Photograph by Brad Fedie for RollingStone.Com

For bikers, this past weekend’s Harley-Davidson Festival was a big deal: Organizers expected more than 100,000 Harley riders and guests to descend on Milwaukee to celebrate the 105th birthday of the H-D motorcycle. Many rode to Milwaukee from all around North America; some came from as far away as New Zealand. For four days, the city was packed with comedians, merch booths, bike stunts, beer and loads of rock & roll. (Click here for photos!)

“Good evening Harley-Davidson enthusiasts,” Bruce Springsteen said just before nine Saturday night. More than 180 minutes later, he was still onstage, closing out six months of steady touring and, for all intents and purposes, the fest. (There are only a handful of gigs Sunday.) Despite all the time on the road, Springsteen showed zero signs of fatigue. He bounced around the stage, sweated like Kevin Garnett, rolled around on his back and took numerous trips into the crowd to shake hands and let fans sing into his mike.

Most of the best-known, crowd-pleasing songs came near the end of the show, including “Glory Days,” “Born to Run” and “Rosalita.” (more…)

After taping VH1 Honors: The Who, Pete Townshend e-mailed Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu with a post-mortem discussing his own performance, his desire to smash plastic Rock Band instruments and the advice he gave Eddie Vedder a few years ago. Here’s the message:

Despite my smiley face, I was on guard on the red carpet and didn’t say much although the New York Times guy caught me off guard with the best question of my life, delivered almost dead-pan: “WHY DON’T YOU JUST DO WHAT ROGER WANTS?” For a split second I tried to answer.

The show felt clunky to me because I find it hard to mix work and pleasure, and so much of it was about mixing with people and accepting their good wishes. I tend to shut myself away before and after shows, it’s about making the best of the very little I have left to give the audience. Trying to increase the force of the water by closing down the valve on the hose, so to speak. I thought Roger sounded good. He’s been keeping himself active, doing small shows, and it showed.

It always takes me 20 minutes or so to loosen up. This was our first show for a year or so, so I was rusty on guitar. I felt like I was holding a spade (shovel). I dreamed last night of trying to play the show with a guitar actually covered in soil. I have been playing piano since last July, and only acoustic guitar (on the sofa while watching episodes of Medium or Boston Legal as my way of remembering America). Electric guitar and arm-swinging is not what I do between dog-walks and arthritis. (more…)

When Rock Daily caught up with Wayne Coyne backstage at the taping of VH1 Rock Honors: The Who (airing tonight), the Flaming Lips frontman told a story about riding to a Who show on the back of his older brother’s motorcycle and being utterly blown away. “I already believed in rock & roll,” he explains, “but seeing the Who really made me feel it. I knew I had to become a musician after that. What the Who did was they gave me no choice — which is what you want. It’s like falling in love, and it’s not up to me anymore.” Eddie Vedder expressed a similar sentiment when RS chatted with him at Saturday’s big Who tribute show: “These guys changed my whole world. It’s a big part of why I get to do what I do.”

For complete coverage of VH1 Rock Honors, check out rocknrolldiary.com. Also look for Rolling Stone correspondent Jenny Eliscu on VH1’s broadcast 9 PM ET tonight.

While in Los Angeles for VH1’s Rock Honors, Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu bumped into the Strokes‘ drummer Fabrizio Moretti, who reports he’s working on a side project with his girlfriend, Binki Shapiro, and their singer-guitarist pal Rodrigo Amarante, who used to play in Brazilian indie-rock group Los Hermanos. An as-yet-untitled debut album is due this fall on Rough Trade, and a first listen sounded like Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vince Guaraldi and Sixties wall-of-sound girl groups. The group’s prospective name: Little Joy.

For complete coverage of VH1 Rock Honors, check out rocknrolldiary.com. Also look for Rolling Stone correspondent Jenny Eliscu on VH1’s broadcast 9 PM ET tonight.

Saturday night’s Who-dedicated VH1 Rock Honors concert drew a star-studded crowd, including performers Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam and Hollywood types like Adam Sandler and David Duchovny. Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu and Pete Maiden caught up with Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, the Flaming Lips‘ Wayne Coyne, The Office’s Rainn Wilson and Brandon Boyd of Incubus and nabbed their favorite Who lyrics, a few impromptu performances and more (Coyne praised the band’s “mystical freakiness”). Click above for the exclusive red-carpet video and stay tuned for even more reports from the big show.

• Photo Gallery: VH1 Rock Honors
• The Who Deliver Big at Rock Honors Tribute
• Eddie Vedder Pays Tribute to the Who

For complete coverage of VH1 Rock Honors, check back at rocknrolldiary.com on Thursday July 17th. Also look for Rolling Stone correspondent Jenny Eliscu on VH1’s broadcast at 9 PM ET this Thursday.

[Video: Pete Maiden]

Eddie Vedder can still recall the exact date of his first Who concert: June 18, 1980, at the San Diego Sports Arena. By then, Kenney Jones was drumming in the band, and he “was on fire,” Vedder remembers. “These guys changed my whole world. It’s a big part of why I get to do what I do.”

Vedder and Pearl Jam got a chance to repay that favor on Saturday at the VH1 Honors tribute concert to the Who at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, reaching across the generations to perform two songs from the Who’s 1973 concept album Quadrophenia. Following sets by the Foo Fighters (who covered “Young Man Blues” and “Bargain”), Flaming Lips (who performed a Tommy medley that included “Pinball Wizard” and “Sparks” and Wayne Coyne’s signature bubble) as well as from Incubus (”I Can See for Miles” and “I Can’t Explain”) and Tenacious D (”Squeeze Box”), Sean Penn introduced Pearl Jam, who erupted with “The Real Me” and a soaring, emotional reading of “Love, Reign O’er Me,” as a string section swelled with Vedder’s Daltrey-like wail. (more…)

Everything about the Who has always been extra-large: sounds, ideas, personality, explosions. Paying tribute to all that isn’t easy, but the VH1 Rock Honors: The Who concert on Saturday in Los Angeles captured a bit of that legacy in a night of stirring Who songs performed by Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Flaming Lips, Incubus, Tenacious D and the veteran band itself, delivering songs with all the power and intelligence fans have come to know.

On a stage painted the Union Jack colors of red, white and blue in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the two-hour concert was split between a rousing show-closing performance by the Who and some painfully brief sets by the night’s younger generation of rockers. The concert (to be broadcast Thursday on VH1) began with a series of taped testimonials from rockers young and old, from Slash, Sting and the Clash’s Mick Jones to Coldplay and Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, but then it was quickly on to the live music.

The Foo Fighters stirred up bluesy thrash on “Young Man Blues,” as a bearded Dave Grohl slashed at a blue electric guitar, and guitarist Chris Shiflet was dressed in a Mod suit and tie. (more…)

Wayne Coyne’s life was changed back in Oklahoma City in the 1970s, when he attended his first Who concert as a teenager. The Flaming Lips leader can still talk excitedly about that night with his brothers, hearing the music erupt onstage, watching the band explode, worrying if the green lasers just might cut off his fingers.

By 1986, Coyne and the Flaming Lips were performing a raw medley of songs from Tommy. And as part of Saturday’s VH1 Honors tribute concert to the Who at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, the Lips will perform a typically mind-altering take on songs from the Who’s most famous rock opera. Coyne plans to emerge in his epic “space bubble” and begin the Lips’ set with the immortal words: “See me, feel me, touch me, heal me…”

The show, to be broadcast on VH1 on Thursday, July 17, will also include performances by the Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Incubus and Tenacious D (who will play “Squeeze Box”). But this won’t be the first encounter between the Who and the Flaming Lips. In recent years, Coyne and the Lips have occasionally stepped onstage with Pete Townshend at his series of intimate “In the Attic” club shows, performing Who songs and originals with the classic rock icon.

“Their music is really optimistic,” says Coyne. “There is a sense that they believe what they’re saying. When the music is going with it, we all believe it together. And that’s a cool thing.”

Did you get to choose what Who songs you would be doing?
Luckily, they wanted us to do a Tommy medley. We’re like, “Fuck, yeah!” We had done this Tommy medley in 1986. When we think of the Who doing those songs in the Live At Leeds era — doing the most intense freak-out shit — that was the period we like the most. We probably would have done anything they asked us, just because it’s cool to do and to meet Pete Townshend is great.

You did this same medley in 1986?
We were such bad musicians back then. (more…)