U2 singer Bono denies reports of health scare (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – U2 lead singer Bono on Sunday denied reports he had been taken to hospital after complaining of chest pains while on holiday in the south of France.

The 51-year-old did attend the Princess Grace hospital in Monaco, but a spokeswoman said it was for a routine checkup.

"Despite press stories to the contrary, Bono has not suffered a recent health scare," the spokeswoman said in a statement given to Reuters.

"Reports of his being rushed to hospital for emergency treatment are untrue. Bono is in good health and enjoying a family holiday in the south of France."

The health scare was reported by the Irish Independent newspaper and picked up by online music news outlets.

Bono and Irish rock band U2 have just completed a world tour which broke ticket sales records.

The group was forced to cancel several gigs in 2010 and pulled out of the Glastonbury music festival when Bono injured his back. They returned to perform on the main stage at Glastonbury this summer.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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Springsteen saxophonist Clemons dies: reports (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Clarence Clemons, the burly saxophone player who played a crucial role in shaping Bruce Springsteen's early sound, died on Saturday, six days after suffering a stroke at his Florida home, media reports said. He was 69.

The New York Times said Clemons' death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for Springsteen. Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports.

Clemons, dubbed the "Big Man," started working with Springsteen in 1971 and was a charter member of the backing group that came to be known as the E Street Band.

His gritty, evocative saxophone solos powered such notable Springsteen songs as "Born to Run," "Jungleland," "Prove It All Night," "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out," and "Badlands."

On stage, Clemons proved a worthy foil for Springsteen and his bandmates. In a 1975 concert review, Rolling Stone said Clemons betrayed an "ominous cool" in contrast to guitarist Steven Van Zandt's "strange hipster frenzy."

"Clarence was the big black saxophone player who completely represented the tradition of rock 'n' roll and R&B," Van Zandt told Britain's Mojo magazine in 2006.

Alongside Van Zandt, Clemons personified the E Street Band, and he took it hard when Springsteen broke up the group for a decade in 1989. But by then, Clemons was being used less in the studio. On stage, he was often reduced to playing tambourine or engaging in crowd-pleasing theatrics, like kissing Springsteen during the live staple "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)."

He also dabbled in acting, enjoyed a solo hit single with Jackson Browne, 1985's ""You're a Friend of Mine," toured with Ringo Starr and even played on two tracks on pop singer Lady Gaga's new album.

'PURE HELL'

Clemons' death came three years after organist Danny Federici, Springsteen's longest-serving musical partner, lost a three-year battle with cancer.

Clemons had been in ill health in recent years, suffering back and hip problems. He had double knee-replacement surgery in 2008, and walked for the first time in three months when Springsteen and the E Street Band played the Super Bowl early in 2009. The band's eight-month world tour that year was "pure hell," he told Rolling Stone earlier this year.

Clemons was born January 11, 1942 in Norfolk, Virginia, and played saxophone in high school where he was also a promising football player. A car crash ended his professional sporting dreams, and he went on to become a social worker, family man and barroom rocker.

His first meeting with Springsteen was auspicious. Clemons had heard about a hot young rocker on the Asbury Park, New Jersey, scene, and walked into one of his club shows on a bitterly windy night. A gust of wind ripped the door from his hand, and it flew down the street. All eyes turned to Clemons, and Springsteen readily agreed when he asked to sit in with him.

"When I first walked on that stage and hit the first note, I saw things that are happening today, then," he told Reuters in 2009. "I knew that he (Springsteen) was what I was looking for and I was what he was looking for to take that next step to the big time. It was just love, man, at first sight."

During sessions for Springsteen's 1975 breakthrough "Born to Run," Clemons spent 16 hours recording his solo on "Jungleland," the nine-minute track that closes the album.

"Creating is like religion," Clemons said later of the marathon session. "I was willing to relinquish myself to him (Springsteen). I've had people say to me, 'That sax solo saved my life.' So I did my job."

Clemons was used more sparingly in later years as Springsteen opted to emphasize the guitars (1978's "Darkness on the Edge of Town") or recorded largely solo (1982's "Nebraska" and 1987's "Tunnel of Love."

He still brought fervor to later-era songs like the hit single "Dancing in the Dark" and "Land of Hope and Dreams, but "over time his role in the band has become more symbolic than musical," author Jimmy Guterman wrote in his 2005 Springsteen biography "Runaway American Dream."

In 2009 he published his memoir, "Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales," co-written with his friend Don Reo.

(Writing by Dean Goodman; Additional reporting by Christian Wiessner; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Springsteen sideman Clemons suffers stroke: reports (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Clarence Clemons, the saxophone player in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, has suffered a stroke, according to a pair of media reports on Sunday.

Reuters could not confirm the reports, and late-night emails sent to publicists for Clemons and Springsteen were not answered.

The news was broken by entertainment gossip website showbiz411.com, which said Clemons was "seriously ill" after suffering the stroke at his Florida home. Rolling Stone magazine said it independently confirmed the stroke, but not its severity.

Clemons, 69, started playing with Springsteen in 1971, and had notable solos on such tunes as "Born to Run," "Thunder Road" and "Badlands." He was dubbed "Big Man," which was also the title of a 2009 memoir he co-wrote with Don Reo.

Away from the E Street Band, Clemons enjoyed a hit single in 1985 with "You're a Friend of Mine," a duet with Jackson Browne. He also dabbled in acting, and worked with other artists including Ringo Starr, Aretha Franklin and Lady Gaga.

Clemons underwent double knee-replacement surgery in 2008, and walked for the first time in three months when Springsteen and the E Street Band played the Super Bowl early in 2009.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman)

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Reports of The Decemberists' demise exaggerated (AP)

By CHRIS TALBOTT, AP Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott, Ap Entertainment Writer – Sat Jun 11, 1:24 pm ET

MANCHESTER, Tenn. – Colin Meloy is known for his brainy wordplay but there are two words he'd like to have back: "Long hiatus."

Those words, uttered in an interview, rippled across the Twitterverse and left many with the impression that Meloy's band, The Decemberists, are breaking up.

"Nothing could be farther from the truth," Meloy said Saturday on his tour bus in the parking lot behind Bonnaroo's big stage. "With this record I feel we have a whole world in front of us with plenty of options and I'm excited to continue writing music for The Decemberists and performing with The Decemberists."

He just wants to do something else for a while.

Driven by a powerful lead song, "Down by the Water," that featured harmony from Gillian Welch, "The King is Dead" hit No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 earlier this year, a rare feat for an indie folk rock band known for its challenging material. A top-selling record is often a bonanza for a band and the impulse is to tour nonstop to capitalize on the opportunity.

Yet The Decemberists will wind down touring in August and won't tour in the fall. Instead Meloy, who calls himself "compulsively creative," will begin promoting his new illustrated young adult book "Wildwood," the first in a fantasy series for HarperCollins he plans to produce with his wife, the artist Carson Ellis. The book idea predates The Decemberists when Meloy worked in a pizza place and played open mic gigs and Ellis worked in a bar and painted in her free time.

"I've managed to pull it off over the last year and a half but it owes a lot to chance and luck and, thankfully, some creative epiphanies," Meloy said. "I think it would water down both things if I tried to do them at the same time."

He also would like to write a musical and tackle a studio project or two during this ... quiet period? And he wants to spend more time at home to be with his son, Hank, who is autistic.

The other members of the Portland, Ore.-based band have things to focus on as well. Founding accordion and keyboard player Jenny Conlee was diagnosed with breast cancer this spring and sat out the band's summer dates.

"We're just glad we're at the point where she has insurance and some flexibility so she has time to do the treatments and come out the other side better," Meloy said.

Conlee also is in the dark, experimental bluegrass band Black Prairie with Decemberists bandmates Nate Query and Chris Funk, and that group expects to produce new material while Meloy works on his projects.

Long waits for new songs are nothing new to fans of The Decemberists. It took three years between the band's complicated breakthrough, "The Crane Wife," and the 2009 release of "Hazards of Love." It took another two years for "The King is Dead" to come out. Fans waited patiently and were rewarded with something a little different.

"Going into this it felt right to sit down and write some simple, pretty songs, but as it turns out the simple, pretty songs in this day and age are what people are into," Meloy said.

And he thinks they'll be waiting for more after ... time away?

"I just assume that they'll still be there in three years," Meloy said. "And also we're not a band that's afraid to take risks, and if this seems risky it doesn't really bother me. I think we've taken bigger risks in the past. I'm just following my whim and I think that's what The Decemberists have been all along, and I think that's why we have our audience."

___

Online:

http://www.decemberists.com

___

Contact Chris Talbott at http://www.twitter.com/Chris(underscore)Talbott.

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Dylan disputes reports he was censored by Chinese (AP)

NEW YORK – Bob Dylan doesn't understand all the fuss about his tour last month in China.

In a brief letter posted Friday on his website, http://www.bobdylan.com, the singer-songwriter disputed reports that he had originally been denied permission to perform in the country or that government officials had censored his playlist.

"As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing," Dylan wrote. "There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous three months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."

In a column published April 9, The New York Times' Maureen Dowd criticized Dylan for not singing such protest anthems as "The Times They Are a-Changin,'" and "Blowin' in the Wind." Dylan, she wrote, "sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left."

Defenders of Dylan noted that he did perform one of his greatest protest songs, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," along with such biting classics as "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Ballad of a Thin Man." He opened his shows with "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," which includes the lines: "I'm gonna change my way of thinking/Make myself a different set of rules."

With hundreds of songs to choose from, Dylan rotates his set list regularly. According to his website, "Like a Rolling Stone" and "All Along the Watchtower" are the songs he is most likely to perform.

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Justin Bieber fires back at "naughty boy" reports (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Justin Bieber says "CSI" star Marg Helgenberger is "kinda lame" for calling him "a brat" in a recent interview.

The teen idol took to Twitter on Monday to scold the actress for her comments and to deflect a separate report about his alleged misbehavior on a Qantas flight.

Helgenberger was widely quoted during the weekend as saying that Bieber, who appeared on two episodes of the long-running crime show, acted inappropriately on set.

"I shouldn't be saying this but he was kind of a brat," she told French radio network Europe 1. "He was very nice to me. But he locked one of the producers in a closet and he put his fist through a cake that was on the cast's table."

Bieber replied, via Twitter: "It's kinda lame when someone you met briefly and never worked with comments on you. I will continue to wish them luck and be kind."

A publicist for Helgenberger did not reply to an email seeking comment.

And on another subject, Bieber questioned the newsworthiness of a minor incident during his recent tour in Australia.

Local media said a flight attendant ordered Bieber to return to his seat after he strolled down the aisle as the plane was preparing to take off. Australia's SkyNews reported that she told him that "his behavior was a security risk and that he had been acting like a child and would therefore be treated like one."

Commented Bieber: "She was right and I sat down. That's news?"

He added: "I know who I am and sometimes people are just going to say what they want. Keep your head up and be the man your mama raised." (Reuters has edited the spelling.)

Justin Bieber is 17.

(Reporting by Dean Goodman; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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