immediately sign their second recording contract with Virgin Records subsidiary label, Charisma Records and released their second worldwide release, Temptation which was not successful.
After a several years on hiatus, the band with all original members released their third CD on Upward Records entitled, The Lost Tapes. A very straight forward and energetic bluesy hard rock record. This release is an actual compilation of songs recorded intended for release but never were back in the early days.
The group holed up with producer Howard Benson in Atlanta, Georgia to record the debut album Stick To Your Guns. It would prove to be an excellent release, with singles such as "Prince Of The City" and "Rhythm Of Action", but would stall at #161 on the Billboard charts. Disappointed with sales, MCA released the band from their roster in late 1990, as the band themselves released Quiggins.
With a new label, the band set to record the follow-up album with session bassist Frank Coglitore. Released in 1991, Temptation was a more mature album, but failed to do much business in recession-hit America. The band hit the road with new bassist Mark Matthews, but with the musical tides changing in the early nineties, the end had arrived for Sweet F.A.
Badlands of Indiana (June 10, 2019) WHR — Founding Five Finger Death Punch drummer Jeremy Spencer left the band in 2018 and was replaced recently by Charlie Engen. According to a report from Blabbermouth, Spencer was recently named a Reserve Police Officer of the Rockport, Indiana Police Department by Mayor Gay Ann Harney.
Chief of Police, Jason Overfield, said Spencer passed the Pre-Basic course of the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy and welcomed him to the department. Rockport is the county seat of Spencer County in southwest Indiana and Spencer grew up in neighboring Warrick County, where he was a graduate of Boonville High School ('91).
Spencer, a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, said: "It's an honor to be able to come back to this area when I can and serve the community as a reserve police officer and help out my brothers."
Spencer sat out the band's 2018 tour prior to his departure due to needing another back surgery. At the time, he said "the rigorous physical wear and tear has got me to the point where I feel I can no longer deliver a performance that brings me satisfaction and joy."
Five Finger Death Punch are currently in the studio.
Badlands of Indiana (May 31, 2019) WHR — After spending the first 3 months of 2019 in the studio, Texas Based Rock Band Blacktop Mojo has announced a summer headlining tour in support of the debut single and video, “Can’t Sleep,” off of their highly anticipated, upcoming 3rd album, Under the Sun.
The video is scheduled to premiere on June 21, at which time the track will be available for download and streaming, with the album slated for a mid-September release.
The Can’t Sleep 2019 Tour launches July 13th in Kansas City, MO and runs through August 24th, finishing in Quapaw, OK.
Catch Blacktop Mojo Live on their 2019 Can't Sleep Tour w/Special Guests Lullwater
07/13 @ Aftershock – Kansas City, MO
07/14@ Apollo Theatre – Rockford, IL
07/16@ Spicolis – Waterloo, IA
07/18@ Durty Nellies – Palatine, IL
07/19@ Rock USA – Oshkosh, WI
07/20@ Bike Rally – Sturgis, KY
07/21@ Exit/In – Nashville, TN
07/23 @ Winchester – Cleveland, OH
07/25@ Hard Times Four Mile Fork @ Fredericksburg, VA
07/26 @ Muddy Creek Saloon – Heath, OH
07/27 @ Cotter Pin – La Crosse, WI
07/28@ Q and Z – Ringle, Wi
07/31@ Token Lounge – Detroit, MI
08/01@ Manchester Music Hall – Lexington, KY
08/02@ Madam Caroll Boat – Monticello, IN
08/03@ Moefest – Monticello, IN
08/04@ Madison Live – Covington, KY
08/06@ Hard Rock Café – Pittsburgh, PA
08/07@ The Chance – Poughkeepsie, NY
08/08@ Wally’s – Manchester,, NH
08/09@ Alchemy – Providence, RI
08/10@ TBA
08/11@ TBA
08/14@ Eclectic Room – Angola, IN
0815@ Illinois State Fair – Springfield, IL
08/16@ Rose Music Hall – Columbia, MO
08/17@ ABATE Summerfest – Bristol, IN
08/18@ The Warehouse – Clarksville, TN
08/20@ Sidetracks – Huntsville, AL
08/21@ TBA
08/22@ Commandry – Ft. Smith, AR
08/23@ City Limits – Oklahoma City, OK
08/24@ Downstream Casino – Quapaw, OK
Badlands of Indiana (March 22, 2019) WHR — Even in the sex and drugs-crazed world of rock and roll, the stories about Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee were legendary. There were girls, girls, girls, alcohol-fueled riots, fist fights, car crashes, cocaine, heroin, mud wrestling and stadiums filled with screaming fans who wanted more of everything. In 2001, the band proved the rumors true in their X-rated, jaw-droppingly lascivious oral history The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band.
Working with writer Neil Strauss, the band told all — the good, the bad, the shocking, the outrageous and even the likely criminal — about themselves and one another. After releasing nine albums, Mötley Crüe had a new chart-topping hit, this time in the form of a New York Times bestseller.
Now, under the direction of Jeff Tremaine, The Dirt has come to Netflix in all its sick, slick and shiny glory. The new film features rapper Machine Gun Kelly as Tommy Lee, Douglas Booth as Sixx, Iwan Rheon as Mars, Daniel Webber as Neil and Saturday Night Live‘s Pete Davidson as the Crüe’s record executive. The Dirt largely stays true to the stories the band tells in the book — though some of them are even more scandalous than the movie depicts.
Here’s a breakdown of the facts that fuel The Dirt:
Did the band’s first show really end in a fist fight?
According to Sixx, this is true. Back in 2014, he told TIME, “The very first show, Vince and I ended up in the crowd in a fist fight! That kind of set a precedent for who we are and what we do.” The incident became a part of Crüe lore as a story of the band’s tough-as-nails, anything-goes attitude.
Did the band’s manager really punch them?
According to Doc McGhee, the band’s longtime manager, delivering the occasional knuckle sandwich was part of the job. “Sometimes punching people is the only answer. I call it full-contact management,” McGhee wrote in an article for The Guardian on his rules of band management. “I’ve had to use it on most of my bands as a last resort. But with Mötley Crüe, full-contact management happened every couple of months. It was more about survival. You’re talking about a band who would physically bite you if they liked you. You’re talking about a band who would regularly attack their own security guard — and he was head of a Hell’s Angels chapter and a black belt in karate.”
Was the band really that girl crazy?
Definitely. In an interview with TIME, Neil explained, “That’s the only reason guys get into music — because you get girls and free beer. It wasn’t about fame or anything. You want to get laid and you want to get drunk.”
Did Nikki Sixx really sleep with his record label rep’s girlfriend?
Mötley Crüe’s A&R man, Tom Zutaut, told The Guardian that he took his girlfriend backstage to meet the band before a gig and “within three minutes” Sixx had disappeared with the girl. When asked by the Guardian reporter to confirm whether the nefarious deed happened, Sixx shrugged. “I’m sure it did,” he said. “But I can’t remember.”
When was Mick Mars diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis?
While the band’s wild antics were well-known to fans, one of the biggest bombshells when the band’s book was published was Mars’ admission that he had been coping with a chronic, degenerative, painful disease throughout his years with Mötley Crüe. Mars was reportedly diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis that primarily effects the spine and makes it difficult to move, when he was 19. While the disease frequently stops its painful, debilitating progression, Mars wasn’t so lucky. “I have a rare form of the disease that hasn’t stopped, so it’s all the way up my whole back and into my brain stem,” Mars told MusicRadar in 2008. “It’s literally squeezing my rib cage together, so I’ve lost some height. And now that it’s up in my brain stem it’s hard for me to move my head in any direction.”
The chronic pain led to drug abuse and a hip replacement. But Mars maintains a surprisingly positive outlook about the chronic illness. “There are some things about this thing that I’ve got that are not so cool,” he told Classic Rock Revisited. “But there is one thing that is cool — I ended up bent. I can always see my guitar. If I’d been straight then I would not be able to see myself play.”
What was the cause of death of Vince Neil’s daughter?
One of the film’s most tragic moments is the death of Neil’s 4-year-old daughter, Skylar. According to a 1995 story in People, she was diagnosed with Wilms’ tumor, a kidney cancer that affects children. She underwent six operations, plus extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments, but passed away four months after her diagnosis. “This ordeal is something no parent should have to go through,” Neil told People. “More than that, I wish no child ever had to go through it.”
Did Ozzy Osbourne really snort a line of ants?
Motley Crüe supported Osborne on his Bark at the Moon tour in 1984, at the height of Osbourne’s fame and depravity. In The Dirt, while the band is at a hotel during the tour, a dress-clad Osbourne (played by Tony Cavalero) kneels down on the ground and snorts a line of ants up his nose with a straw, much to the shock of the band. Sixx swears this is true. In an interview with Page Six, he said that while Motley Crüe was a “wild young band” who thought they could compete with Osborne, “you can’t with Ozzy. He won.”
Did Nikki Sixx really die temporarily from a heroin overdose?
Yes. “For two minutes in 1987 I was pronounced clinically dead from an overdose,” he wrote in a powerful op-ed in the Los Angeles Times last year. While it took him several more years to finally get sober, Sixx has become outspoken about ways to combat opioid addiction.
Who was Razzle from Hanoi Rocks?
Another tragic moment in the band’s history came when Neil, while driving under the influence, got into an accident that killed his friend, Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley, and critically injured two other people. Dingley was the English drummer of the Finnish glam rock band Hanoi Rocks. Dingley and Neil had been at a party to celebrate the band’s first U.S. tour when they decided to take a drive and Neil lost control of the car. Dingley was just 24 and reportedly had a wife who was seven months pregnant at the time of his death.
Neil was sentenced to 30 days in jail but released early for good behavior. He was ordered to pay a fine, which even Neil admits was not enough of a punishment. “I wrote a $2.5 million check for vehicular manslaughter when Razzle died,” he reportedly told Blender. “I should have gone to prison. I definitely deserved to go to prison. But I did 30 days in jail and got laid and drank beer, because that’s the power of cash. That’s f-cked up.”
Did Vince Neil really quit the band?
In the film, as the band was working on a follow-up to their 1989 album Dr. Feelgood, Neil stops coming to rehearsal, eventually storming out and announcing that he quits just as Sixx tells him he’s fired. In real life, the band released a statement saying that Neil left because his longtime hobby, car racing, had “become a priority” in his life. But this explanation, which is not depicted in the film, may not have been the truth, either. In a 1992 appearance on Dennis Miller’s talk show, Neil had a very different take on the situation, saying that being kicked out of the band was a complete shock to him. “Two days after my birthday — like, ‘Happy birthday, Vince‘ … Everybody had 25 percent input, so 75 percent voted me out. They’re great guys; they just had to do what they felt they had to do.”
Did Motley Crüe break up?
They did. In 2014, the band very publicly signed a legally binding Cessation of Touring Agreement in front of reporters that prohibits future, unauthorized performances and prevents any of the four members from touring under the band name. As Sixx told TIME, “We just wanted to have pride in the band when the band is done forever. If you put on a Crüe t-shirt and walk down the street we want someone to say, ‘The Crüe, man, those guys came in and went out on their own terms.’”
Whether or not that break-up sticks, though, is still to be determined. The band did reunite to record four new tracks for the movie. Since then, rumors have been circulating that Mötley Crüe will go on tour after The Dirt arrives on Netflix. While Sixx said there would be no one-off shows, he recently told Rolling Stone: “Sometimes I look out at my friends, like the guys in Aerosmith and Metallica, and I’m like, ‘God damn it, did we retire too soon?“ He then added, “Maybe we’ll just get together and jam in Mick Mars’ front room.”
Does the band have any regrets about their behavior?
While the film features some of the band’s wild, reckless, depraved behavior, it barely scratches the surface of the dark, twisted and even criminal behavior documented in the book. When asked about a particular story involving Lee and Sixx and a possible sexual assault, Sixx admitted that they went too far, even though he doesn’t recall the specific incident and admits he may have made it up or embellished it. “There is a lot of horrible behavior in the book,” he told Rolling Stone. “What I can tell you is that we all lived to regret a lot and learned from it. We own up to all our behavior that hurt our selves, our families, friends and any innocents around us.”
Badlands of Indiana (March 17, 2019) WHR — Nearly 60 years ago, surfers flocked to the waves along Newport Beach to try mastering the new craze. When the sun set, they needed someplace to dance and Dick Dale delivered it at Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula. Nearly every week for two years, Dale and his band packed over 3,000 people into the ballroom.
“The energy between the Del-Tones and all those surfers stomping on the hardwood floor in their sandals was extremely intense. The tone of Dale’s guitar was bigger than any I had ever heard,” recalled Del-Tones bandmate Paul Johnson.
Dale, whose death was confirmed Sunday, manifested a quintessentially Southern California story, forged in surf, sand and rock ’n’ roll. They called him the Pied Piper of Balboa Beach, but his musical instrument of choice was defiantly not a flute. Rather, the electric-guitar playing son of a Lebanese father melded elements of the music of his ancestral homeland with roaring instrumental rock sounds emerging in the late-1950s, and helped pioneer an iconic American genre known as surf music.
“When I got that feeling from surfing,’” he told the writer Barney Hoskyns, “‘the whitewater coming over my head was the high notes going dikidikidiki, and then the dungundungun on the bottom was the waves, and I started double-picking faster and faster, like a locomotive, to feel the power of the waves.”
Those rushing guitar lines energized generations across the Southland and reverberated around the world.
Dale, who was 81, died Saturday after a long bout with rectal cancer, longtime friend and former bassist Steve Soest said Sunday.
That guitar tone arrived via a blindingly fast picking technique, one of the centerpiece elements of his breakthrough hits “Let’s Go Trippin’” in 1961 and “Misirlou” the following year, that caused guitar picks to melt in his hand. A few decades later, director Quentin Tarantino tapped “Misirlou” to serve as the theme to "Pulp Fiction."
The sound featured a liberal use of electronic reverb with his signature Fender Stratocaster guitar, cranked to wall-rattling volume through juiced up Fender amplifiers. Other rock instrumentalists charted wordless hits before Dale came to the fore in the early days of the electric guitar, among them Link Wray’s “Rumble” and Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser,” but Dale helped push surf music into the mainstream through those high-energy performances, supplying a sound that paired perfectly with that growing surf craze.
It began as a regional phenomenon in Southern California and soon spread around the world influencing the likes of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in England, and a high-school aged Canadian named Neil Young long before he found fame. According to Hoskyns’ “Waiting for the Sun,” a young Jimi Hendrix was said to have seen Dale and his band play. Echoes of Dale’s fiery guitar runs and showmanship can be heard in Hendrix’s style.
Dale was born Richard Anthony Monsour May 4, 1937, in Boston to a father who had emigrated from Lebanon and a mother who was Polish Belarusian. Growing up in a Lebanese neighborhood in Quincy, Mass., outside of Boston, exposed him to the sounds of Arabic music, which became a signature of his musical amalgam.
His musical training started with his childhood interest in piano. Early on, he studied trumpet and also acquired a ukulele before eventually picking up a guitar and trying his best to emulate one of his heroes, country music titan Hank Williams.
A friend suggested he call himself “Dick Dale,” rather than Richard Monsour, because it sounded more fitting for a would-be country singer.
The Monsour family moved to Southern California in 1954, when his father landed a job at Hughes Aircraft Co. in El Segundo, near the beach. Dale became a regular at the weekly live country music television show "Town Hall Party."
"I wanted to be a cowboy singer, so I went on 'Town Hall Party' and entered their talent contest every week," he told the Glendale News-Press in 2015. "And I did, every week."
The confluence of Dale’s ethnic heritage and newfound geographic proximity to the beach and to the flourishing factory in Fullerton, Calif., where electric guitar innovator Leo Fender worked, all blended into the music Dale would soon bring to listeners.
“Misirlou” represented a cross-cultural blend, coupling minor key motifs and Middle Eastern musical scale with pounding drums and throbbing bass, all fueling Dale’s stinging “wet” electric guitar pyrotechnics.
A section of the song featuring trumpet also brought in an element of the mariachi music that was prevalent around Southern California.
In interviews he would often overstate his role in the development of Fender products, but he was an important early adopter of instruments and amplifiers that would change the sound and content of popular music beginning in the 1950s. Dale liked to consider himself one of Fender’s favorite guinea pigs, and he did push guitars and amplifiers to the limits in his live performances.
"Playing guitar was only a window in my life," he said in 2015. "I never practiced the guitar and when I'm done playing I just put it down. Music is like building a house. It's like going out deep into the desert to see what nature is doing. It's like painting, like Salvador Dali. I try to do that with my music, make it like a Salvador Dali painting."
A freak accident, when hot oil exploded while he was cooking popcorn in 1983 left second-degree burns over much of his body, put him out of commission as a musician for months.
“With every problem comes a gift in hand,” he told The Times in 1985. “For instance, when I do shows to raise money for burn victims, now I can talk to them and know what they are going through. And I can tell their family and friends that when the doctor says the recovery has begun, that's really the time they need your concern and love.”
As a celebrity, he capitalized on quirky passions. At one point he kept live tigers at his Balboa Peninsula mansion, which had previously belonged to Gillette shaving company magnate King Gillette, and titled an early-‘80s live album “The Tigers Loose.” That was his first album in 18 years after surf music fell out of favor in the mid-1960s with the rise of the Beatles, the British Invasion, psychedelic music and other genres.
A decade ago Dale battled back from cancer, even playing a show in south Orange County shortly after being released from a nine-day stay at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for treatment of an infection.
“I thought, ‘I cannot cause this [club owner] to lose thousands of dollars,’” he said at the time.
That’s when he started trying to promote a new moniker to substitute for the “King of the Surf Guitar” label often applied to him: he wanted to be referred to as “Dick Dale-Cancer Warrior.”
With characteristic bravado, he told The Times, he would soon return to the hospital because “everything is messed up, and if it continues that way, I will die. But I’m not ready to leave my son, not ready to leave [his wife] Lana, I’m not ready to leave all the Dick Dale music lovers. They’ve been my medicine.”
Although he has not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he was elected to the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville a decade ago. He experienced recurring brushes with widespread popularity, notably in 1994 when Tarantino used “Misirlou” in “Pulp Fiction.”
In 2010, a career retrospective album “Guitar Legend: The Very Best of Dick Dale” also helped introduce his music to a new generation.
Through his life Dale practiced martial arts and explored eastern philosophy, which he often quoted in interviews.
"There are four sentences [taken from Eastern philosophy] in my life that I go by: 'To experience is to know. To know is to understand. To understand is to tolerate. To tolerate is to have peace',” he told The Times in 1985. “It took me 17 years and [training with] masters of the martial arts to make me understand what that means. But I understand it and that's how I can put up with all the stuff that goes on.
"That's one of the reasons I like working with tigers and lions. If you can understand animals like that, then you can really put up with the reasons why people are the way they are and love them."
Dale’s survivors include his wife, Lana, and his musician son, Jimmy. Information on services was not immediately available.
Badlands of Indiana (October 17, 2018) WHR — Music fans of all persuasions have now been invited to vote in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame’s annual Fan Vote. For the seventh year running, fans will be able to have their say in the Fan Vote, with the five artists who receive the most votes making up a “fan’s ballot” that will help determine who makes it into the prestigious Rock Hall.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Class Of 2019 – which includes first-time nominees Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks, Todd Rundgren, Roxy Music, John Prine and Devo – will also be decided by artists, members of the music industry, journalists and music historians.
The other influential acts to be nominated for the 2019 Rock Hall are The Cure, the MC5, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Rage Against The Machine, Janet Jackson and two acts previously nominated for induction in 2018, Radiohead and The Zombies. Also on the nominees list are Kraftwerk and LL Cool J, both of whom have previously received four Rock Hall nominations.
To be eligible for induction into the prestigious Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, an individual artist or band must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination.
Several of the nominees have enjoyed high profile success during 2018. Iconic Yorkshire rockers Def Leppard and Journey played an acclaimed co-headlining North American tour across the summer, performing to some of the biggest houses of their career.
Stevie Nicks
According to reports in Billboard, the two bands playing in venues ranging from 8,500-seat arenas to 45,000-capacity baseball parks.
Def Leppard have also recently announced the imminent release of an upgraded greatest hits anthology, The Story So Far, while The Cure have confirmed a series of huge festival appearances for the summer of 2019, including South Africa’s Rock On The Lawns and Malahide Castle in Dublin, Ireland.
As uDiscover Music previously reported, the winners will be announced in December 2018, with the induction ceremony taking place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, on 29 March 2019. Ticket information will be released in January. To enter, visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and enter your selections. Hurry, it ends December 9, 2018.
Badlands of Indiana (October 1, 2018) WHR — In the
musically-rich history of Macon, Ga., families like the Waldens and Allmans
left a huge mark on American rock history with Capricorn Records. The local
business with major label ties provided a global sounding board for Southern
rock in the 1970’s. Decades later, it remains a symbol of excellence for fans
of jam bands, Southern rock and other forms of roots-based popular music that
predate Americana.
The Allman Brothers from their "The 1971 Fillmore East recordings" album cover
In the 1960’s, brothers Phil and Alan Walden found a niche
in the music business as managers of regional R&B talents, including
Clarence Carter, Johnny Jenkins and local treasure Otis Redding. Initial plans
for a record label that’d revolve around Redding had to be reconsidered after
the singer’s 1967 passing.
Phil’s music business involvement often paired him with
Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler. Through that work relationship, he discovered a
different building block for a Georgia-based imprint in Atlantic session
musician Duane Allman.
Beginnings
Duane, his brother Gregg Allman and the rest of The Allman
Brothers Band relocated from Jacksonville, Fl. to Macon in 1969 to become the
cornerstone for Phil Walden and co-founder Frank Fenter’s Atlantic/ATCO
Records-distributed Capricorn Records. The Allmans and theirsupporting cast need no introduction as
classic rock artists, bluesy proto-Americana innovators or the granddaddies of
the jam band scene.
Late ’60s and early ’70s releases by The Allman Brothers,
Bonnie Bramblett, Wet Willie and others served as stepping stones for Southern
rock as it emerged from the smoky clubs that hosted both country music and the
blues. After the smash success of the 1971 Allman Brothers live album At
Fillmore East, Walden moved the label to Warner Bros. Despite the 1972 death of
Duane Allman and the Allman Brothers’ short-lived 1976 breakup, the Southern
rock imprint barely lost a step as the home ofThe Marshall Tucker Band, Cowboy, Elvin Bishop, Dixie Dregs, Stillwater
and even country singer Billy Joe Shaver.
From outside of the South and Southwest came heavy rock
supergroup Captain Beyond, a psychedelic answer to Black Sabbath called White
Witch and two of James Taylor’s brothers, Livingston and Alex. Those exceptions
aside, the Capricorn catalog reminds us that Southern rock was the Americana of
its time–a country and rock-leaning interpretation of regional folk and popular
sounds.
Although these acts probably held bluegrass masters, the
Rolling Stones, country blues greats and peers like Charlie Daniels in similar
regard, each sounded at least a little different from their label mates. For
example, The Marshall Tucker Band’s guitarist and lead songwriter Toy Caldwell
and Wet Willie’s frontman Jimmy Hall were cut from similar musical cloth, but
their bands had separate identities from their label mates.
Second Helping
Changing trends and other factors forced Capricorn’s final
distributor of its original run, Polygram, to cut ties in 1979. Walden rebooted
the label in Nashville in 1990. The success that followed built around Athens,
Ga.’s own Southern-flavored jam band giants, Widespread Panic. Their label
mates ranged from Col. Bruce Hampton’s Aquarium Rescue Unit and Lynyrd Skynyrd
to 311 and Cake. Kenny Chesney’s debut album In My Wildest Dreams was also
released on the label in 1994.
Decades later, the label’s original run represents a
creatively free time when hippies and rockers took country and roots sounds to
a broader audience as Southern rockers, “newgrass” pickers and members of some
of the earliest jam bands.
