What do Rob Zombie, Neil Young, Bette Midler, John Legend and Elton John have in common?

They’ll all be onstage in New York in March, along with Paul Simon, Lloyd Price and the Doors’ John Densmore, welcoming the latest class of inductees into the Rock and Roll of Fame, hall officials will announce Tuesday.

Zombie has been tapped to welcome in one of his musical forebears, shock-rock pioneer Alice Cooper; Young will induct fellow iconoclast Tom Waits; John will bring in his friend and recent collaborator Leon Russell; and Simon will deliver remarks on Neil Diamond. Legend inducts Dr. John,  Midler will handle Darlene Love and Densmore gets Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman, who signed the Doors and launched their recording career.

The ceremony is scheduled for March 14 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo (left) of Alice Cooper. Credit: Ethan Miller

Photo (right) of Rob Zombie: Credit: Stephen C. Mitchell / EPA

 
Buffalo Springfield issued only three studio albums during the influential band’s short two years together from 1966-68: “Buffalo Springfield,” “Buffalo Springfield Again” and “Last Time Around.”

All indications going into the group’s reunion performances last month for Neil Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concerts in Northern California seemed to suggest that the operative album title for this latter-day get-together was going to be “Last Time Around.”

However, “Buffalo Springfield Again” might be the more fitting choice, as Pop & Hiss is hearing rumblings of some additional performances next year, possibly even a summer tour. (It wouldn't come as a big surprise to any of those who were on hand to witness the joy the group members appeared to be having being in one another's company once again.)

It had been 42 years since Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay last performed together as Buffalo Springfield before they reunited for the Bridge School event, which benefits the Northern California institution that serves severely disabled students and their families. Young and his wife, Pegi, have been staging the annual benefits for 24 years now, and their son, Ben, has been a Bridge School student. (The other two original band members, bassist Bruce Palmer and drummer Dewey Martin, died in 2004 and 2009, respectively.)

Their set included such Springfield touchstone numbers as “Mr. Soul,” “Rock and Roll Woman,” “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound),” “Kind Woman,” “Bluebird,” “Go and Say Goodbye” and “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.”

Above is a shot of the 2010 edition of the band from backstage showing (l-r): drummer Joe Vitale, who has played with Crosby, Stills and Nash;  Stills; Furay; Young, and bassist Rick Rosas, who has played regularly with Young. Some have whimsically dubbed the reconstituted group “the new Eagles.”

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Buffalo Springfield reuion for the 2010 Bridge School benefit. Credit: Eleanor Stills

Merle Haggard missed his scheduled appearance Saturday with Kris Kristofferson for Neil Young's annual Bridge School benefit concert in Mountain View, Calif., because of illness, Kristofferson announced when he arrived onstage alone.

Kristofferson said Haggard's doctor ordered him to cancel several performances this month to recuperate. A chest infection prompted him to cancel a chunk of his September itinerary, but at the time his spokeswoman said he had been expected to recover in time to perform for the Bridge School event. Haggard's representative was not immediately available to comment on whether the same illness prompted the latest round of concert cancelations.

[Updated Oct. 25, 11:45 a.m.: Haggard's spokeswoman said the health issue concerned regulating his blood pressure.]

The 73-year-old singer and songwriter, whom Kristofferson lauded Saturday as "the closest thing we have to Hank Williams on the planet right now," is due in Washington, D.C., in December as one of five recipients of this year's Kennedy Center Honors.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Merle Haggard performs at the Stagecoach festival on April 24, 2010. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

 
During my recent interview with Neil Young and Daniel Lanois about their collaborative new album, “Le Noise,” I asked Young about one of the thematic threads running through several songs. My question had to do with songs that address opposing forces and raise the prospect of balancing those forces.

In “Angry World,” for instance, he sings, “Some see life as a broken promise/Some see life as an endless fight/They think we live in the age of darkness/They think we live in the age of light.” In “Love and War,” broad topics commonly thought of as mutually exclusive domains, he says, “When I sing about love and war, I don’t really know what I’m saying/I’ve been in love and I’ve seen a lot of war/Seen a lot of people praying.” “Someone’s Gonna  Rescue You” takes aim at people who focus on the negative -- “Somewhere in a ray of sunshine, you find the dark” -- then suggests a way out: “Someone’s going to rescue you and bring you back.”

So I asked him: Has the idea of balance become more pressing as time goes by?

Neil Young is an experimental artist working in a pop mode; he wants his music to be relevant, but he doesn’t care about either proving himself great or staying hip, the usual stumbling blocks for aging baby boomer rock stars. Young just wants to hear how something (a choir, an R&B band, a concept like the history of automobiles) sounds when it collides with his fundamental warped-folk sound. A strong sense of entitlement, the bane of many in his generation, is his ace in the hole. Not caring what anybody thinks keeps him attuned to himself.

He does make room for collaborators, though, and on “Le Noise,” his 34^th solo studio album, he engages in a clarifying dialogue. Young recorded the tracks in the Silver Lake home of producer Daniel Lanois, using just his voice and mostly electric guitar; the studio master then remixed and enhanced them. The result lands in the same ballpark as work by much younger artists such as Joseph Arthur or even Best Coast, though the mood is more reflective.

At times, the sound heats up, as on the earnest “Walk With Me” and the Bo Diddley-touched “Rumblin'.” But in general, this is an easy album to enjoy, something not always true of Young’s recent output. The treatments Lanois gives Young’s raw performances don’t distract from their basic emotional tone, and if the lyrics sometime seem simplistic, Young’s worn, gentle vocals lend them an authenticity that’s neither showy nor dogmatic. He revisits his favorite themes, from marriage and the pull of family to the ecological fate of the Earth, without fussing over them. “Le Noise” is not an epic -– if it were a book, you could read it in an afternoon -– but it’s statement enough from a man who’s already said so much.

-- Ann Powers

Neil Young

Le Noise

Reprise

Three and a half stars

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Neil Young and Daniel Lanois click on 'Le Noise'

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Merle Haggard has canceled 10 performances through the end of September after coming down with a chest infection, his spokeswoman said Thursday. That includes an appearance on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” that the 73-year-old country music singer and songwriter had been slated to do on Tuesday.

The cancellations include dates in the South and on the East Coast. Haggard has returned to California and is consulting with his doctor about treatment. His spokeswoman said he is expected to recover in time to make a newly announced appearance with Kris Kristofferson on Oct. 23 for Neil Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concerts in Mountain View, Calif.

He’s also due at the White House in December to receive one of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, along with Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, choreographer Bill T. Jones and Broadway lyricist and composer Jerry Herman.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Merle Haggard and his dog, Fanny Mae, aboard his tour bus backstage at this year's Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Neil Young will reunite with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay for a pair of performances as Buffalo Springfield for Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concerts in Northern California, with lineups that also include Pearl Jam, Elton John and Leon Russell, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams and several other acts.

The reunion of the influential country-rock band born in 1966 in Los Angeles will feature Young, Stills and Furay as an acoustic trio, given the Bridge School’s history of unplugged performances by all participants. The group's other two original members, bassist Bruce Palmer and drummer Dewey Martin, died in 2004 and 2009, respectively.

Want a gig working with a Grammy-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member? Try posting a smart video on YouTube.

That’s how it worked for Daniel Lanois, who recently wrapped up work producing a new album for one of his longtime rock heroes, Neil Young.

Sure, it didn’t hurt that Lanois has seven Grammys of his own and had previously worked with such stellar lights of contemporary pop music as U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris and Brian Eno.

Still, it was the YouTube stuff Lanois made with his own band, Black Dub, that inspired Young to reach out to his fellow Canadian about collaborating.

“He called me and he said ‘I could use your help,’ ” Lanois told me over the weekend at his house in Silver Lake. “He said, ‘I saw your Black Dub films on YouTube…. I loved those films. Would you film me and record me doing 10 acoustic songs?' I always wanted to make a Neil Young album. I said I would, of course.”

Their get-together, however, didn’t turn out exactly as Young first proposed it. Instead of 10 acoustic songs, the resulting album, “Le Noise,” which comes out Sept. 28, has just eight songs, only two of them acoustic numbers.

Nearly every decade since Neil Young launched a solo career in 1968, the Canadian rocker has put out a watershed album with which he’s upped the ante for himself.  In 1969, it was his sophomore effort, which first paired him with Crazy Horse, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” In 1979, punk rock was powerfully on his mind in “Rust Never Sleeps,” while 1989 brought “Freedom,” in which he fully assumed his latter-day role as  a state-of-the-union messenger about what’s right, and wrong, in America.

“Silver & Gold,” which was recorded in 1999 but didn’t surface until four months into the following year, didn’t quite hit the same level of accomplishment, but with “Le Noise,” which will be released Sept. 28, Young's peaking in yet another decade, and just a few months behind schedule for keeping his streak going for years ending in 9.

The title is a wink to his collaborator, musician-songwriter-producer Daniel Lanois, who premiered the album Tuesday night for a few dozen friends, music journalists, bloggers and L.A. music world denizens at his home overlooking Silver Lake.

The assembled group packed into the living room of the early 20th century mansion on the hillside, a voluntarily captive audience for Young’s subtly subversive method of forcing listeners to hear it for the first time the way he intended: on a first-class sound system, in the dark, no distractions.

What’s striking about “Le Noise” is the way it both summarizes and distills Young’s singular approach to music, predominantly just Neil and a guitar: his big, white hollow-body Gretsch electric slashing and burning for most of the tracks, a couple built around picked and strummed acoustic instruments. Both are recorded and amplified -- literally and metaphorically -- by Lanois’ signature soundscapes that  loop vocals, and enhance the guitars’ bass notes through distortion boxes, synthesizers and other electronics.

Ben Keith, the veteran steel guitarist who played on Patsy Cline’s 1961 hit “I Fall to Pieces” before befriending Neil Young and going on to play on more than a dozen of the Canadian rocker's albums, has died. He was 73.

He died of a heart attack, director Jonathan Demme said Tuesday. Demme, who directed Young’s concert films “Neil Young Trunk Show” from earlier this year and 2006’s “Heart of Gold,” said Keith had been staying at Young’s ranch in Northern California, working on new projects with his longtime collaborator.

Keith was featured prominently in both. In “Neil Young Trunk Show,” shot in Pennsylvania at a stop on Young’s 2007-2008 concert tour, Young said a key reason he chose to tour with Keith, bassist Rick Rosas and Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, rather than convening the full, hard-rocking Crazy Horse trio, was that “I can do more variety this way, because Ben plays so many instruments.”

Demme called Keith “an elegant, beautiful dude, and obviously a genius. He could play every instrument. He was literally the bandleader on any of that stuff… Neil has all the confidence in the world, but with Ben on board, there were no limits. Neil has a fair measure of the greatness of his music, but he knew he was even better when Ben was there.”

Most recently, Keith had been touring with Young’s wife, Pegi, in support of her second solo album, “Foul Deeds,” for a handful of West Coast performances in June. He also had played earlier this year with Neil Young on his first totally acoustic tour in several years.

Keith met Young in 1971 in Nashville, where the rocker was working on what would become his commercial breakthrough album, “Harvest.” Keith came to the recording studio at the invitation of bassist Tim Drummond, whom Young had asked to find a steel player for the sessions. When Keith arrived, “I didn’t know who anyone was, so I asked, ‘Who’s that guy over there?’ ” and was told “That’s Neil Young.”

Neil Young and Co. give the kids a great show, and Young gives his fellow performers a great example.

Reporting from Mountain View, Calif. - The direct impact of Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts is as plain as the joyful faces of the special-needs school's students, many of whom watch each year from an onstage riser placed right behind the performers.

Those faces were often captured by the video cameras that were otherwise trained on the stars of this year's shows, which got underway Saturday at Shoreline Amphitheatre just north of San Jose with unplugged sets by No Doubt, Coldplay's Chris Martin, Jimmy Buffett, Sheryl Crow, Monsters of Folk, Fleet Foxes, Wolfmother and Gavin Rossdale. Adam Sandler was scheduled to take over Buffett's slot as the only change on Sunday's lineup.

In a fairly understated way, Young and his wife, Pegi, the event's co-organizer, have a school of their own going in this show, one that trains newcomers in service to a cause higher than merely entertaining fans, and how to go about it with class and humility.

"Thanks for being here," Neil said when he finally took the Shoreline stage just before midnight on Saturday. His succinct statement applied as much to the other musicians as to the crowd, which appeared close to filling the 22,000-capacity amphitheater.

The powerfully emotional backdrop of Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts is evident in the faces of the nonprofit school's disabled students and those of their families, which were flashed on video screens throughout Saturday's 6 1/2-hour show.

On occasion, the performers' feelings burst to the surface as well. Event co-organizer Pegi Young's voice cracked at the outset of the show as she introduced each of the students who watched from a riser on stage behind the performers.

Then during No Doubt's set, singer Gwen Stefani had to reach for a tissue after singing "Simple Kind of Life," the song she wrote shortly before having the first of her two kids with husband Gavin Rossdale, who played his own set earlier in the evening. In that song, she wrestled with conflicting drives of career and motherhood, and looking into the faces of the children for whom the yearly fundraiser was launched back in 1986 -- right about the time No Doubt got started -- Stefani choked up.

"This is very emotional," she said. The acoustic arrangements the band used -- including a string quartet for about half the set -- brought out the sweetness and vulnerability of that song, "Don't Speak" and even the usually feisty "Just a Girl." Apparently big girls do cry.

Young brought things to a close with a strong set, accompanied by Pegi Young, bassist Rick Rosas, pianist Spooner Oldham, lap-steel and dobro player Ben Keith and drummer Karl Himmel. Just before midnight, he offered a solo reading of "I Am a Child," the Buffalo Springfield song he wrote in his early 20s that has taken on added richness and levels of resonance with each passing decade.

With the Bridge School students looking on, the line "You can't conceive of the pleasure in my smile" also gained an extra measure of potency. "I gave to you, now you give to me" became less a plea as in the original than practically a demand to acknowledge the responsibility inherent in parenthood.