Good day, sunshine! The Pulse Of Radio via Exclaim! are reporting Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has revealed the identity of another special guest on the band’s upcoming album Concrete And Gold, telling ET Canada that Paul McCartney plays drums on a track. Grohl explained, “He’s a pal. We’ve known him for a long time. He’s great. He’s the most wonderful person in the world. He’s a great guy.“
Grohl and surviving Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear previously collaborated with McCartney on a song called “Cut Me Some Slack” for Grohl’s 2013 documentary Sound City. Grohl told us at the time they were so starstruck working with McCartney that they didn’t realize how momentous the occasion was: “When we were recording the song with McCartney, that really was the first time Pat and Krist and I had sat down in a room and written a song from scratch and jammed it out like Nirvana used to do. That was the first time that had really happened in 20-something years. Because Paul was there, we sort of forgot that. So the first couple of hours we were there, we were so focused and freaked out on Paul McCartney being in the same room that we forgot, like, ‘Wait a minute, we used to be Nirvana, this is weird,’ you know.”
Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins described the session with McCartney for the new album, saying, “He hadn’t even heard of the song. He comes in and Dave picked up an acoustic and showed him real quick. He sat on his special drum set that his tech set up for him. I sat there with a drumstick conducting. He did two takes.”
Grohl has still not revealed the identity of another secret star who sings on the album. He recently walked back his description of the person as the “biggest pop star in the world,” telling Rolling Stone that the person “is, I think, more than that.”
He added, “This person’s been around a long time. And I think I’ve met this person maybe a few times, but I’d never spent time with this person, and we had a blast together.” He denied that the “person” was either Taylor Swift or Adele as rumored. (Says me: I think it’s Dolly Parton.)
In addition to McCartney, confirmed guests on the Sep 15th release include The Bird And The Bee’s Inara George, the Dead Weather‘s Allison Mosshart, saxophonist Dave Koz and singer Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men fame.
Meanwhile, Foo Fighters will perform at Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival this weekend — but not as headliners alongside the Killers and Muse. The Foos will instead play one of the official aftershows, at the 1,100-person Metro Chicago tomorrow (Aug 4th). It will be the first concert in the U.S. for the Foos since the BottleRock Festival over Memorial Day weekend, and serve as a warm-up for their upcoming tour. Other acts playing aftershows during Lollapalooza include Live, Liam Gallagher, Royal Blood and more. (Diffuser)
The PRP via Pulse Of Radio says Five Finger Death Punch is celebrating the recent 10th anniversary of its debut album, The Way Of The Fist, by offering fans a series of personalized plaques. The steeply-priced pieces run as high as $850.00 and resemble gold or platinum record awards, with some notable changes and options. Shorts and T-shirts are also available. View the plaques and other 10th anniversary merchandise here.
The Way Of The Fist was a success out of the box and guitarist Zoltan Bathory told us a while back how it happened: “The whole thing happened organically. We recorded this album on our own, and then we put the songs on MySpace, just a couple of them, and it sort of exploded. Within a couple of weeks, we had four, five thousand downloads a day. So by the time, you know, the record hit, you know, we had kind of an idea that it’s gonna go off pretty seriously, you know.”
The Way Of The Fist was originally released on July 31st, 2007 and was certified gold in the United States on Apr 13th, 2011. Meanwhile, the band’s seventh studio effort remains in limbo with the group’s longtime record label Prospect Park.
Five Finger Death Punch delivered its follow-up to 2015’s Got Your Six to Prospect Park several months ago, but a legal battle with the company has delayed the LP’s release. The band filed a new lawsuit against Prospect Park in April, asking a judge to release them from their contract and order the company to pay over a million dollars in damages. The label sued Five Finger Death Punch in 2016 for breach of contract, alleging that the group wanted to rush the recording of a new album. The band signed a new North American recording deal with Rise Records last year.
This makes me so insanely angry right now. Someone who attended Chester Bennington‘s funeral can only be described as muthaf-ing low-life pieces of sh!t. In at least two instances, the items given out at the service were posted on eBay for absurd amounts of money. The “packages” included a funeral program, wristband, laminate and a pin with Chester’s signature engraved on it. Two listings initially appeared on eBay selling the items for upwards of $34,000 and $51,000. eBay later took the posts down, although an image of them was posted on Twitter. (Exclaim)
Green Day & Stevie Wonder are among the acts performing at this year’s Global Citizen Festival. The sixth annual event will take place on Sep 23rd in New York City’s Central Park. Also performing are the Chainsmokers, the Killers, Pharrell Williams, the Lumineers and more, with other special guests to be announced soon. Tickets to the festival are always given out via an online lottery to individuals who contribute to the Global Citizen project at www.globalcitizen.org. (FMQB)
Love this! Blabbermouth reporting our friends Kaytie and Cutter of Razor 94.7 in Oshkosh, WI did a killer new interview with Halestorm‘s Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the band’s follow-up to 2015’s Into The Wild Life album.
“We’re writing,” Joe said. “I think the record’s written, and we actually probably have a bunch of it recorded, but… I don’t know. We haven’t, like, officially started, but we’re about to. So we just have to, yeah, dive in and see where we’re at and go for it.”
“We picked a producer before we had any songs written,” Lzzy added, referring to Nick Raskulinecz, the acclaimed producer who has previously worked with Rush, Korn, Alice In Chains, Rise Against and Deftones, in addition to having helmed Halestorm‘s third covers EP, ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP, which came out in January. “And he basically said, ‘Hey, I have this studio and I have this pre-pro budget situation and I wanna do the record with you guys, so let’s start.’ So we started literally from scratch — like [with] no real ideas — and ended up doing a bunch of instrumentals with him, and then I’d take it home and write over them. And, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. So, like Joe said, we’re recording and we’re writing, and then, in a few weeks, we have, like, the big meeting with label and management, and then we go from there.”
“A lot of the demos could just be keeper takes,” continued Joe. “I don’t know… It’s all recorded well enough.”
Asked about the overall sound of the new material, Lzzy said: “It sounds like us [laughs] — really! It’s interesting, ’cause Nick is such a rock producer, so going into this process, I wasn’t worried about, ‘Okay, is it gonna sound rock enough?’ or whatever, ’cause we worked with a couple of producers in the past that are obsessed with, ‘You have to cross over to Top 40,’ or we’re, like, their guinea pig, first time doing a rock band, so you have that stress in the back of your mind, like, ‘No, we have to make sure this rocks.’ And this time, we have no stress like that at all.”
“Nick is such a rock [guy], he sees us as, like, ‘This is what I haven’t heard you do yet,’” Joe added. “So we’re kind of bouncing our ideas off his… He knows what rocks and what he wants — he’s just a fan — so it’s kind of fun to bounce the ideas off him and see if… ‘You think that’d be cool?’ And he’s, like, ‘I think it would be cooler if it rocks a little more.’ And we’re, like, ‘Okay. Then let’s do that.‘”
According to Lzzy, Halestorm‘s upcoming album will showcase the tremendous playing ability of her chief bandmate, her kid brother Arejay Hale, who took over the drum kit their parents bought for Lzzy and is still playing behind her.
“I can’t wait till you hear Arejay on this record; it’s unlike anything that you’ve heard,” Lzzy said. “I mean, we all know Arejay, and he’s not here to defend himself, but he’s nuts in the best way, and he’s a modern-day Keith Moon when everyone sees him live, but no one’s really ever been able to capture that yet, and I think we’re doing that. We’ve been shocked, and I’m his big sister — it takes a lot to shock me with him. And we’re, like, ‘You got him to do that? That’s crazy!‘”
Meanwhile, don’t forget to send in your questions for ASK LZZY on hardDrive XL with Lou Brutus! She loves answering fan questions, so find the link on the home page and gets yours in now!
Motionless In White will film a music video in Los Angeles next week on Tuesday, Aug 8th, and are seeking extras for it. You can find the details on how to attend via the band’s social media channels. Motionless In White is currently touring in support of its fourth album, Graveyard Shift, which arrived in May and features the Top 20 rock radio single “Loud.” (The PRP)
Lots o’ folks celebrating birthdays today: Metallica’s James “Papa Het” Hetfield turns 54, Stephen Carpenter (that’s Stef-en to you) of Deftones is 46, Tom Brady hits the Big 4-0 and the amazing Tony Bennett is 91.