• Behind the New Cover: Metallica
• MySpace Music Readies Launch
• Byrne Dances Through First Date of Eno Tour
• Paul McCartney Discusses Israel Show
• Breaking: The Gaslight Anthem
• Hands On: Guitar Hero World Tour
• Tom Jones Sings Springsteen on New LP
• Ted Nugent Sends Sarah Palin His New Book
• Guitar Hero Makers Planning DJ Hero
• On The Charts: Metallica, Jessica Simpson
• On Tour: Stone Gossard, Crystal Method
• Colbert Shoots Music Heavy Christmas Special
• News Ticker: Eminem, Nate Dogg, Tom Jones

Top stories from the last three days:

• Jack White, Alicia Keys on Bond Theme
• Andre Benjamin Says Solo LP on the Way
• Queen Return With Paul Rodgers: Video
• Slash on His Solo LP, Guitar Hero, Gn’R
• Excerpt From Juliana Hatfield’s New Memoir
• New Reviews: Ne-Yo, Nelly, Metallica
• On Breaking: Exclusive Tracks From Repo!
• Robert Smith Attacks Label, iTunes
• Which Comic Is Slamming RS?
• Kanye West Re-Records “Love Lockdown”
• Fricke’s Picks: The Cream of Bruce
• MTV’s TRL Going on “Extended Hiatus”
• Brandon Flowers Previews New Killers LP
• Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright Dead at 65
• New Music Report: Metallica, Ne-Yo
• B.B. King Opens Museum With Three Hour Set
• Five Rock Movies From Toronto Film Fest
• Metallica Stir Up Most Pit at BBC Radio Show
• Sheryl Crow, The Dead, T.I. Get Out the Vote
• Bob Dylan Poetry Book Out in November
• Chucky Taylor: Teen Torture Suspect

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

After Rock Band stole music game headlines last year with its drum kit and expanded options, the folks at Activision knew they had to strike back big. Guitar Hero World Tour marks a giant leap forward for the franchise that jumpstarted the music game craze, featuring a drum kit and microphone but also a new guitar design and the ability to build your own tracks in a virtual studio.

The drum kit contains three drum pads and two virtual cymbals, which makes the percussion experience all the more realistic. The pads themselves are also velocity-sensitive, so the harder you hit them, the louder they sound. The new guitars are especially impressive: there’s a touch-sensitive patch on the neck that allows for sliding solos and more realistic hammer-ons, which allows players to look more and more like Eddie Van Halen (but hopefully with better dental work).

As for the song lineup, there’s an excellent balance between stone-cold classics like Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” (which is incredibly difficult to sing), Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” (which is equally difficult to drum) and Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” along newer hits by Tokio Hotel and the Mars Volta. (more…)

Photo: Lovekin/Getty

Stone Gossard steps out of Pearl Jam temporarily for four solo shows, the Crystal Method schedule DJ nights and the Sea & Cake alert you to their Car Alarm. Follow the jump for the complete set of dates.

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“Me and the band are really looking forward to this one,” Paul McCartney says of his upcoming Tel Aviv concert, taking place 43 years after Israel banned the Beatles from performing there. “It’s the first time I have ever been to Israel, or really that part of the world so I am very interested to look around and look at the situation, just personally. I am going to be interested as a tourist just to look around and meet the people.” Despite outcry and even some threats from Palestinian groups, Macca promises the show will go on. Tel Aviv’s “Friendship First” concert — as McCartney dubbed previous first-ever shows in Quebec and Kiev — specifically is about music and promoting friendship. “Music can help people to just calm them down. I also think it can be very interesting for change,” McCartney says. (more…)

This week’s featured artist on the Breaking blog is New Jersey’s the Gaslight Anthem, who put a punked-up spin on Springsteen-style blue collar anthems on their new album The ‘59 Sound. Click below for more on the Gaslight Anthem, including behind the scenes video on the making of the album and live footage of the title track.

• Breaking: The Gaslight Anthem

Related Stories: (more…)

The next great hope for the music business is about to come out of the gate. Though they still don’t have a firm release date, the MySpace store has moved forward with their first big promotional push, debuting massive billboards in New York’s Time Square that feature the Jonas Brothers and Lil Wayne and play up the service’s myriad options.

The store will allow fans to stream millions of songs for free in an ad-supported framework, and sell digital downloads with help from the Amazon MP3 store. “The idea behind it was to sort of create the ultimate music experience,” says Chris DeWolfe, the site’s co-founder. “You’ll be able to see the top songs your friends are listening to. Eventually you’ll be able to buy tickets and merchandise and ringtones.”

The new service is a partnership between top labels Universal, Sony BMG and Warner, and the smallest major label, EMI, is reportedly in discussions to join soon. But MySpace officials have yet to hire a chief executive officer for the service and won’t give specifics about prices, what the website will look like or even when it will launch. Some in the music business wonder if a music store based on free, ad-supported streaming can make money to justify the partnership. (more…)

Photo: Getty

Rock’s favorite Republican Ted Nugent has sent a copy of his new book Ted, White & Blue: The Nugent Manifesto to Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In fact, Palin was at the top of Nugent’s list to receive an advance copy of the book, which documents Uncle Ted’s ideas on “how to fix America.” In a letter to Palin, the Nuge writes, “As a proud fellow American hunter, fisherman and lover of Alaska’s soul cleansing magnificent Spirit of the Wild, we who live our American Dream by God, truth, logic, goodwill and decency, thank you for bringing such defiant common sense and self evident truth back to the GOP and politics.” (more…)

Photo: Getty

Las Vegas staple Tom Jones will release his first U.S. album of new material in 15 years, as 24 Hours hits stores on November 25th. Just as Jones’ 2002 Reload (which did not get a domestic release) featured a plethora of guests, Jones will welcome U2’s Bono and the Edge on one song this time around, as the U2 duo wrote and perform on the new song “Sugar Daddy,” which was written specifically for Jones. Over half of the new material was co-written by Jones himself and produced by Future Cut, who have also produced for Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Estelle. The album will also feature Jones covering Bruce Springsteen’s Devils & Dust cut “The Hitter,” as well as covers of songs by Tommy James & the Shondells, Pumali Panthers and Carla Thomas. “It’s all very well just singing songs, but for this record I really wanted to get properly personal,” Jones says. (more…)

Photo: Brian Hineline/Retna

No doubt drawing on lessons learned from his collaboration with choreographer Twyla Tharp, David Byrne took his sold-out show Zoellner Arts Center in Bethelehem, PA, and created a show that used his various collaborations with producer Brian Eno (including the recent Everything That Happens Will Happen Today) and bodies in motion to advance the ambiguous narratives his multi-cultural rock — think of it as modern dance for people who don’t like modern dance.

Byrne — looking fit, trim and sporting a magnificent shock of silver hair — handled all guitar duties with surprising aplomb, expertly replicating the pneumatic wheeze of chords on “Home” and the angular funk of “Cross Eyed And Painless.” (more…)

Photo: Getty

The Big News: Metallica only needed four days to storm to the top of the charts, as the current cover boys sold 490,000 copies since its Friday release. While the shortened week prevented the band from setting a personal one-week sales record, they did manage to sell 400,000 more copies than the number two record, Young Jeezy’s The Recession. Kid Rock’s Rock N’ Roll Jesus stayed embedded at three, while Jessica Simpson’s country music crossover Do You Know scored fourth with 65,000 copies sold. Slipknot’s All Hope Is Gone rounded out our top five.

Debuts: LL Cool J’s Exit 13 led the second wave of debuts, coming in at nine with 44,000 copies, or a third of the copies LL’s Todd Smith sold in its first week in 2006. (more…)

Photo: Getty

The makers of Guitar Hero have a new music game in the works, as DJ Hero might finally hit shelves next summer after two years of development. As the name suggests, DJ Hero feature a simplified plastic scratch deck instead of a mini plastic guitar to hit prompted cues. Whereas users follow a guitar’s neck on the screen for what notes to play, DJ will forecast its moves using the half-arc of a vinyl record on the screen. Part of the game’s long delay to stores — besides the inherent difficulties in getting the rights to sample-heavy hip-hop tracks — now appears to be Activision’s plan on making DJ playable with Guitar Hero gear, allowing users to create mash-ups between the rap and rock genres, which hopefully means playing along to the OJayZis mixtape is within our grasp.

Related Stories: (more…)

Photo: Getty

• Eminem’s mother Debbie Nelson will release her memoir My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem in November. The book contains Nelson’s side of the stories found in some of Slim Shady’s songs.
• Nate Dogg suffered another stroke, his second of the year. Luckily, Nate is in stable condition and shows no sign of brain damage. He is due in court September 24th to face felony death threat charges.
• The Langerado Festival is migrating once again, this time setting up shop in at Bicentennial Park in Miami. The full lineup will be announced in November.

Photo: Kristopher Long

Stephen Colbert will spend the holidays with Elvis Costello, Feist, John Legend, Willie Nelson and Toby Keith on the host’s Comedy Central special A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!. The one-hour special, scheduled to air on November 18th, has a plot about Colbert being snowed in in an upstate New York cabin, so he and his musical friends play tunes to pass the time. All the original songs were written by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and David Javerbaum, who also collaborated on the Broadway version of John Waters’ Cry Baby. Jon Stewart will also be on hand, duetting with Colbert on “Hanukkah,” while the entire ensemble will come together on “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding.” (more…)

Death Magnetic is finally here, and so is the Metallica cover of Rolling Stone. Pick up the new issue today to find out what it took to make their heaviest record in decades, plus how they continue to deal with ego clashes and the fallout of Some Kind of Monster’s group therapy sessions. Check out the feature below, and also take a look at the online-exclusive interviews with each of the bandmembers.

But first, click above for a behind the scenes look at James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo at their Rolling Stone cover shoot at their home base, where Ulrich admits, “It’s a good summer to be Metallica.”

• Louder, Faster, Stronger: How Metallica Conquered Bad Habits, Group Therapy and Ego Clashes to Make Their Heaviest Record Ever

• Photo Gallery: Three Decades of Metallica

• James Hetfield: “There’s More Dedication From the Four of Us Than Ever Before”

• Lars Ulrich: “If We Don’t Get Along, Everything Else Is Irrelevant”

• Kirk Hammett: “I Was Ready To Start Working On a Solo Album”

• Robert Trujillo: “It’s Like You’re Caught Inside a Massive Set of Waves”

Andre Benjamin has dressed up as everything from a space alien to a slick pimp as a member of OutKast, but he’s never worn a turtle costume — until now. This Friday sees the opening of Battle In Seattle, a film about the protests surrounding the 1999 World Trade Organization summit. Benjamin plays Django, a lighthearted activist who just wants to protect his small green friends but finds himself in over his head once violence breaks out.

Though the protests were one of the centerpieces of the news cycle back in ‘99, the incident was new to Benjamin. “I don’t know if I was out of the country or in the studio, but I missed it,” he explains. “The first time I heard about it was when I read the script and saw footage of what happened.” Benjamin admits that he’s not much of an activist himself. Despite the fact that he was named PETA’s “Sexiest Vegetarian” in 2004, he’s never actually done any work for the organization. “Besides, I’m not totally vegan. I still eat honey and wear leather. I’ve learned that I’m most powerful when I’m doing my art,” he says. “That lasts longer.”

In fact, among other projects, Benjamin says a new solo album is in the works. (more…)