Welcome to this year’s edition of “New Year’s Resolutions for Rockers Who Need Them,” where we assist musicians with setting goals for the coming 12 months. It’s not an easy job, but one that begrudgingly must be done.
Rockers, rollers and performers of all sorts are just like us: they make resolutions on December 31, sign up for classes at the gym and still find themselves face down in a basket of Snickers fun size by January 2. Sometimes though, they don’t have the time to sit down and figure out what areas they need to do better in in the coming year, which is where this column comes in to save the day.
Below are some bits of advice for our favorite musicians, some who need a little confidence building or direction in figuring out how to keep the upcoming year moving in a forward trajectory.
WHO: THE ROLLING STONES
RECOMMENDED RESOLUTION: THINK ABOUT CALLING IT A DAY
Now, before hellfire rains down from all the Stones honks – of which I proudly consider myself to be a card-carrying member – note that this isn’t a call for Mick, Keith and…well, Mick and Keith, to shut it down completely. It’s just a recommendation to dial it back a little bit.
The band’s two co-founders, and sole remaining original members, are each 80 years old. “New guy” Ronnie Wood is 76. And while the recent studio album, Hackney Diamonds, is their best since 1981’s Tattoo You, putting some 20 stadium shows on the docket this spring feels a bit too ambitious at this juncture.
Then again, these are the same guys who modeled their careers after the old American bluesmen who would be playing well into their 90s, sitting on a stage in a smoky basement club with a guitar in one hand and a glass full of whiskey at their side. Who knows? Maybe the Glimmer Twins have it all figured out.
WHO: AC/DC
RECOMMENDED RESOLUTION: LET THERE BE ROCK ONE MORE TIME
It’s been a somewhat tumultuous decade for the “Thunder from Down Under.” Midway through the tour for their 2014 album Rock or Bust, frontman Brian Johnson’s inability to perform live due to hearing issues led the group to, for all intents, kick him to the curb while they moved forward with Axl Rose at the mic. Those shows with the Guns N’ Roses leader ended at the Wells Fargo Center in September 2016.
Since then, rhythm guitarist and co-founder Malcolm Young passed away. Bassist Cliff Williams retired. Drummer Phil Rudd was able to put a bizarre murder-for-hire plot he was arrested for behind him to rejoin the group. Perhaps most importantly, in 2020 the band released Power Up, one of their strongest studio efforts in recent memory and the perfect way to go off into the sunset…following one more lap around the world.
Rightfully or not, there are those who feel cheated at the “Axl/DC” run of dates. Johnson is now fully able to do gigs again, evident at this fall’s headlining slot at the PowerTrip festival in the Southern California desert, where the band delivered a stunning set of classics. It’s time to follow that up with a proper goodbye. There doesn’t even have to be anything expansive; do 10 major market shows in North America and a handful of European dates before calling it a day. Let the fans salute you before riding off down the highway to hell.
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WHO: OASIS
RECOMMENDED RESOLUTION: REUNITE
As a Christmas present for his fans, Noel Gallagher last week released a demo of him covering the Joy Division classic “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” To many of his supporters, it was a gift they’d like to send back, even though the elder Gallagher brother had previously performed the track live.
All the long-suffering Oasis fans have been wanting in their collective stocking since the group tore itself apart in spectacular fashion back in 2009, is to have Noel and his younger sibling Liam bury the hatchet and put the kings of Britpop back together. Instead, we’ve got the latter heading out on a 2024 tour where he’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the band’s debut, Definitely Maybe.
Those concerts are sure to be fine and well, Liam rarely fails to deliver these days, but it comes across as a consolation when these two stubborn nitwits just need to get into a room with one another and hash things out. Come on now, as Liam might say, let’s make this happen.
WHO: LYNYRD SKYNYRD
RECOMMENDED RESOLUTION: STOP THE CHARADE
Checking back through the archives, it was two years ago in this very same space where we called for bands with one original member left to either call it a day or call it a tribute and stop ripping off the fans under false pretenses.
One of the biggest offenders at that time was Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now, with this year’s passing of guitarist Gary Rossington, there are exactly zero originals left in the lineup of the Southern rock icons. At this point, it’s not just a disgrace that the scabs continue parading around under the Skynyrd banner, it’s flat out wrong.
“The outcry of the fans were such that they said, ‘Please don’t let this be the end of it,’” current guitarist Rickey Medlocke said recently in an interview where he defended the decision to go on in the wake of Rossington’s death. “And so, we decided, along with the former bandmembers’ estates and relatives, that we were gonna go back out and take the great music to the fans.”
That’s fine. And songs like “Gimme Three Steps” and “Sweet Home Alabama,” no matter how overplayed on rock radio, need to be heard by upcoming generations. But do the right thing and call it a tribute. Because no matter how many hours you’ve logged in the Skynyrd ranks, you didn’t have a hand in writing those songs or putting them at legendary status in the first place.
WHO: PAUL MCCARTNEY
RECOMMENDED RESOLUTION: FIX UP THEN FOR NOW
Defying expectations of how these things can go terribly wrong, Paul McCartney led the charge, aided by technology commissioned by director Peter Jackson, for a brand-new Beatles song in 2023. The craziest part of all? It turns out “Now and Then” is a great piece of music.
Had the surviving Beatles been able to use that technology back in the mid-90s, perhaps the songs they did with John Lennon’s home demos, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love,” not come out sounding so…disconnected. Both have the bones to make up truly beautiful compositions, evident in the end results for the Anthology series. And despite all the hoopla that “Now and Then” would be “the last Beatles song,” no one said the past couldn’t be retooled a bit.
Take that Jackson tech that extracted Lennon’s vocals so well on the new song and reconfigure “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird.” Make them sound truly whole and, mainly, like the Beatles songs they have the potential to be.
A version of this article appears in this week’s print and online editions of my syndicated Rock Music Menu column under the title “New Year’s Resolutions for the Stones, AC/DC, Skynyrd and more“
The Chronicles of Michael Christopher 