Today's Day in Rock Stories

Axl Rose Explains How Guns N' Roses Reunion Came About

The five-show run will begin in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 26. "It's on!!!," says the band. "As we put the finishing touches on Hardwired�To Self-Destruct we're also getting ready to hit the road for the first of many headlining shows around the world.

"To kick it all off we're returning to five cities we know will absolutely rock hard with all kinds of crazy Metalli-love and get this tour started right! First up we travel to Latin America with stops in Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

In June, frontman Steven Tyler said the band would embark on their final run of shows next year. Though guitarist Joe Perry said it had been discussed over the years, he recently admitted that he can't ever imagine calling it quits.

Those dates were scheduled to finish in November when they complete a US tour. But now they've added 40 shows to their itinerary - and they're calling it their 'final' tour. The first date is planned for the Norwich Waterfront, UK, on January 18. The extensive run of dates will wrap up at the Brussels AB Ballroom, Belgium, on March 5.

They launched Limerent Death - first material from the follow-up to 2013's One Of Us Is The Killer last month, with Weinman calling it one of his favourite The Dillinger Escape Plan tracks.

He'd been the band's only lead vocalist since Robert John Godfrey founded the symphonic rock band in 1973, and appeared on their most recent albums Journey's End, Invicta, First Light, The Bridge and Dust. He was also responsible for co-writing, management, live artistic direction and promotional duties.

Slayer say: "The Repentless video trilogy is complete. Watch the gore, violence and carnage unfold in Slayer's brand new, merciless music video, directed by BJ McDonnell. You have been warned."

Queen guitarist Brian May delivered a video message revealing the announcement, which also contains a brief video of AsteroidFreddieMercury17473 moving through space. Watch it below.

May says: "Where's Freddie's asteroid? Well, it's out in the main Asteroid Belt beyond the orbit of Mars and inside the orbit of Jupiter. It's about 3.5km across and it only reflects about a third of the light which falls upon it, so it's a dark object - it's like a cinder in space. It's a dot of light, but it's a very special dot of light.

And he now reports he picked up the acoustic guitar when he was with his ill mother, who passed away in March this year. The bassist tells Eddie Trunk (via Blabbermouth): "I had to keep playing, and she knows I had to keep playing. So I picked up the acoustic and started doing what I was able to do when I was just hanging around her, and started learning my cowboy chords and started collecting my songs.

"This was about the beginning of summer of 2014. So I would play certain songs for her, kind of choking through them - a bass player playing heavy-handed on the acoustic guitar and just banging these cowboy chords out and learning Johnny Cash, Neil Young and George Jones and more popular things like that.

He tells SleazeRoxx: "We're negotiating with a record company as we speak. At the moment, the goal is to have an album written and recorded and have it out by the summer of 2017.

"The idea is to have songs written by people that were in the Dio band or close to the Dio family. Also, the other criteria is that the songs would be done in a manner which Ronnie would approve."

The bassist and vocalist says he's never had more than a sip in his life, partly because he decided at a young age to avoid letting his Holocaust-surviving mother down.

Simmons said earlier this year: "She saw her mother walk into the gas chambers. Her whole family was destroyed. My mother was the only one left alive. And she was 14."

Now he tells the LA Times: "I'm my mother's only child. I was concerned that I had no right to harm my mother. Life did that enough." And there's another reason: "I literally never drink, privately or publicly. I don't like the taste or smell of alcohol. I've never been drunk in my life and have never taken more than a sip of anything - and I hated it every time. I'll toast, just to be sociable, but that's it."

The follow-up to 2010's Straight To DVD continues the band's story, and includes footage of the them on the road and the making of sixth album Future Hearts - which last year gave them their first No.1 chart placing.

The band say: Everyone put in so much work over the 11 years we've been a band, and it's been a steady, slow build. You feel so lucky and so blessed just to be a part of it.

"People have been following us with cameras for years now - and we filmed everything. There's so much nonsense that's been captured - just losing our minds on tour.

He was behind the film Keith Richards: The Origin Of The Species which aired on BBC2 back in July, with a 75-minute director's cut of the documentary also planned for the weekend.

Richards says: "No one has taken over a TV channel before. Let's see how it flies." Temple adds: "The programming will be interwoven with a uniquely relaxed, wide-ranging and intimate interview in which Keith shares his legacy, world views, life philosophy and survival strategies with viewers.

Speaking of the album, vocalist Brandon Yeagley tells Classic Rock: "I think with our new material we're definitely stretching the ends of the spectrum."

Harris says: "On this tour we'll be making our first visits to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Ireland. We've got a really strong show lined up, including plenty of songs not on the British Lion album.

Mainman Mikael Akerfeldt recently said the follow-up to 2014's Pale Communion was inspired by "the negative aspects of love." He explained: "I've struggled a little bit in my relationships these last couple of years, and that has inspired me, I think, to write.

"Not that I deliberately sat down trying to write these types of lyrics. That's literally what came out when I started trying to write. It's only in retrospect that I kind of understood what it's about."

They said: "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."

Led by founding member, singer, pianist and composer Gary Brooker since 1967, the British symphonic outfit will celebrate 50 years since the release of their single A Whiter Shade Of Pale with a concert at the city's Royal Festival Hall on March 3.

The US outfit's sixth album was released today (September 2) and guitarist Kevin Skaff reveals they had so many songs, it was impossible to feature them all.

Skaff tells Chorus FM: "There were a few super thrash songs. We've never really gotten into thrash before, but they were thrashy. There were a few songs were I was like, 'We could sell this to My Chemical Romance.' Then there were a couple songs that had like a Tom Petty vibe. It was literally all over the place."

Skaff reports that Bad Vibrations is heavier than 2013's Common Courtesy - but says it wasn't a conscious decision. He adds: "We literally wrote two songs a day for 30 days, and then we democratically voted on 15 songs to record. Then there's 11 on the record and two deluxe.

"It just kind of happened naturally that the record is heavier. I don't know why that is or what triggered that. Subconsciously, it probably just happened.

"It could have been a ton of things. It could have been because we were finally all together in a room writing again and everyone's pissed off. Who knows? But it wasn't like we targeted that we need a heavy record. It just came together that way."

And as Pixies prepare to launch their sixth album Head Carrier on September 30, Francis - aka Charles Thompson - says he can't foresee himself releasing further solo material.

He tells Rolling Stone: "I can't really justify it. It takes a lot of energy, ultimately, to put out a record. Then people want you to go on tour to promote it.

"Pixies are pretty successful in the touring realm. I can't really say, 'OK, kids, I'm going on tour again, bye. But this time I'm not going to make any money. I'm just doing it because I'm an artist.'

Guitarist Eric Peterson says: "The first record is always classic because you form the band, you're totally into it, you go through the club scene, find yourself, and write your initial album over multiple years.

"Then, you get signed and end up in a cycle. We took some time to do Brotherhood Of The Snake - and it shows. Different influences came in. Normally, there are a few straight ahead thrash songs. We haven't had this many thrash tracks since The Legacy. It's a new era."

It's described as, "A Tequila Reposado from Mexico which has been aged in French oak barrels for at least eight months. "Conserved fruit and agave aromas are paired with vanilla and caramel notes in this Reposado, that is silky smooth with a sweet aftertaste. The colour is bright golden yellow."

Mainman Townsend tells the Independent: "It's so easy to say 'Everything's sh*t, man - it's all going to hell.' Making a statement that is positive was really where I wanted the power of this record to be rooted.

The band checked in to say that while working on the new material, they decided to change up the way they'd previously worked - with Civil Isolation capturing the mood while recording.

They say in a statement: "Before we began writing the new album, we decided to create an environment where we could express ourselves and explore new ideas without feeling trapped or confined by rules, regulations or deadlines.

"We transformed an old warehouse in the industrial heart of Sheffield into our new home. This song encompasses our views and experiences, breaking from the conventional model and creating a new ideology that works for us.

I have been saying for a while that "Living A Lie" is the song that I am most proud of to date as a songwriter. Out of all the songs I have written, this song took me the longest to write in terms of time and how many times I had to re-write it because I believed that the message was so important. I was at the worst place in my life where I was having a lot of issues, in addition to being a part of music projects that would start off and then go nowhere. I was spending my days being extremely productive with my music and then days where I get defeated and nothing would happen for days. I was stuck in this spinning cycle, meanwhile I had to live my life like any other person and since I am a naturally bubbly and private person, no one knew I was having these problems ("You can fool everyone, but you can't fool me.").

I had kept hearing the words, 'Living A Lie' in conversations, songs, TV shows, books...the line would just jump out at me and scream in my face. I felt like someone knew about this secret that I was hiding because I was filled with doubt, shame and fear and couldn't get out of my own way. I have always turned to music to relate or solve any problem and realized that at that time, I couldn't find a suitable song to deal with it.

This is a song that the positive side of myself is talking to the negative side of myself. The fantastic aspect of this song can also be shown to a friend, by a friend as if they are having a conversation with them about being real with themselves. This song forced me to continuously live my life in a truthful way, no matter what happens.