“It’s better to burn out than to fade away” – Neil Young (1979)

“If Neil Young admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it?” – John Lennon (1980)

British author Jeremy Simmonds admits that he has had an obsession with death, and in particular rock star deaths, for many years. “A very unhealthy obsession ever since I was young,” he told me in a recent phone call from his home in South London. “I’ve followed rock and roll for 40-odd years. I felt that there was a history that one could look at from six feet under.”

The first question many Jeff Lynne fans might ask after hearing his two new albums is, “Where are the new songs?” Not that we aren’t happy to finally have some new Jeff Lynne music 11 years after Electric Light Orchestra’s “Zoom” (essentially a Jeff album with cameos) and 22 years after his excellent “Armchair Theatre” solo record, but fans who were hoping for an album of all-new Jeff Lynne compositions will need to wait until next year.

Gregg Allman is on the phone, and he’s laughing as he recalls a trip to Maine with The Allman Brothers Band in the ‘90s. “We were playing there and they took us out to this island,” he remembers. “There was a 50 gallon drum full of lobsters and man, we partied – let me tell you. We had boats and it was just a very memorable time.” When I asked if he could recall the approximate date of that visit, he thought about it for a few moments. “It was probably the early ‘90s – no, wait a minute. It was probably the later part of the ‘90s because I had already gotten clean and sober and that was in 1996. Man, we had a ball.”

When The Allman Brothers Band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, the ceremony was capped with the usual all-star jam session and after-party. Allman says his party began a week early – technically, decades earlier. He recounts this story with vivid detail at the beginning of his new memoir “My Cross to Bear” (William Morrow), written with journalist Alan Light.

Styx, REO bring back the classics 

BANGOR – The Midwest Rock'N'Roll Express Tour came to Bangor's Waterfront Pavilion Sunday to play the last date of a tour that RollingStone Magazine called one of the hottest for Summer 2012.

Ready to rock and shock, Ted Nugent and his band of heavy-hitting talent, Derek St. Holmes, Greg Smith, and "Wild" Mick Brown, started the night playing full throttle from the get-go.

The nine-song set list covered classics "Wango Tango" and "Cat Scratch Fever" as well as a great blues/Motown treat with REO's Dave Amato. After the band wrapped up with "Stranglehold," a fellow attendee announced, "I didn't know I was a Ted Nugent fan. That was incredible!"