• Sting Returns in Fall With Winter’s Night
• Jack White Criticizes the Internet
• Bret Michaels Won’t Sue Tony Awards
• Dead Body Found at Bonnaroo Site
• Archuleta’s Dad Busted for Prostitute
• Billy Joel, Wife Katie Lee Split
• 50 Cent Drops War Angel Mixtape
• Taylor Swift Owns the Night at CMTs
• Eddie Van Halen Sues Nike Over Shoe Design
• Courtney Love Resurrects Hole for Next LP
• Dads Who Rock: Family Photos
• Breaking: Amazing Baby
• McCartney to Score Animated Film
• Courts Deny Chris Brown Delay Request
• Black Eyed Peas’ E.N.D. Tops the Charts
• Flaming Lips’ Embryonic Due in Fall
• Jordin Sparks’ New Music Report
• Os Mutantes Confirm New Studio Album
• The Birth of Green Day’s American Idiot Show
• Mariah Fires Back at Eminem in “Obsessed”
• Ventures’ Bob Bogle Loses Cancer Fight
• Trio of Lil Wayne “Rock” Songs Leak
• Gossip on Rick Rubin Sessions for New LP

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

Despite fracturing his nose and busting his lip after colliding with a stage prop at the Tony Awards, Poison’s Bret Michaels told People that he will not take legal action against the show’s producers. “There’s no lawsuit. I’m not doing any of that. I’m taking the high road,” Michaels said.

Michaels was hit in the head by a prop that was lowered onto the stage following the band’s performance of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” with the cast of Rock of Ages. Immediately after the accident, the Tonys Twitter pronounced him uninjured and host Neil Patrick Harris made a “head-banging” joke at the top of the telecast. In the following days, Michaels and his reps criticized the show for issuing statements indicating he had “missed his mark” and for making light of the situation. (more…)

Billy Joel and his wife of five years, TV host Katie Lee, are splitting up, according to an official statement. Joel, 60, and Lee, 27, confirmed they put “much thought and consideration” into their decision to separate, and say they will “remain caring friends with admiration and respect for each other.” Joel was previously married to his business manager Elizabeth Small (1973-82) and model Christie Brinkley (1985-94), with whom he has one daughter, singer Alexa Ray, who told Us Weekly she “wasn’t surprised” by the news: “I have a pretty good women’s intuition, so I can tell. I know my dad pretty well, so I’m behind him.”

Jack White is a famous critic of technology’s effects on the recording and distribution of music. He laid down the White Stripes’ Elephant on pre-1963 analog equipment, and Icky Thump engineer/producer Joe Chiccarelli used a rare 2-inch tape machine and tracked the album in analog. White rush-released the Raconteurs’ Consolers of the Lonely, telling Rolling Stone last year, “It really gets annoying that you have to turn into some computer-whiz salesman once you’re done mixing.”

And in a new interview with Canada’s National Post, White laments how the Web forced his newest project, the Dead Weather, to get off the ground fast. “If not for the Internet, we would have loved to have done six months of small clubs down south to really build up what we are and discover what we are,” he said, “but because of the way it is, we have to have a trial by fire and jump right in, guns a blazing.” (more…)

The crew cleaning up after this past weekend’s Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee, discovered the dead body of a man in his 20s on the camping grounds Tuesday, June 16th, one day after the fest had ended, the Tennessean reports. An autopsy is being conducted to determine cause of death. According to the report, the unidentified man was last seen alive on June 15th at 3 p.m., and police theorize that he was from Alabama. The body showed no signs of trauma, leading Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves to speculate that the death was either drug-related or the result of a pre-existing medical problem.

(See all of Rolling Stone’s Bonnaroo Coverage.)

“All we know is that he was alive [Monday] at 3 p.m.,” said Graves, who added he was unsure whether the man was a worker who stayed behind to help clean up the site. The death marks the seventh in Bonnaroo’s eight-year history, the Shelbyville Times-Gazette reports. (more…)

During a raid in mid-January on a massage parlor in Midvale, Utah, the father of last year’s American Idol runner-up, squeaky-clean Mormon David Archuleta, was arrested by police and charged with prostitute solicitation, a Class B misdemeanor.

According to Us Weekly, Jeff Archuleta, 41, who was the consummate stage dad during his son’s Idol run, has pleaded no contest to the charge, paying a $582 fine following his arrest at an establishment called the Queens of Reiki on January 14th. (more…)

Sting has confirmed plans to return this fall with a new solo album titled If On a Winter’s Night… on his official Website. The October 27th album, inspired by what Sting calls his favorite season, will feature two original compositions along with carols, lullabies and traditional songs from the British Isles.

“The theme of winter is rich in inspiration and material,” Sting said. “By filtering all of these disparate styles into one album I hope we have created something refreshing and new.” The two Sting songs on the disc are called “Lullaby for an Anxious Child” and “The Hounds of Winter,” and both have been previously released (”Hounds” is the opening track of his 1996 solo album Mercury Falling). Other tracks include the 14th century carol “Gabriel’s Message,” the traditional ballad “The Snow it Melts the Soonest,” Henry Purcell’s “Now Winter Comes Slowly” and an English reworking of Schubert’s “Der Leiermann” now called “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” (more…)

Photo: Buckner/Getty
Last year’s American Idol champ David Cook extends The Declaration Tour through August and adds a gig at New York’s Central Park for the GMA Summer Concert series. Plus, Journey and new singer Arnel Pineda continue their support of last year’s Revelation and Ra Ra Riot embark on a headlining jaunt. Full dates for all three treks, after the jump. (more…)

Photo: Graythem/Getty

The California Supreme Court opted not to intervene and delay Chris Brown’s preliminary hearing, setting the stage for Rihanna to testify at the June 22nd court date, the Los Angeles Times reports. As Rock Daily reported earlier today, Brown’s lawyer Mark Geragos requested a delay so the defense could attain police personnel records that may shed light on the photo leak that led to TMZ publishing an unauthorized photograph of Rihanna’s “horrific” injuries following the alleged February 8th altercation. Geragos believes the photo will taint potential jury pools, preventing his client from having a fair trial.

However the courts all indicated that Geragos could request those files 30 days before the actual trial, ruling the request wasn’t sufficient grounds for a delay. Brown has been charged with felony assault and making criminal threats; he pleaded not guilty to both charges. Rihanna’s lawyer Donald Etra previously said his client would cooperate with the Los Angeles District Attorney, who will likely call Rihanna to the stand June 22nd.

Photo: Hogan/Getty
Paul McCartney will record a score for an animated film based on the children’s story Macca co-wrote, High in the Clouds. According to Variety, the film will be produced by former New Line Cinema founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne and directed by The Lion King’s Rob Minkoff. “Paul [McCartney] said he would commit to a score of original songs as part of it,” Lynne said. “Bob and I had never focused on animation in our career, but that got our attention.”

High in the Clouds tells the story of a squirrel’s quest to find an animal sanctuary, Variety writes. The film will be McCartney’s first heavy involvement in an animated project since 1968’s Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine, and his first time composing music for a movie since 1967’s The Family Way. McCartney does have a long history of contributing songs to films, however, penning the hit “Live and Let Die” for the James Bond film of the same name and the title track of 2001’s Vanilla Sky soundtrack. In both cases, McCartney was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Song category.

Who: A Brooklyn-based quintet who broke out at this year’s SXSW on the strength of their free debut EP The Infinite Fucking Cross who have since gone on to open for Cold War Kids and MGMT. Bummed with their jobs working as ringtone designers, Will Roan and Simon O’Connor initially formed Amazing Baby as something to do after hours. “We would just sit around getting really wasted and work on songs,” says Roan. “We didn’t think we’d be very popular.”

Sounds Like: On their stunning debut album Rewild (out this month), Amazing Baby deliver tunes that are at times thoroughly vintage and refreshingly futuristic: “The Narwhal” sounds like Led Zeppelin at their druggiest and most mystical; “Invisible Place” soars and swoops like Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” and “Kankra” builds into such an anthemic frenzy, you’ll be oozing serotonin for days. The crew also have a wonky sense of humor, especially on tunes like the scuzzed-out jam “Smoke Bros,” which features stoner-appropriate ruminations like “She protects her animals/ We are starving cannibals.” “We’re all like super emotional screwed up dudes,” says Roan. “It’s not all about raging songs — we’ve got a pretty strong sense of musical aesthetics, even if our lyrics are totally ridiculous sometimes.”

Vital Stats:

• Amazing Baby are part of Brooklyn’s crew of neo-psychedelic bands, which also includes MGMT and Chairlift. In fact, O’Connor used to room with MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser at Wesleyan. “We’ve all slept with the same girls,” says Roan. (more…)

After numerous delays and false starts to her solo album Nobody’s Daughter, Courtney Love will resurrect Hole and release the album under the band’s name, Love revealed to the NME during a recent studio visit. Love has recruited guitarist Micko Larkin to join the new Hole, and also said that former bassist Melissa auf der Maur will contribute background vocals at the least and possibly return as Hole’s bassist on a forthcoming tour.

In a video of the studio visit, with Love fittingly surrounded by doll parts, Love said that because the scope of Nobody’s Daughter had changed — it was originally conceived as an introspective “Blood on the Tracks,” but Love now likens it closer to the bombast of Davie Bowie’s Diamond Dogs — that the return of “Rock Courtney” meant the return of Hole. Nobody’s Daughter will still feature some of the tracks that resulted out of Love’s collaborations with both the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan and songwriter Linda Perry. The album is finally expected out in late 2009 or early 2010. While we’ve heard estimated release dates in the past, NME reports they’ve heard the entire album and will post a track-by-track of the disc tomorrow.

Photo: Mazur/WireImage

Snoop Dogg starred in a recent reality show called Father Hood, and the Prince of Darkness famously aired his family’s dirty laundry (and dog poop) in his career-changing The Osbournes. Bottom line: being a dad and being a rock star are clearly not mutually exclusive. So in honor of Father’s Day, Rolling Stone presents Dads Who Rock, a photo gallery looking back at rockin’ fathers with their kids.

In the spirit of Rock & Roll Moms and Hot Rock Offspring, flip through photos of Kurt Cobain with Frances Bean, plus Chris Martin, George Harrison, T.I., James Hetfield, Billie Joe Armstrong, Johnny Cash, Flea and many more right here:

• Dads Who Rock: Slash, Snoop, Elvis, Ozzy and More Rock Stars With Their Families

Photo: Tercero - Harris/FilmMagic

As promised, 50 Cent dropped his new mixtape War Angel as a free download last night on his ThisIs50 Website. The mixtape is the first of three that 50 is plotting to release before his oft-delayed Before I Self Destruct comes out in September. War Angel includes the gritty “Redrum” and a sequel of sorts to Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M,” fittingly called “C.R.E.A.M. 2,” with 50 rapping, “Cash rules I keep a shooter ’round me, Queens get the money, I’ll have a nigga kill y’all.” Taking a page from the Jay-Z playbook, 50 declares “Goons don’t use Auto-Tune” in the opening track “I Line Niggas”

Given the mixtape’s name and subtitle (”Prepare For Total Destruction”), it’s not surprising that the majority of War Angel’s tracks are heavy on violent lyrics, especially cuts like “Better Come On Your a Game” and “Get The Message.” However, 50 does take a brief two-song break from the gunfire with the soulful “I’ll Do Anything” (”This one’s for the bitches,” he says) and “London Girl,” which seems like 50’s response to Estelle and Kanye West’s “American Boy.” Other highlights include perhaps the funkiest song ever about drug trafficking, “Cocaine,” featuring Robin Thicke hitting the Prince falsetto as 50 raps about re-upping and claiming corners. (more…)

Photo: Cohen/WireImage

Eddie Van Halen’s red, white and black splatter-striped “Frankenstrat” guitar is one of the Van Halen leader’s true signatures. In fact, it’s so closely associated with the guitarist, Van Halen had the color scheme copyrighted in 2001. Now he’s suing Nike because he says the sportswear giant put a similar design on one of their Dunk Lows sneakers, Spinner reports.

In the lawsuit Eddie and his ELVH Inc. accuse Nike of treading on his trademark, saying the NYX sneaker did “irreparable harm and damage” to his design. He is seeking both monetary retribution and “the impoundment and destruction of all footwear.” While the sneaker does feature red, white and black stripes on the sole — a popular tri-color combination — it doesn’t seem identical to Van Halen’s pattern, and in response to the suit, a Nike spokesperson said, “Nike’s Dunk shoe design is not substantially similar to any of the Van Halen designs, and Nike has not referenced the ‘Van Halen’ name or image as part of any marketing campaign or promotional material associated with the shoe.” (more…)