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Neil Diamond had been eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for several years but never got a nomination to join music's prestigious club. But he was never really worried about it....

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland will induct Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Dr. John, and Darlene Love, according to the New York Times. Jac Holzman, who founded Elektra, and Art Rupe, who founded Specialty Records, will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award, which is given to music-industry executives. Pianist Leon Russell will receive the Award for Musical Excellence. The ceremony will be held in March

Ever wondered what it is like to sleep with, service, travel or live with a rock star -- or maybe a whole band of them? Tonight, VH1 introduces you to the groupies who have done just that -- or, should I say, have done just them? Pamela Des Barres -- author of five best-selling books on and about her time as the traveling companion, sometime girlfriend and sometime one-night stand of the most infamous rockers -- tracks down the other groupies who made their names on their backs, backing up the best bands of the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

  Well-wisher ... John Lydon famously railed against the monarchy in Sex Pistols anthem God Save The Queen By SEAN HAMILTON AS snarling punk idol Johnny Rotten, singer John Lydon famously railed against the monarchy in The Sex Pistols' Seventies anthem God Save The Queen. So you might not expect him to join well-wishers queuing to congratulate Prince William and Kate. Here he tells SEAN HAMILTON why he wishes them well. WHEN I heard William had popped the question to Kate, I had a nice cup of tea for them. Later on, I might even put some bucks fizz...

With today’s announcement of the Top 10 Guitar Solos of All Time, another Gibson.com Top 50 list is in the books. Below, check out the full rundown of all 50 solos that made the list. (You can get more information on each of the entries here: #50-41, #40-31, #30-21, #20-11 and #10-1.) Plus, take a look at the readers poll and the guitarists who scored multiple entries further down the page.

It didn’t take much to convince Ken Casey, frontman for the Dropkick Murphys, to jump into one of the state’s most pitched labor battles. “It seems like the right thing to do,” Casey said yesterday about the Boston band’s work with 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, a controversial labor group that represents 35,000 Massachusetts nurses, nursing home assistants and at-home health aides. Labor organizers say The Dropkicks’ shoutout to a Service Employees International Union local is the first time a music group has used a union campaign as a central theme in a video. “It seems like a cruel...

THE Troggs frontman Reg Presley has suffered a serious stroke while on holiday in Spain. The 68 year old, whose band’s hits include Wild Thing, Love Is All Around and With A Girl Like You, was playing with his grandchildren when he fell ill on Friday. Now the singer, pictured, is out of hospital with his wife of 48 years, Brenda, but he has been left unsteady on his feet and with double vision. His voice has also been affected, casting doubt whether the singer will ever perform again. Brenda said: “It was very frightening. He had a serious stroke....

The top 10 1. Van Halen, Van Halen (1978) 2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced (1967) 3. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV (1971) 4. Derek and the Dominos, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970) 5. Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction (1987) 6. Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II (1969) 7. The Allman Brothers Band, At Fillmore East (1971) 8. Cream, Disraeli Gears (1967) 9. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland (1968) 10. AC/DC, Back in Black (1980)

Jason Bonham knows better than to promise a Led Zeppelin reunion as part of his "Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience" show that goes on tour this fall. But he's certainly not opposed to the idea. "I'm not going to hide it from them," Bonham, who filled his late father John "Bonzo" Bonham's spot and played with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones at the 2007 Zep reunion concert at London's O2 arena, tells Billboard.com. "I will invite them to every show I can, because my goal and dream is, 'Wouldn't it be cool if I did something that...

Sub Pop art director Jeff Kleinsmith talked to us earlier this week about ideas the label is kicking around about selling physical products (like concert posters and T-shirts) that come with digital downloads of albums as a new way of giving fans a physical item to go along with their digital purchase, beyond the common practice of including a download code along with vinyl sales. Today, Sub Pop's general manager, Megan Jasper, sent us a statement with more on the ideas that are swirling around the label's offices. "Although Sub Pop is primarily known for its many fine artists and...

<p>Nigel Godrich has had no problem working with what some would consider the best artists ever. The real challenge is the acts that never were.</p> <p>"It's always terrible," Godrich said of movies that contain an artificial group. Action-romance "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" has four of them.</p>

Ringo Starr kept his 70th birthday celebration going on Tuesday night (July 7) with a concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall that was positively star-studded, thanks in part to "a little help from his friend," Paul McCartney. The former Beatles bandmates topped off the show by surprising audience members with a performance of "Birthday" from "The Beatles [White Album]," and appropriately so. With McCartney on lead vocals and Starr behind the drum kit, the duo performed with classic rock 'n' roll flair. "Birthday" was preceded by another all-star collaboration, when Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band played "With...

Our world has no shortage of mysteries: Where did life begin? Who killed JFK? Will the BP oil spill ever end? Why is Ozzy Osbourne still alive? For this last conundrum, at least, we may have an answer. Researchers at the genome sequencing company Knome, based in Massachusetts, are mapping the heavy metal singer's entire genome to get to the bottom of why rock and roll's self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness is still kicking and screaming despite decades of relentless drug and alcohol abuse.

And, so it begins. You voted and so did we, and at the end of a month-long process, we’re ready to start revealing Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

Most (good) history books correctly portray the collapse of communism as due to the efforts of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. But there were other subversive elements at work, not the least of which was rock and roll, which bled through the Iron Curtain at an unstoppable level. In Seven Events that Made America America, I examined rock’s part in not only providing a source of hope and optimism for those youth locked under communism’s grip, but also how it became a subversive force within the East Bloc. Through interviews with American rock and rollers of...

  If you seek proof that liberal-arts scholarship is mostly a stinking heap of rubbish, behold the Journal of Popular Culture. Here are three recent examples of articles that have appeared in its dispensable pages: “Queer Dress and Biased Eyes: The Japanese Doll on the Western Toyshelf,” by Judy Shoaf (February 2010); “SpongeBob SquarePants: Pop Culture Tsunami or More?” by Jonah Lee Rice (December 2009); and “‘There’s Genderqueers on the Starboard Bow’: The Pregnant Male in Star Trek,” by Stephen Kerry (August 2009). Yet the ultimate testimony to the journal’s shining irrelevance appears in its current issue: “Rockin’ the Right-Wing...

Iranian groupie 'risks life' for book on bedding famous rockers A self-proclaimed "slut" from Iran may become the target of Muslim extremists after she penned a book about having sex with the world's most famous rockers. Roxana Shirazi, who lived in Tehran until she was 10, claims to have had sexual encounters with members of Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue, Velvet Revolver, Papa Roach and Skid Row. Several editors and agents reportedly refused to work with her on the book, titled The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage, for fear of enraging the Muslim community. "I haven't attacked...

A LESSER-KNOWN version of the Rolling Stones’ “Loving Cup,” found on the bonus disc of the new reissue of the band’s 1972 album, “Exile on Main St.,” seems to me the best thing the Stones ever did... ...the recordings ...stretched from 1969 to 1972, across the making of two other excellent and, to me, superior records — “Let It Bleed” and “Sticky Fingers.” ...Mr. Richards contributed little to the extra tracks on the bonus disc and distrusted altering even the outtakes and unused tracks... “I didn’t want to interfere with the Bible.” “My job was to enforce the no-fiddling rule,”...

Keith Richards remembers the period in the early 1970s when the Rolling Stones were working on Exile on Main St as a fairly down time. The parts he remembers at all, that is. That's partly due to the fact that the recording sessions took place as the Stones guitarist and songwriter's heroin habit took hold in a big way, a habit that took him nearly a decade to shake. But it wasn't strictly the drugs he was referring to when he spoke recently about that fabled phase in his and the group's life. It's a period he and Mick Jagger...

Message from Wendy Dio Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever. - Wendy Dio