Blog Posts by Andy Greene

  • Listen: Scott Weiland’s Version of ‘Winter Wonderland’

    Scott Weiland and Christmas music are probably not things that most
    people associate together in their minds. But the Stone Temple Pilots
    frontman - whose album of Christmas classics Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
    hit shelves earlier this week - says he's always loved holiday
    standards. "I've been listening to these songs my entire life," he tells
    Rolling Stone. "It was a great honor to do this album."

    The album features standards like "White Christmas," "Silent Night"
    and "I'll Be Home For Christmas."  Many of the songs were cut with a
    large orchestra. (You can hear a stream of "Winter Wonderland" below.)
    Weiland's vocal style varies wildly between tracks. "I've never recorded
    something commercially before where I'm crooning," he says. "But if you
    listen to my solo albums it shows that there is such a major difference
    in the music that influences me and the way that I use my voice. I look
    at my voice as an instrument. My two favorite singers, John Lennon and
    David Bowie, had very

    Read More »from Listen: Scott Weiland’s Version of ‘Winter Wonderland’
  • Leonard Cohen Gearing Up for First Album of New Material in Seven Years

    Leonard Cohen has been working on a new album for years, but it's finally hitting shelves on January 31st.  Speaking to the press in Oviedo, Spain while in town to accept an award, Cohen said that the disc will be called Old Ideas. "I've played it for a few people and they seem to like it," Cohen said, adding that he still struggles with songwriting. "When
    you're writing, you're always an absolute beginner. Each time you take
    up your guitar or sit by a blank page, you start from scratch. It's a
    struggle."

    Cohen hasn't released an album of new material since 2004's Dear Heather,
    but he went an epic world tour between 2008 and 2010 where previewed
    new material onstage, including "Darkness," "Lullaby," "Born In Chains"
    and "Feels So Good." According to a post
    on his official online forum, only "Darkness" made the final cut for
    the disc. (Watch a video of Cohen performing "Darkness" at a 2009
    concert below.)

    In June of 2010, Cohen spoke with Rolling Stone about his new album. "I'm

    Read More »from Leonard Cohen Gearing Up for First Album of New Material in Seven Years
  • Liam Gallagher Open to Oasis Reunion

    The Stone Roses may not be the only Britpop group gearing up for a reunion. Liam Gallager tells Rolling Stone that he would consider reconciling with his brother Noel to reunite Oasis for the 20th anniversary of the release of (What's The Story) Morning Glory.
    "In 2015, if we can put our s--t aside, we can tour and play the album
    in its entirety for the 20th anniversary," he says. "I'd be up for that,
    if it's on our terms. There's got to be two-way respect."

    In a radio interview this past August, Noel Gallagher said that breaking up Oasis was a rash decision. "We
    could maybe have all gone off and done other things for a few years,"
    he said. "In my own head the 2015, 20-year anniversary of Morning Glory
    is looming and we could have maybe come back, made a new album and
    played that album in its entirety and gone and been the greatest thing
    ever, but there you go."

    The two brothers no longer speak, but Liam tells Rolling Stone
    that Noel's public comments got him thinking about the

    Read More »from Liam Gallagher Open to Oasis Reunion
  • Thirty Years In, Weird Al Yankovic Shows He’s Still Got It

    Weird Al Yankovic
    only sang about one minute of his 1988 classic "Lasagna" at the Count
    Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey last night, but he made it count.
    Clutching an accordion, Yankovic delivered the song (to the tune of "La
    Bamba") with the same look of crazed intensity in his eyes that Bruce
    Springsteen has when he belts out the beginning of "Backstreets." Now,
    it's pretty tough to be hysterically funny when singing a G-rated song
    about lasagna. In fact, Weird Al might be the only man on the planet who
    can pull it off.  The man is a national treasure. 

    Weird Al fans are the kind of people who cheer for songs long before
    the band plays a single note. They can tell what's coming next solely by
    the costume the band is wearing when they walk onstage after video
    interludes. If they have on long beards, it's time for "Amish Paradise."
    Flannel shirts mean "Smells Like Nirvana" and pocket protectors mean
    "White and Nerdy." 

    The show is as rehearsed as much as any Broadway play. It

    Read More »from Thirty Years In, Weird Al Yankovic Shows He’s Still Got It
  • Peter Tork: Monkees Canceled Tour Due to a ‘Glitch’

    Earlier this year, the Monkees
    put aside a decade of acrimony and toured in support of their 45th
    anniversary. They did 43 dates in Europe and America before the tour was
    called off with little explanation in August. "I'm not really at liberty to get into detail about what happened," Monkees bassist/guitarist Peter Tork tells Rolling Stone.
    "But there were some business affairs that couldn't be coordinated
    correctly. We hit a glitch and there was just this weird dislocation at
    one point. I can't say anything more without getting into the stuff that
    we have to keep down. We need to work on this stuff outside of the
    public eye."

    According to Tork, the group's internal problems
    from the 2001 tour didn't resurface. "I find myself much less reactive
    than I used to be," he says. "Between everybody's behavior changing
    enough and restructuring the way that we related to one another . . . We
    did it all right. We had a good time on stage, laughed and created
    jokes. Jonsey [Davy Jones] and

    Read More »from Peter Tork: Monkees Canceled Tour Due to a ‘Glitch’
  • Members of Blink-182 Discuss Overcoming Years of Acrimony

    We recently posted a long series of interviews with the members of Blink-182 -
    but that was only the beginning. Here's part two of our series of
    Q&As with Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge and Travis Barker, conducted
    backstage at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York. We
    spoke about the difficult birth of their new album Neighborhoods,
    how they finally learned to communicate and compromise after years of
    strife, and Delonge's belief that that the band has embraced a "much
    more modern and relevant form of rock & roll."

    Mark Hoppus

    Everybody in the group spent the last few years working on
    different projects. Do you think that  helped the creative process after
    you guys convened to cut the new album?
    Yeah, absolutely. I
    think that doing things outside of Blink allows us to find out what our
    skill sets are, what we're good at, what we lack, what each person
    brings to the table. I think probably the most important lesson we
    learned from taking five years off from Blink was

    Read More »from Members of Blink-182 Discuss Overcoming Years of Acrimony
  • Our recent interview with Peter Gabriel was more than just
    the Genesis
    Inquisition
    . During the course of a 40-minute chat, we touched upon
    everything from Bruce Springsteen to the overuse of "Solsbury Hill" in movie
    trailers. We also talked about his long-awaited studio album I/O, which
    is fast becoming the Chinese Democracy of Peter Gabriel albums. But we
    started off with New Blood, his new CD where he re-recorded
    songs from his back catalog
    with an orchestra. 

    Can you explain how New Blood came out of your Scratch My Back
    covers project?
    When we brought Scratch My Back on the
    road we wanted to have two hours of music and I only had one hour with
    Scratch, so we started working up my own stuff. It was opening up
    something and I wanted to explore it a bit more. I was really pleased with the
    Scratch My Back portion of the show, but people seemed to really like
    the second half better. I was really enjoying it too. I felt that we were
    discovering something special. It wasn't just an orchestral

    Read More »from Peter Gabriel: Story That Bruce Springsteen Was Inspiration for ‘Solsbury Hill’ is ‘Hogwash’
  • Filmmakers Looking to Cast an Unknown as Elvis Presley

    Filmmaker John Scheinfeld made his name directing documentaries about John
    Lennon and Harry Nilsson, but he's the first to admit that it's hard to pull off
    a great feature film about a famous rock star. "A lot of those movies try to do
    too much," he tells Rolling Stone. "They go cradle to grave and they're
    racing through scenes and they don't give dramatic moments their due. They also
    feel obligated to show the artist on stage, so you're seeing concert
    performances with an actor. As good as they are, they aren't the artist. We have
    an image of these people in our mind, and an actor just won't match up."

    With all that in mind, Scheinfeld has a big challenge in
    front of him: he's been hired to write and direct Fame & Fortune,
    which tells the story of Elvis
    Presley
    through the eyes of his best friend Sonny West. "I want to do an
    intimate drama and one of the guys happens to be Elvis," he says. "We're not
    doing his full life. We're not doing everything that ever happened to him. We're

    Read More »from Filmmakers Looking to Cast an Unknown as Elvis Presley

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