2009 promises to be a good year for classic rock fans, with a meaty list of new albums and tours already on the books. We've given the crystal ball a good shake and here's what we see.
New Music
2009 will bring a new Springsteen album - Courtesy Columbia Records•
Working On A Dream (release date 1/27) will be Bruce Springsteen's 16th studio album. The release is timed a few days ahead of The Boss's halftime show at the Super Bowl, and a couple of weeks after the release of a greatest hits compilation. The title track (
Listen/Download) was released in November.
• A new U2 release, No Line On The Horizon (pre-order) has a March 3 release date.
• Aerosmith are reportedly working on an album that is expected to be released in the spring
• Look for a new KISS album by summertime
• Heart, Boston, Fleetwood Mac and Foreigner have talked about the possibility of new albums sometime in 2009.
On Tour
Ronnie Wood & Rod Stewart will be part of the 2009 Faces reunion - photo by Mike Mainz/Getty Images• Surviving members of
Grateful Dead will play 19 dates in April and May.
• Pretenders will tour North America from late January through March.
• Surviving members of Faces rehearsing and finalizing dates for an anticipated 2009 tour.
• Fleetwood Mac are booking dates for a tour beginning in March (tour schedule) possibly followed by a new album.
• Billy Joel and Elton John will be touring together again. (Tour Dates)
• Rumors of a Paul McCartney tour have been circulating for several months, but nothing official has been announced.
• The Zombies are to tour the US in the summer, performing their 1968 album Odessey & Oracle in its entirety.
High Tech, Old Tech
It looks like vinyl is here to stay• The vinyl LP celebrated its 60th birthday in 2008 with a surge in new and reissued releases. Major artists (see Bruce Springsteen above) now release new material on CD, mp3 and vinyl, and classic albums are increasingly being reissued on vinyl. The trend is likely to continue.
• Every year there's some reason to be optimistic that The Beatles catalog will finally become available in digital download form, but then something comes along to burst the bubble yet again. In late 2008, talks on the subject between Apple Corps and EMI stalled, and the prospects for digitized Beatles in 2009 are about as dim as they've ever been.
• 2009 may well be the year that digital downloads finally exceed CD sales.
Reunion Fever
• Will
The Kinks reunite? In spite of a major PR campaign by co-founder Ray Davies, it doesn't seem likely. How about
Pink Floyd? After the death of
Rick Wright in 2008, the already slim chance seems close to zero.
Led Zeppelin? Forget about it.
Robert Plant isn't interested. The one near certainty is that there will continue to be an abundance of rumors and wishful thinking about other possible reunions in 2009.
Classic Rock Rocks On
Although you may not like the limited length and breadth of the typical classic rock radio station format, it can serve as a gauge of the popularity of the music. As of November 2008, some 1,052 US radio stations program a Classic Rock or Classic Hits format, according to Inside Radio. Although that's about half the numbers for each of the top two formats (Talk and Country) it represents an increase of nearly 100 stations in the previous year. Add anecdotal evidence like the number of classic rock era artists who are currently up for GRAMMY awards (about a dozen) and the frequent use of classic rock songs and artists in video games and TV commercials, and it adds up to another year of good health for our favorite music genre.
