Ronnie Wood turned down the chance to join Led Zeppelin.
The Rolling Stones guitarist was once managed by Peter Grant who helped turn the 'Stairway to Heaven' band into one of the world's biggest music acts but Ronnie admits he was unimpressed when he first heard them and was asked to join them.
Speaking on his Absolute Radio show, Ronnie said: "Peter Grant, used to manage myself and Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart and Mickey Waller and Nicky Hopkins back in the good old days. He was behind a band that was going to be called The New Yard Birds, which I had an offer to join, and I said 'I can't join that bunch of farmers'. Anyway, they eventually changed their name and turned out to be Led Zeppelin, and he managed them as well."
Ronnie also revealed that although he and Mick Jagger wrote many of The Rolling Stones' hits together, they often decided to split up the rights to the songs.
He explained: "'I Can Feel the Fire' is a song I swapped with Mick for 'It's Only Rock and Roll,' because we kind of wrote these songs together. He said 'You keep 'I Can Feel the Fire' and I'll keep 'It's Only Rock and Roll', and I said 'Oh alright then, Mick'."
While Ronnie, drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Keith Richards have all said they are keen to mark the 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones this year, no official announcement has yet been made.
The Beach Boys will reunite at the Grammy awards on Sunday.
The legendary pop group will start celebrations of their 50th anniversary as a band at the event when the surviving members of the their classic line up - Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks - take to the stage together for the first time in over 20 years.
The band will play a segment which will feature a medley of their hits, and they are also to be joined by Maroon 5 and Foster the People.
As well as going on tour later this year, the band is planning to make a new album.
Speaking of the group getting back together, Brian said: "This anniversary is special to me because I miss the boys and it will be a thrill for me to make a new record and be on stage with them again."
Al Jardine added: "From our humble beginnings as brothers, cousins and friends, we have been honored to sing the praises of California, and I'm really excited for our fans to be able to see us again in concert on the world stage."
The Grammy Awards take place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles this Sunday with performers including Adele, Chris Brown, Deadmau5, Foo Fighters, David Guetta,Lil Wayne, Bruno Mars and Paul McCartney.
Gorillaz are releasing a new single with Andre3000.
The cartoon band have joined with the Outkast star and former [art]LCD Soundsytem[art] frontman James Murphy for 'DoYaThing,' available to fans as a free download from shoe company Converse's website later this month.
Gorillaz main man Damon Albarn - who is also singer in Blur - opens the song with two rapped verses before Andre3000 and James take over.
The track will also be accompanied by a video from Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett, which introduced two new characters, a baboon in a karate suit and a man in a Panama hat and Mexican wrestling mask.
Damon is also said to be preparing an explicit 12-minute version of the track.
The new track is a positive thing for fans, as Jamie and Damon cast doubt over whether they would continue with Gorillaz after they completed a world tour at the end of 2010.
Damon said: "'It's been an unqualified success - bizarrely. But we always think that when we get to a point where we've achieved something that it's time to stop, don't we?"
Jamie added: ''This would be a wonderful point to leave Gorillaz; at the end of this tour, I think. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We'll never repeat this."
'DoYaThing' will be available to download from February 23.
Dave Grohl feels "responsibility and a lot of pride" to be nominated for six Grammy Awards.
The Foo Fighters frontman is excited about his band's nominations - including Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song for 'Walk' - and is glad they will fly the flag for guitar music at the awards on Sunday.
He said: "I feel a little bit of responsibility and a lot of pride. I'm f***ing proud to be in the Foo Fighters.
"We're a real band. If I were a kid in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who loves rock bands and plays with my rock band in the garage, and I turned on the Grammys and saw a rock band with choreographed dancers playing to computers, I'd be bummed until the Foo Fighters came on, and then I'd think, 'Oh, good, humans that play instruments.'"
Dave is also glad Foo Fighters' 'Wasting Light' album is up against Adele's '21' for Album of the Year, as he counts her as a true talent.
He added: "I'm glad that we're with Adele in the same category. It means we've done something right. I think she gives us all hope. She's made an incredible record, and she's an incredibly talented artist, so maybe it is true that the cream actually rises to the top. There's a reason why that record is so f***ing huge. It's good. It's inspiring when something legitimate gets recognised for what it is. It's such a cliche, but it's a huge achievement to be nominated."
Foo Fighters are one of the artists who will perform at the Grammy Awards when they take place in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Black Sabbath's reunion is in doubt after drummer Bill Ward has threatened to pull out of the project.
The band announced they were reforming their original line up for a new album and tour last year, but this has suffered setbacks, firstly when guitarist Tony Iommi was diagnosed with cancer and now Bill claims he is being asked to sign a contract which will make him lose his "rights, dignity and respectability."
In a long post on his website, he wrote: "The place I'm in feels lousy and lonely because as much as I want to play and participate, I also have to stand for something and not sign on.
"If I sign as-is, I stand to lose my rights, dignity and respectability as a rock musician.
"Since the news of Tony's illness, and the understanding that the band would move production to the U.K., I've spent everyday getting to or living in a place of readiness to leave [The US].
"That involves something of a task, and as I've tried to find out what's going on with the U.K. sessions, I've realised that I've been getting 'the cold shoulder' (and, I might add, not for the first time). Feeling somewhat ostracised, my guess is as of today, I will know nothing of what's happening unless I sign 'the unsignable contract.'"
While he has not given specific examples of his grievances with the reunion, Bill - who completes the band with Tony, bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne - insists he is not complaining because he is not being offered enough money.
He added: "My position is not greed-driven. I'm not holding out for a 'big piece' of the action (money) like some kind of blackmail deal. I'd like something that recognizes and is reflective of my contributions to the band, including the reunions that started fourteen years ago.
"After the last tour I vowed to never again sign on to an unreasonable contract. I want a contract that shows some respect to me and my family, a contract that will honour all that I've brought to Black Sabbath since its beginning."
Black Sabbath's planned album and tour would be the first to include the original line up since 1978. No other member of the band has yet commented on Bill's statement.
AC/DC have delayed recording sessions for their new album after one of them has fallen ill.
The legendary 'Back in Black' rockers - Malcolm and Angus Young, Phil Rudd, Cliff Williams and Brian Johnson - had been working on the follow up to 2008's 'Black Ice' but forced to cancel sessions when one of them was taken ill.
Choosing not to reveal which of the band it is, Brian told US radio progamme The Cowhead Show: "Hopefully this year we can get back together again.
"One of the boys is a little sick. I can't say anything, but he's getting better."
When asked if the illness was serious or terminal, he reassuringly added: "No, but just bad. He's doing wonderful. A full recovery is fully expected."
The singer also said the group are set to meet up to discuss "how we're feeling" about their 40th anniversary celebrations in 2013, and whether they will tour.
The band completed a two year tour in support of 'Back Ice' in 2010.
The group have previously said they don't work to deadlines when making their albums, as they don't like like the pressure of working to them.
Brian said: "Nobody says, 'Right, let's get in the studio by January.' That's because immediately we have an enemy - time. And that makes you worried and that makes you in a box and you have to think."
Jack White has announced that he will release his first solo album, "Blunderbuss," on April 24th.
"I've put off making records under my own name for a long time but these songs feel like they could only be presented under my name. These songs were written from scratch, had nothing to do with anyone or anything else but my own expression, my own colors on my own canvas," the White Stripes lead man said in a statement.
To kick things off right, the Nashville-based songwriter released the debut track "Love Interruption" - streaming now on his newly launched website. Joined by raspy, raw female vocals, the new track is a stripped-down, laid back, bluesy song - a refreshing change from White's harder rock trademark.
"Love Interruption" will be up for sale digitally starting tonight, and will also be pressed onto a vinyl single for release on February 7th with exclusively B-side "Machine Gun Silhouette." Both songs were recorded this winter.
The single and the album are being released through White's own Third Man Records label, in conjunction with Columbia.
Looking forward to hearing more from this album, which was apparently produced by White out of his Third Man Studio. Listen to "Love Interruption" below!
How would you feel if you discovered a historic collection of African music - forgotten by the world for decades? And what would you do if you learned it was in danger of being lost forever?
The Radio Tanzania Dar-es-Salaam archives contain over 100,000 hours of priceless Tanzanian music on damaged and deteriorating reel-to-reel tapes, and they need your help.
Radio Tanzania: Reviving the Forgotten Archives was created to raise awareness and support for our project to preserve, digitize and restore this collection and make it available to the world through mp3 downloads, a 'best of' compilation CD, and a documentary film. Check out the video below.
The project has two aims: to save and to share the Radio Tanzania archives. To save the archives, they will digitize the 100,000 hours of East African music recorded from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. This will include providing high-quality equipment for the transfer of the music and training Tanzanian employees/interns to perform the bulk of the digitization. The project leaders have spoken with a number of audio archival experts, budgeted costs, and put together a small team of people perfectly suited for the job.
To share the Radio Tanzania archives, a compilation 'Best Of" CD and a website will be released and launched, dedicated to the history and dissemination of the music, complete with background info, translations and photographs. A documentary film will also be produced, allowing viewers to get an inside look at the digitization project, the history of the archives, the evolution of Tanzanian music, and what makes this music significant for contemporary artists and listeners. The film will include interviews and performances by surviving musicians.
The Radio Tanzania archives contain priceless treasures of cultural heritage with tremendous academic, historic, anthropological and entertainment value, but their existence is in grave danger. The material at risk includes ethnographic recordings of ngoma drumming from dozens of Tanzania's tribes, Arabic taarab, energetic Afro-jazz dance music, political broadcasting used to garner support for independence movements across Africa, and more. Essentially, the archives are an audio-musical history of Tanzania's struggle for independence and its birth as a modern African nation. The digitization of this collection will be a tremendous good as an act of cultural perservation, and will benefit musicians, scholars, and music lovers alike.
Since the launch of the campaign in December, Radio Tanzania has raised $11,054, with 157 people backing the project. They have exactly 9 DAYS left before the Kickstarter campaign ends on Feb. 4th to reach their goal of $13,000. They are SO close!
To be a part of this awesome project, visit the Kickstarter page, where you can pledge anywhere for just $1 to $1000 - the more you pledge, the more involved you can be with the project! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/radiotanzania/radio-tanzania-reviving-the-forgotten-archives
For more information about the archives, the team and the plan, check out TanzaniaHeritageProject.org. Also, be sure to "Like" Radio Tanzania on Facebook and share the mission with your friends!
To hear a sample of some of the music, check out their Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/user1962241
Thank you for your support!!
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