News Roundup 2011: March

The Darkness very quietly went about reuniting at the beginning of March, first relaunching their website and then posting a couple of cryptic messages on Twitter. They were added to the Download Festival lineup a few days later. For a band renowned for being over the top, this was a surprisingly low key comeback.

Similarly low-key but at the opposite end of the spectrum, Buffalo Springfield's surviving three members announced their first reunion tour for 42 years. Richie Furay, Stephen Stills and Neil Young played at Young's Bridge School Benefit Show back in 2010 but they announced their first set of proper tour dates together for the summer. A second tour was later scheduled for the winter, but that was postponed until 2012 and then cancelled altogether because Young is said to be writing his book. Still, it seemed good while it lasted.

Love was also in the air for Aerosmith after Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry finally put 12 months of strife behind them. Tyler announced via Twitter "AeroFreaks rejoice... Joe and I sent smoke signals, shot the shit and chewed the fat for the last year, but just smoked the peace pipe for an hour today. On our way to rockin' your fkin worlds this summer by locking ourselves away somewhere w/guitars and drums..." The band have been busily recording a brand new album for much of the year (between seasons of American Idol on which Tyler is a judge). We're expecting their new record at some point in the next year.

One person we won't be seeing anytime soon is Phil Collins who announced his retirement with a genuinely classy sign off. He told FHM "I'm sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn't mean it to happen like that. It's hardly surprising that people grew to hate me. I don't really belong to that world and I don't think anyone's going to miss me. I'm much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely."

The always entertaining Sammy Hagar announced in March that he was once abducted by aliens. He told MTV "Aliens were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren’t even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, "F**k, they downloaded something into me!" Or they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment." In fairness to Sammy, he was aware of what people might think and was happy to poke fun at himself in a TV sketch on the Jimmy Kimmel show a month later.

An entire album of unreleased David Bowie material leaked online in March. The album, Toy, was recorded in 2000 and would have been released instead of 2002's Heathen. The album featured new songs and re-recorded versions of some of Bowie's earliest work. 

Trevor Horn returned to the Yes fold to produce the band's brand new studio album, Fly From Here - their first with singer Benoit David. Horn co-wrote several of the songs on the album, while the band also welcomed back keyboardist Geoff Downes who played with the band in the 80s.

And how different rock history could have been if The Doors had managed to find out where Paul Rodgers lived in 1973. Rodgers revealed to Uncut "I discovered quite recently that I was lined up to join The Doors, which blew my mind. Robby Krieger told me that The Doors were all fans of Free and, after Jim Morrison's death, they came to England looking for me. Thing is, at that time, I had buried myself in the country, working on things, and they couldn't get hold of me. My jaw actually dropped, like in a cartoon, when Robbie told me this."