BATMAN AND ROBIN!

Rip It Up, Issue 9, 1 March 1978, Page 2

BATMAN AND ROBIN!

NOW SHOWING

and according to reports has his feet back on the ground and is ready to work. He’s signed a recording contract jjnd Mick Fleetwood of the Mac has agreed to manage Peter. Green was last heard of when he was committed to an institution for threatening his publisher with a revolver. It’ll be good to have him back. . . . Fleetwood Mac’s next album will be a double (no not a live one) due to what Mick Fleetwood terms a glut of material’. It also means that if they can sell as many copies as they did of the last one, then they’ll all be twice as rich ... other reincarnations include Alex Harvey who, just a few months ago, announced his surprise departure from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Alex has returned with a new band and an ambitious show using complex scenery and lighting, with a choir and orchestra . . . ex-members of the SAHB, Zal Cleminson, Chris Glen and Ted McKenna have formed Zal with the addition of guitarist Billy Rankin ... also new on the group front is a band going by the name of UK that’s wait for it a supergroup, if anyone can remember what that word means. Members of UK are: John Wetton (ex King Crimson, Family, Bryan Ferry and Uriah Heep), Bill Bruford (ex Yes, Crimson and Genesis), Eddie Jobson (ex Roxy Music and Zappa) and guitarist Allan Holdsworth (ex Soft Machine). Impressed? ... just in case anyone still cares out there, Qzzie Osbourne has rejoined Black Sabbath after the new singer they hired on his departure didn't work out ... On the financial front. Rock music interests seem to be taking over the burgeoning American soccer business. A syndicate which includes Mick Jagger and Rolling Stones manager Peter Rudge, Peter Frampton and his managers, Paul Simon and manager, as well as well-known promoter Bill Graham and A & M label boss Jerry Moss, have just bought the soccer franchise for the city of Philadelphia. The top team in the US soccer league is the New York Cosmos who are owned by Warner Communications, the parent company of Warner Brothers Records. And manager-producer of the group Chicago, James William Guercio, owns the franchise for part of Colorado . . . Patti Smith’s new album is to be titled Easter and will feature a track she wrote with Bruce Springsteen . . the future of rock ’n’ roll also lends a helping hand on Lou Reed’s newie, Street Hassle . . . Rick Danko, is aided on his first solo album by all his mates from The Band

and also Eric Clapton and the ever-present Ron Wood . .. Elvis Costello’s second LP to be titled This Year's Model ... second album from The Clash to be produced by Blue Oyster Cult Man Sandy Pearlman . . . the much delayed second album from Boston has been completed, though it’s still some way from release. Reports suggest that it’s similar in style and quality to their huge-selling first ... Warren Zevon will record his third album for Asylum under the direction of producer Jon Landau. Hopefully this means that Landau has finished work on the long awaited Springsteen album . . . and finally the strange alliance between producer Kim Fowley and singer Helen Reddy is about to yield up an album and ELO’s Jeff Lynne has apparently written a song specially for the project...

joining Abba The Album and Abba The Book is Abba The Film which is released overseas this month. Where will it all end? ... Kris Kristofferson currently doing nicely as the latest Hollywood stud/leading man, has taken time out from all that movie frolicking to record two albums one solo and one with wife Rita Coolidge ... Rod Stewart and Elton John are to star in a movie together. As yet the script has not been worked out, but it has been decided that the film will feature comedy as well as the expected music. Shooting will begin late this year or early next... oh yeah it’s to be called Jet Lag . . . Wing’s single “Mull of Kintyre” has sold 30,000 copies in N.Z. since its release in December. So guess we can expect Macca mania when the boy’s new album, Londontown , is released later this month ... on March 9, Dragon begin their first ever national tour of Australia in a gruelling series of one nighters that takes them through NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Australian Capital Territory. But due to negotiations between management and Dragon’s American label, Portrait, dates for the later part of the Aussie tour remain unsettled . . . Split Enz packed out London’s Roundhouse at the end of their British tour. Particularly notable in an extremely favourable review in music trade paper, Music Week is mention of new material: “Phil Judd’s new song “Play It Strange" is surely bound for single’s chart honours a classic in the mould of “Whiter Shade of Pale” in terms of atmospherics" . . . Tommy, Ken Russell’s visual extravaganza based on the Who’s rock opera, is to be re-released and is scheduled for screening round Easter time in Auckland and elsewhere in early April. With this issue we bid a rocking farewell to cub reporter John Malloy off to gain a bit of the old O.E. He has now been promoted to overseas correspondent as long as he promises we don’t have to pay the airfares.