Guns N' Roses Accused Of Stealing 'Sweet Child O' Mine'

"We're excited to be teaming up with our friends at ESPN again to headline the new Super Stage at X Games in Austin, TX on June 6 at the Circuit of the Americas," says the band.

The show extended to two sets and an encore, totalling 24 songs, a drum solo and four video features, and included material the band hadn't performed in years.

The UK rockers have been in the studio working on the follow-up to 2008's "Songs >From The Sparkle Lounge" after completing some marathon songwriting sessions last year.

"It's all over the place," Elliott tells VH!'s That Metal Show (video below). "Stylistically wise� I can't really pinpoint, because every song is different from every other song. We've always aimed at that.

"We hit it for the first time on 'Hysteria', where we'd done an album that allowed us to go in any direction we wanted to; it wasn't just purely hard rock or metal. There was pop, there was ballady stuff. There was� everything other than acoustic; we didn't have that covered at the time, but we did a few years later with 'Two Steps Behind'."

"There's some real classic Leppard-sounding stuff on the new album," continues the singer, "but there's also some stuff that a band that's of our standing - basically, in our 50s - should be doing, which is a little bit more� I don't wanna say grownup, 'cause that makes it sound boring, but a little bit more� organic, I think is probably the best way to put it.

"We've allowed our roots, or the music that we were steeped in of other people, to soak into our music a little bit more. So whereas you can listen to a Zeppelin album and go, 'I can hear a little bit of Muddy Waters in there,' or a little bit of this, that and the other. You'll be able to say, 'That sounds a little bit like�' because we've been honest enough to just say, 'Well, if it sounds a bit like� This song sounds like Led Zeppelin,' or, 'This song sounds like Queen,' then that's us, that's 'cause we always did.

"But we weren't trying to disguise everything too much; we just let it breathe and just be natural. So it's a very mixed bag of songs. There's fifteen of them on the go. I don't know how many of them will make the album, but I'm hoping most of them will, because they're all very different from each other and very representative of who we are right now."

The current lineup of the group also features Sorum's former Guns N' Roses bandmates Duff McKagan and Gilby Clarke, as well as ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Cheap Trick's Robin Zander, Deep Purple's Glenn Hughes and Billy Idol's Steve Stevens.

This week's concerts will be taking place at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida on Friday (May 15) and on Saturday (May 16) at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut.

Asked if he had any advice for Slash and Axl Rose - who have not spoken for years - McKagan tells Northjersey.com: "I just wrote about something that I understand about myself. Over time I've gotten rid of a lot of resentment I didn't know I was even carrying around. I don't try to impart anything in the book, though, but if I can write about things without being preachy and people get something out of it, that's great."

The "Torn Apart" video reunited the band with director Mike Tyler, who worked with them on the "Anaesthetist" video. The new video can be streamed online here.

The video comes ahead of the band's busy tour plans this spring and summer. Next week they will be kicking off an Australian tour which will be followed by two Russian dates.

Now Bettencourt tells Songfacts: "I'm writing all the time. We're in the studio right now with a couple of friends that are writers, and we're working on some new stuff.

Slayer are gearing up for the launch of their 11th album, which is complete except for the artwork. He's not allowed to reveal its title yet - but when it does arrive, it could become one of the most-pirated records of the year.

Bostaph tells Pop Culture Madness: "People being able to appropriate music for free, that's not right. I don't think people should go into poverty to buy something, but I don't believe we, as artists, should invest so much in what we do then give it away.

The Boston Herald reports the clip from ESPN's "E:60" took home honors in the "Outstanding Open/Tease" category at a ceremony in Frederick P. Rose Hall at New York's Lincoln Center.

"It's kind of a surprise, but I'll take it," said Casey Tebo, the director who filmed the performance, which was mixed for broadcast with scenes of the victims, the Martin Richard Foundation marathon team training in Boston and other Boston Strong images.
"Steven asked me what we could do," explained Tebo of the song's re-creation. "I said, 'Man, it's gotta be something that will give you goose bumps.' And we thought about what happened to Martin, and thought it would be great to have a children's choir sing with them."

Everyone in the Aerosmith camp felt affected by the tragedy, including Tebo. "What happened affected us all pretty deeply," said Tebo. "A friend of mine was standing right near where the bombs went off. He spent a month at Mass. General having skin grafts on his legs and hands. And Aerosmith has represented Boston for so long. 'Dream On' was a fitting song for the whole Boston Strong thing of trying to rise up after something terrible happened."

Trujillo tells Rolling Stone: "The style and the way that I play, low centre of gravity, has a lot to do with skating and surfing and even snowboarding. It's kind of a natural thing for me."

He believes the strong links between metal an extreme sports is here to stay. "It always seemed like the skaters and the surfers were really connected to the music of Metallica," he says.

Balbus spoke about the new album plans with Metal Shock Finland: "We're writing, we're mashing up ideas. We'll gather everyone's ideas. We'll get to Israel and go full force on it."

Now guitarist Patrik Jensen says they hope to release their ninth album by the end of the year, Blabbermouth reports. Jensen says: "Not known as a band that likes to rest on our laurels, we're pushing ahead with the follow-up to last year's Exit Wounds album.

Directed by Francesco Carrozzini (who has worked with the likes of Lana Del Rey, A$AP Rocky and Beyonce), Mazza's new video is typically artistic and full of visual metaphors.

If you've ever had the opportunity to talk to all three Beastie Boys together (that is Mike D, Adam Yauch and Adam Horovitz), you'll appreciate this episode of Minimation. The experience was akin to herding cats.

By 2007, when this interview took place, it was well known that that's how talking to the Beastie Boys would go. Asking what inspired their then-new, all-instrumental album, The Mix-Up, probably never had a chance of getting any legitimate answer. Adam Yauch's answer, that they were influenced by Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, should probably be taken with twelve grains of salt; as should the ensuing debate over whether or not Mike D prefers Tusk to Rumours, which included shout outs to the Clash and Electric Light Orchestra.

As someone who has interviewed the Beastie Boys together, I can promise you that this is exactly what interviewing them was like. It was difficult, frustrating, fun in the way that a roller coaster that you can't wait to get off of is fun. And I wish I could have interviewed them one more time. R.I.P. Yauch.

The song is taken from Back To Momo, the band's fourth album and the follow-up to last year's Til Death Do Us Part collection. Back To Momo is released on June 13.

But he still fields questions about his time with Dave Mustaine's band, including recently being linked with a return to the band as they searched for a new guitarist and drummer.

He says the Megadeth questions come mostly from media and fans outside of Japan, and that fans in his adopted country are as interested in the music he has created since moving there.

He adds: "I've done so many other things. Maybe if 10 people meet me, two of them would know me from Megadeth, two of them know me from this thing and two would know me from something else. It's all different things."

Fellow veterans Charlie Musselwhite and John Hammond were also honoured, as were Bobby Rush and Joe Bonamassa. Bishop - who first came to notice in the Butterfield Blues Band in the 1960s - scored all the top gongs via latest album Can't Even Do Wrong Right.

"You can feel our obscure psychedelia, uncontrolled noise, dark ambient and cathartic outbursts," he continues. "Today our music is a sudden release of strong emotions. We have explored territories never visited before, also in terms of melodic research and songwriting.

He goes on to describe the writing and recording process of the new album - which was recorded at Aadya's Temple. "Our ritualised improvisation urge is still alive and well, but this time we focused more on the songs structures. As usual we have worked all together: bass, drums and guitars have been recorded at the same time. We also overdubbed synth and others instruments like didgeridoo as we wanted to get a more powerful sound. Padmalotus is our artistic peak, but only until the next expressions of our invocations. Nibiru is a forge of ideas, and nothing can stop us".

After a run of summer festivals, the Blast Of Our Kind dates will kick off on November 30th and will be launching in support of their fourth album Last Of Our Kind, to be released on June 1.