Professor of Rock

A few weeks ago, I introduced a new show where I did a pop culture crossover of Rock and Roll Meets Star Wars, including a story of how Terri Nunn, the Lead singer of New Wave band Berlin, was a frontrunner for the role of Princess Leia…She even had a final screen test with Harrison Ford, who did not like her. So, getting rejected by Star Wars, she became a new wave icon with the #1 hit, Take Me Breath Away well I got so many requests for more Star Wars and rock, but this time around we’re doing Star Wars as well as expanding our coverage to other science fiction franchises. From Star Trek to ET to Alien including how The Who Saved the RIdley Scott movie Alien and How Micheal Jackson’s Label sued ET and Then ET turned around and Sued Neil Diamondas well as the crazy story about Sting’s Space underwear from the movie dune…and One of the funniest Williams Shatner stories you’ll ever hear and it has to do with he band KISS it’s my top 5 Sci-Fi rock and roll crossovers… So let’s get it started: at #5, I have a special guest to tell the story about the time that a famous voice actor fooled William Shatner into believing he was Gene Simmons of KISS and all hell broke loose… It’s a Gag that is still going. Ok, so Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry, and it debuted on NBC in 1966. And although it was canceled after just three seasons, the show found sustained success in syndication during the 70s and built a passionate fanbase.

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Coming up, the story behind Ac/DC’s classic rock hit Big Balls, a song with a dual meaning that made parents angry and the goody-two-shoes blush, but it made every Gen-X kid fall down on the floor laughing. It was written by rock icon Bon Scott, who was always the life of the party to his detriment. In a drunken daze, Bon turned his fascination with his body part into a song meant as filler for an album, but Big Balls became a surprising classic rock standard. One that everyone who has come of age since the 70s has laughed about with their friends for days on end! Hey also came up with a song later about his wife that could be taken as good or bad, and she divorced him for it. We’re gonna loosen up the shackles of self-righteousness and have some fun telling the story of this track. NEXT on Professor of Rock.

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This is the full uncut interview with Rick Beato… a Classic Rock Masterclass. Actually, it’s more of a 90-minute geek-out on music. We just kick back and discuss all our favorites in music from Boston to Led Zeppelin to Pink Floyd to everything in between. I’ve received a lot of requests for the uncut interview, so here it is.
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Coming up, we continue our treasure hunt, tracking down the greatest #3 hits in music history, and this time we got to arguably the best era in music history 1965-1969. Including songs by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Stones, including California Girls, a song that popped into the mind of Brian Wilson after he swallowed his first tab of LSD… You could honestly say that the song that came from that trip started a musical revolution that inspired everything that came after. Plus a track that saved the career of future legend Stevie Wonder during a time when his label wanted to drop him because he was going through puberty. In fact, they had labeled him a novelty act; he would go on to prove them wrong as one of the last living musical geniuses... Plus one of the most prolific lyricists of all time, Jimmy Webb, captured the image of a man working on a telephone pole and turned it into a hypnotic classic… And lastly, the angry song Fortunate Song that stood up for the common man that became one of over a dozen huge hits for John Fogerty whose historic run in music was thrown off course by one of the biggest scumbags in music history. It’s a special countdown of the Top 10 Greatest #3 Hits released between ’65 & ’69, NEXT on Professor of Rock.
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Let's take it back!
As a father of 3 daughters this was the most difficult song that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, one of America’s great rock bands ever had to write… It actually took him 9 months to finish, then a record exec made him censor his own song fearing it wouldn’t get played on pop radio because of 1 word that wasn’t even a swear word… Would he change it? It would be the biggest hit on an 80s hard rock masterpiece. Pump an album that had a pretty good chance of being the first hard rock record to have 3 #1 hits from one album… would it happen … THE ROAD WOULD BE TOUGH… Janie’s Got A Gun got banned and had to compete with a smash hit starring a cartoon cat... find out if this …provocative and haunting song pulled it off next on Professor of Rock.
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