Today's Day in Rock Stories

Former AC/DC, Ozzy, Dio Members Form New Supergroup

In the past, the lineup has also featured Jet drummer Chris Cester, Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin and The Zutons drummer Sean Payne, reports NME. That's impressive enough, but during Tuesday night's gig, the Jaded Hearts welcomed a bona fide Beatles legend to the stage -- Sir Paul McCartney.

During the show, Macca joined the group for "Helter Skelter" and Bellamy shared footage from the incredible moment on Instagram. 'Just did Macca with Macca #walkinglegend," he wrote.

"Devastated for fans and her family- Dolores O'Riorden had such an exquisite voice, so distinctive and defining of an era," tweeted Liz Phair. "She would have continued to be a rare musical treasure late into a long life #gonetoosoon."

"We are crushed to hear the news about the passing of Dolores O'Riordan," tweeted rockers Duran Duran. "Our thoughts go out to her family at this terrible time."

Organized by Eric Clapton and Olivia Harrison, the November 29, 2002 show at London's Royal Albert Hall landed one year to the day after Harrison's passing from lung cancer at the age of 58.

The evening featured George's songs, and music he loved, performed by a lineup that included Clapton, Joe Brown, Dhani Harrison, Jools Holland, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Monty Python, Tom Petty, Billy Preston, Ravi and Anoushka Shankar, Ringo Starr and many more.

"We will always celebrate George's birthday," says Olivia, "and this year we are releasing Concert For George in a very special package in memory of a special man."

Directed by David Leland, "Concert For George" will be reissued as a Deluxe Edition Box Set, a 4-LP Box Set, plus new CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray combo packages.

The song has quite a bit of history; we wrote and recorded this years ago under a different band name with a friend Shinji, from the Japanese band Secret 7 Line, but never released it.

Andy (Vocals/Guitar) was living in Brisbane and I (Mark (Guitar)) was in Sydney for work when I heard the news Shinji passed away in a car accident. Andy and I hadn't spoken much, I guess we were both busy with work and other projects, but when I heard about Shinji it was the first time we spoke. We threw around the idea of finishing the song and giving to Secret 7 Line for a tribute, which never came about. We decided to make 2 versions of the song, with the Shinji version for Japan release only.

We thought it would be cool to contact one of our idols Nick Thompson from Hit The Lights to see if he would feature on the track. We couldn't believe he was keen and Andy and I kept it a bit of a secret from Anthony (Bass) and Josh (Drums) until the night of shooting the video clip. Suffice to say, they were just as stoked as we were.

The song was written about how once a month we would go down the Gold Coast, get a hotel and drink ourselves silly. We tried to have that simple story line as the clip. We were so lucky in many aspects, firstly to get someone like Clay Fisher to direct and also everything to fall into place. We had arranged with the hotel to play in the room within a certain time frame and as we start up the first take I think "shit, this is way louder than I thought it would be", as we finish the take there is a banging on the door! That's it! We will have to stop, we have no plan b! Little lady at the door, "would you like fresh towels?".

We are so stoked how the clip and song has been received so far with over 65,000+ views on Facebook in the first 3 days. We never imagined that sort of response! Much love to everyone who has checked it out!

So, what made Sgt. Pepper No. 1 again? A deluxe 50th anniversary reissue that dropped in late May of last year kicked the record back to the No. 1 slot on the U.K.'s Official Albums Chart on June 8, 2017. That's 49 years and 125 days since the last time Sgt. Pepper took the No. 1 position, on Feb. 3, 1968, making it the largest gap between No. 1 records.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band first entered the No. 1 spot on the chart on June 10, 1967, and stayed there for 23 consecutive weeks. It went back up to No. 1 four more times between November of 1967 and February of 1968.

The trek will open in Berlin, Germany on August 31, with stops set for France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Italy and Holland before things wrap up in London on October 23.

Tickets for the announced shows will go on sale from Friday, January 26 and U2.com subscribers will be first in line in a pre-sale beginning Thursday, January 18 at 10:00 am and running through Saturday, January 20 at 5:00 pm

A Perfect Circle: It's the year for new A Perfect Circle music. The band has promised to unleash their first studio album since 2004's eMOTIVe sometime this spring, and judging by the band's two new tracks, "The Doomed" and "Disillusioned," the set will be doom-y and atmospheric, in classic A Perfect Circle style. Guitarist Billy Howerdel has a fancy for Gibsons, especially Les Pauls. "It's all I really play," he told Gibson.com in a previous interview, adding that, "They're solid. They do well when you throw them 30 feet in the air. Plus, there's the beefiness of the sound, the playability, the scale. I prefer the Gibson scale. It really comes down to the sound for me. To me, there is no other guitar I go towards."

Five Finger Death Punch: Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Jason Hook told Gibson.com last last year that the band "finished a brand new record," and the group made the news public with a tweet announcing, "new album this spring." Hook, who rocks his own signature M-4 Sherman, also told Gibson.com that, "We work very hard on these records. I think it's your standard percentage of meat-and-potatoes Five Finger Death Punch that everyone expects and likes, but then we took a couple songs and said, "Let's try to push ourselves a bit and step outside the box, stylistically," and I think we did that, too. So, I'm curious to see how the public will react to those songs that are slightly different for us."

Judas Priest: You know it's going to be a good year when new Judas Priest music is involved. The British metal heavyweights continue to soar with their towering classic metal sounds, and their new album, Firepower, is expected to drop in the early part of 2018. Longstanding members Rob Halford and Glenn Tipton wrote the tracks with their newest band member, the talented Flying V and Les Paul player Richie Faulkner. "Gibson is part of who I am as a player," Faulkner told Gibson.com in a previous interview. "It's been synonymous with rock 'n' roll and blues and wherever you can imagine."

Megadeth: Megadeth enjoyed major success with their 2016 studio set, Dystopia, which earned the band their first Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. Now, is new Megadeth up ahead for 2018? Frontman Dave Mustaine recently tweeted that the band will be back in the studio to work on a new album by the middle of 2018. "I work in the studio all the time. Do yo mean for the new record? That will be prolly the mid of 18," he tweeted in response to a fan's question. Bring it on!

Ozzy Osbourne: Metal icon Ozzy Osbourne has already announced that his farewell tour will run from 2018 to 2020, but what about a final album? Ozzy has been dropping hints that he's working on a new record, and now that Zakk Wylde is back in the fold, we're extra excited for Ozzy's final studio collection.

Tool: Could 2018 be the year for new music from Maynard James Keenan's Tool and A Perfect Circle? We can hope. Fans have been begging Tool to release their follow-up to 2006's 10,000 Days for years now, and drummer Danny Carey has implied that the new tunes will be out by the middle of 2018. That said, rumors of a new Tool album have circulated for years. What is confirmed is that Tool, along with A Perfect Circle, will both perform at Rock on the Range festival this May in Columbus, Ohio.

The rocker will now play shows in Biloxi, MS, Atlanta, GA, Valley Center, CA and Indio, CA in April and May in addition to his festival appearances at the Welcome To Rockville Festival in Jacksonville, FL on April 29, the Carolina Rebellion in Concord, NC on May 6 and Napa Valley, CA's Bottlerock on May 26.

Ticket pre-sales begin Wednesday, January 17 at 10am local venue time (password: cyberpunk) with general public seats available Friday, January 19 at 10am local time.

Last fall, the singer released newly-remastered vinyl editions of the solo debut, 1983's "Rebel Yell", and the 2008 collection, "Idolize Yourself: The Very Best of Billy Idol", as part of a reissues campaign.

The tribute show will feature his all-star band with special guests accompanied by 'newly remastered and never-before-released audio and video of Prince." The show is scheduled to takes place at the Target Center on April 21.

The trek will feature support from special guests Rituals Of Mine from April 11th through April 25th and Ed Harcourt will be taking over on April 27th through May 15th.

Who was she?: Back in the day, music was even more sliced and diced into categories than it is now. However, if there was one "Gospel" artist who was the genre's breakout name, the first real crossover superstar, it was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Sister Tharpe was rockin' before rockin' existed - her first hit (and it was even called "Rock Me"!) was way back in 1938, when Elvis was a mere toddler.

She was born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas in 1915, and was, frankly, a remarkable prodigy. Rosetta was singing gospel in church by age six, and soon playing some mean guitar too. Via a move to Chicago, where her musical education exploded, she headed to New York City. Like a righteous gatecrasher, she was soon playing at the Cotton Club with Duke Ellington as her teens swung by, she played with Dizzy Gillespie, then with swing bandleader Lucky Millinder. She soon headed back south to tour with fellow gospel icons the Dixie Hummingbirds.

That first single of hers had come in 1938, and in 1945, her sassy single "Strange Things Happening Every Day" - with its hot guitar solo - was the first gospel single to cross over on the Billboard race charts, what we'd now call R&B. Amid all the claims for the "first rock'n'roll record" over the years, "Strange Things Happening Every Day" has as good a claim as any.

Signature Sounds: The thing is, it remains hard to categorize Rosetta Tharpe's music as it is broad. Pure Gospel, smooth jazz, horn-backed ballads, proto rock'n'roll jump rhythms, shredding guitar (yes!) - she covered a lot of bases. Her guitar playing though was notable, and she was one of the very first players to use distortion. Which for a gospel singer is pretty darn extraordinary.

Tharpe was a brilliant guitar player, yet almost never acknowledged in the annals of rock'n'roll. It shouldn't be a surprise really, even if it's wrong. The "accepted" tale of rock'n'roll - with Elvis as some sort of fountainhead - is the story of white men, and Sister Tharpe was, of course, neither white nor a man. But, whooa, she could play.

According to fellow gospel star of the day, Inez Andrews, "The fellows would look at her, and I don't know whether there was envy or what, but sometimes she would play rings around them. She was the only lady I know that would pick a guitar and the men would stand back." "She could play the guitar like nobody else � nobody!" added Lottie Henry, a member of Tharpe's back-up vocal group The Rosettes.