Search Results for: european

Rick Van Santen, a co-president of Goldenvoice, a Los Angeles concert promotion company that ushered punk rock from the fringes of the music scene to a wide audience, died last Sunday at his home in Ventura County of flu-related complications, his Goldenvoice partner Paul Tollett said. He was 41. In the 1980s, a time when major promoters shunned punk because of its reputation as a violent subculture, Goldenvoice presented acts in large, established rooms with quality sound, such as the Hollywood Palladium and the Palace (now the Avalon). “There cannot be any L.A. band since the early ’80s that was… Read more »

German media giant Bertelsmann named a new chairman Wednesday to take over for Gerd Schulte-Hillen, who announced his resignation last month after a clash over corporate strategy with the company chief executive. Dieter Vogel, Schulte-Hillen’s former deputy, will start Jan. 1 in the new position, a company statement said. Schulte-Hillen, a 63-year-old company veteran, agreed to step down as supervisory board chairman after he and CEO Gunter Thielen developed “different views on the strategic direction of Bertelsmann,” according to the Guetersloh-based company. Bertelsmann and Sony Corp. are merging their music businesses, bringing together the world’s No. 2 and No. 5… Read more »

Metallica and Godsmack are gearing up for a 2004 North American arena tour which could stretch as far as 80 dates, Billboard.com has learned. The trek will begin March 2 in Phoenix; other confirmed dates include March 8 in San Francisco and March 28 in Seattle. The first batch of ticket on-sales will begin Saturday (Dec. 20) via Ticketmaster. Metallica has already committed to the Big Day Out tour of Australia and New Zealand after the first of the year, plus European festival dates beginning in late May and stretching into July. The group is touring in support of its… Read more »

Ozzy Osbourne fractured several bones including a neck vertebra in an all-terrain vehicle accident but the injuries are “not a major problem,” a doctor said Tuesday. Osbourne, 55, was “stable and comfortable” after emergency surgery that restored the flow to a blood vessel damaged in Monday’s accident, said Dr. Dick Jack, the medical director at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, west of London. “When he was admitted, he had a fractured left collarbone, he had some damage to the blood vessel that is underneath it, he had eight fractured ribs on the left side and, in addition to that, an… Read more »

U.S. shock rocker Marilyn Manson is the target of a criminal inquiry in Switzerland, after a religious group made a formal complaint about his stage act. Zurich District Prosecutor Michael Scherrer told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the artist was under investigation for allegedly breaching Swiss law protecting religion as well as making incitements to violence during a concert in the city in February 2001. Manson – whose real name is Brian Warner – and his band members take their first names from pop culture icons and their surnames from famous serial killers. He also uses the sobriquet “Antichrist… Read more »

The Prince of Darkness is opening up about his dark past. In a candid interview appearing Monday in London’s Daily Mirror, Ozzy Osbourne revealed that he was molested as an 11-year-old schoolboy while growing up in the working-class city of Birmingham, England. “I was sexually abused when I was a kid,” the heavy-metal icon told the Mirror. “Two boys used to wait for me to come after school. Then they would f-k around with me. They didn’t f-k me, but they messed around with me. “They would force me to drop my pants and all that s-t. They felt me… Read more »

What do you get when you put a couple of pop-punk guys together with a few near-legendary dudes from New York’s underground hardcore scene? You get Hazen Street, a hard-edged but catchy, two-singer-fronted band that has become the first act to be signed to Benji and Joel Madden’s D.C. Flag imprint. The signing of Hazen Street is neither a leg up to a buddy band nor an attempt to cash in on a current trend. For the brothers who call Good Charlotte their day job, putting out the new supergroup’s debut is a chance to show some love to the… Read more »

Lots of pop stars who are huge in Europe never succeed in the United States, but judging by Thursday’s MTV Europe Music Awards, Europeans can’t seem to get enough of American idols. Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles and Christina Aguilera were the big winners at this year’s racy, profanity-laden EMAs, held in Edinburgh, Scotland. Eight of the 12 awards were presented to U.S. residents. Timberlake won three trophies: Best Album for Justified, Best Pop and Best Male. The Neptunes, who produced much of Justified,presented him with the latter, and after they gave him the statue of an “M” on a spring,… Read more »

Splinter, the eagerly-awaited new album from The Offspring, will be released by Columbia Records on Tuesday, December 9. The first single from Splinter, “Hit That,” is the #1 most added track at modern rock and rock formats this week. Splinter is The Offspring’s 7th album and is produced by Brendan O’Brien – who worked with The Offspring on Conspiracy Of One and has helmed projects by Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Rage Against The Machine, Korn, and many others – and features legendary drummer Josh Freese (the Vandals, A Perfect Circle) on each of the album’s 12 tracks. “After seven albums, it… Read more »

Bertelsmann AG and Sony Corp. announced a preliminary plan to merge their music businesses Thursday, setting the stage for a music company that would vie for world primacy with Universal Music Group. A merger of Sony Music Entertainment and Bertelsmann’s BMG, if it comes to pass, would bring together the world’s No. 2 and No. 5 music companies as the industry struggles with losses blamed on music piracy. The new company, to be called Sony BMG, would be equally owned by Sony and Bertelsmann and run by Andrew Lack, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment. Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, the… Read more »