Rock News

Alice In Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell told Spin.com that the band's late lead singer, Layne Staley, was a fan of Elton John, who plays piano on the title track of the band's upcoming album, Black Gives Way To Blue. Cantrell explained, "Layne's mom reminded me that Elton John was Layne's first concert and she said he was blown away. Layne told me that once, but I had totally forgotten about it. It brought back some really cool memories. There's a lot of really weird things lining up here. Number one: the significance of Elton to Alice In Chains. Number two: it was Layne's first concert. And to have Elton play on a song for Layne, whew, it means so much to us."


Nine Inch Nails blew away the audience at New York City's tiny Webster Hall on Sunday night (August 23rd) by playing its classic 1994 album The Downward Spiral in its entirety for the first time, according to Billboard.com. The gig was only the second on Nine Inch Nails' 10-show "Wave Goodbye" trek and opened with the album, which features the hits "Closer," "Hurt" and "March Of The Pigs," played in sequence. Frontman Trent Reznor told the audience, "I've always wanted to play that whole record, and this seemed like the time to do it."


Pearl Jam's performance video for its new single, "The Fixer," has been posted online. The clip was shot at a secret show the band played in its hometown of Seattle back in May, and was directed by Cameron Crowe, the band's longtime friend and director of the films Singles and Almost Famous. The song comes off Pearl Jam's upcoming ninth album, Backspacer, which is due out on September 20th through Target. The video will also reportedly appear in Target commercials promoting Backspacer. In other news, another song from the CD called "Supersonic" began leaking over the weekend, while 30-second clips of every track on the record are streaming at Amazon.co.uk.


MySpace Music began streaming the new song "All Is Love" by Karen O and the Kids on Monday (August 24th). The track is taken from the soundtrack for the upcoming film Where The Wild Things Are, for which the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer and guitarist composed and recorded the score. The soundtrack comes out September 29th, while the movie opens on October 16th.