In Blender Magazine, AEROSMITH frontman Steven Tyler was asked about his habit of tying a scarf around his microphone stand.
That boho-chic look has lately been adopted by all sorts of pop stars, from Carrie Underwood to Lindsay Lohan. But the man most frequently associated with the mic-stand scarf, Tyler, insists he was the first.
According to Tyler, it started as an accident. "Very early on," he tells Blender, "I had a favorite macramé shirt that I wore onstage all the time and an Indian scarf in my hair. The shirt and scarf got worn out and torn off me eventually," he says, but rather than throw them out, Tyler "hung them on the mic-stand for good luck. Must be the gypsy in me." The look stuck, and it's now one of his trademarks.
Interestingly, in addition to looking cool, the scarves doubled as a makeshift medicine cabinet. "Some of them had little pockets sewn in," Tyler said in the band's 2003 autobiography, "and I'd weight them with Quaaludes and Tuinals. That way I wouldn't run out."
GUNS N' ROSES FOOTAGE FROM RODEO DRIVE'S WALK OF STYLE CEREMONY
The web site of French news magazine L'Express has a short clip of GUNS N' ROSES performing "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" at the Rodeo Drive's Walk of Style ceremony on February 8 in Beverly Hills, California. Watch it at LExpress.fr.
The event was a star-studded gala honoring Donatella and the late Gianni Versace. A wall-to-wall A-List, including Jennifer Lopez, Cindy Crawford, Ashton Kutcher, Sharon Stone, Quincy Jones, Naomi Campbell, Elton John (who also performed), Demi Moore, Prince, Elizabeth Hurley, Ingrid Sischy, Sebastian Bach, Mischa Barton, Franca Sozzani, Paris Hilton and many others attended the event.
Donatella Versace personally asked Axl Rose if GN'R would perform, and Axl obliged with a stripped-down version of GN'R featuring guitarists Richard Fortus and Ron "BumbleFoot" Thal, who played acoustics on "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and "Sweet Child O'Mine" to close out the ceremony.
With full command of the stage, Axl moved and sang like only Axl can. Bassist Tommy Stinson was unable to attend because of a personal family issue so keyboardist Chris Pitman filled in admirably on bass. Lead guitarist Robin Finck, keyboard player Dizzy Reed and drummer Frank Ferrer all tore it up.
LORDI ON BREAKING INTO NORTH AMERICA "WE HAVE TO START FROM SCRATCH, BECAUSE NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT US"
The following report is courtesy of Christa Titus from Billboard:
It took 10 years for metal band LORDI to get a record deal and another four for it to make international headlines as Finland's contender for the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest. But when the band won the competition in a landslide, its fortunes reversed overnight.
Winning Eurovision is giving Lordi a chance to captivate another country: the United States. Brooklyn, N.Y.-based the End Records is releasing "The Arockalypse" March 20 stateside with bonus tracks and a DVD.
To support the album, Lordi will commence its first North American tour in late April, playing approximately 12 markets in venues with 700-1,500 seats. Lordi will cap the tour by playing the Bamboozle festival (May 5-6) in East Rutherford, N.J., alongside such rock stars as My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park.
It's a lot to be excited about, but Mr. Lordi knows America isn't being handed to him on a silver platter. "We have to start from scratch, because nobody knows about us -- well, I hope somebody knows," he says with a laugh. "It's going to be, in a way, really good for us to be humble again, to play at the clubs and not take things for granted, and we have to work for our audience."
