Old Joad

he keyboardist, sax player and archivist for Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Band whose farewell show with the group was memorialized in Martin Scorsese's landmark documentary The Last Waltz, died Tuesday in his sleep at a nursing home in Woodstock, NY. He was 87. Born Eric Hudson on August 2, 1937, in Windsor, Ontario, and was trained in classical piano and music theory. He played in local bands before hooking up in the late 1950s with rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins' The Hawks, which eventually would feature many of his Band mates. The group would back Bob Dylan's on the notorious mid-'60s "Going Electric" tours and, rechristened The Band, they collaborated on groundbreaking album The Basement Tapes, helping to invent the Americana genre. he Band broke out with its 1968 debut album Music from Big Pink, which made the U.S. Top 30, went gold and featured such classic tracks as "The Weight" and the Dylan cover "I Shall Be Released." "The Weight" was featured in nearly two dozen movies, playing an integral role in classics such as Easy Rider, The Big Chill and as well as in projects as diverse as Patch Adams, Starsky & Hutch, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The King of Staten Island. In 1969, The Band played at Woodstock and became the first North American rock group to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Rick Danko and Richard Manuel and American drummer Levon Helm - released its sophomore album The Band in 1969, which included its biggest pop single, "Up on Cripple Creek," along with the Civil War-set folk tale "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." The disc was its first Top 10 album, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard 200, and remains its only million-seller without Dylan. The Band went on to release several other albums through the 1970s. Stage Fright (1970) reached No. 5 and featured the title track and "The Shape I'm In." Cahoots (1971, No. 21) had "Life Is a Carnival," and the Top 10 double live set Rock of Ages (1972) followed. Its other albums include Moondog Matinee (1973), Northern Lights-Southern Cross (1975) and Islands (1977). Along with 1975's The Basement Tapes, The Band also released a pair of Top 10 albums with Dylan the year before: Planet Waves and Before the Flood. The soundtrack to The Last Waltz - which was recorded in November 1976 at the Winterland in San Francisco and released with the movie in April 1978 - also featured Dylan, Hawkins, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison, The Staples Singers, Neil Diamond and many others. The album reached No. 13 in the U.S. and went gold.

John Sykes, a veteran hard-rock guitarist who was a member of Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy and the Tygers of Pan Tang, has died, He had battled cancer for several years; he was 65. A fiery guitarist and strong singer with a mane of wavy blond hair, Sykes is best known for his work on Whitesnake's eponymous 1987 seventh album, for which he cowrote nearly every track - including the hit singles "Still of the Night" and "Is This Love" - and played all of the guitars. However, he had been fired from the band before the album's release, due to disagreements with frontman David Coverdale, and saw two other guitarists miming his parts in the songs' videos and touring extensively with the band during its peak years. Born in Reading, England in 1959 and raised partially in Spain, Sykes began playing guitar as a teen and launched his professional career with a group called Streetfighter in the late 1970s after he'd moved to Blackpool in the north of England. He left that group to joined the Tygers of Pan Tang, which were popular during the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" era of the early 1980s that also spawned Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and many other bands. He played on three of the group's albums and left in early 1982, but was contractually obligated to record two more songs for the band's label, MCA. After Sykes auditioned unsuccessfully for Ozzy Osbourne's band, Tygers producer Chris Tsangarides connected him with Phil Lynott, singer-songwriter of Thin Lizzy, who were enormously popular at the time and had a constantly shifting second lead guitarist position. The members of Thin Lizzy played on a Sykes solo single that fulfilled his contract, and he was asked to join the band. Sykes brought a distinctly heavy metal touch to the band's final album, "Thunder and Lightning," which did not sit well with many fans, but Lizzy was in a downward spiral, primarily due to Lynott's heroin addiction (which ultimately led to his death in early 1986), and the band split up in 1983. While he'd intended to continue working with Lynott, Sykes instead opted to join Whitesnake in early 1984. He added guitar parts to the band's "Slide It In" album and played with them for a world tour, but Coverdale fired the entire band after the self-titled album was recorded and regrouped with alums of Dio, Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot and Vandenberg. Driven by the Sykes-cowritten songs and their videos, that album became a global smash and Whitesnake was a major draw for the next two years, although their follow-up album flopped. Sykes formed the band Blue Murder with veteran drummer Carmine Appice and bassist Tony Franklin, although the outfit only lasted for two albums. In the following years he was considered as Def Leppard's replacement for the late guitarist Steve Clark (although the role went to Vivian Campbell, who ironically had replaced him in Whitesnake) before pursuing a solo career and fronting a Lynott-less incarnation of Thin Lizzy for several years. Sykes also auditioned unsuccessfully for Guns N' Roses in 2009, and continued work on solo material in the years before his death.

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happy B-day

Get well soon and healing thoughts like Craig said☮️

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