Rockin’1000 – The biggest rock band on the planet assembled 1,000 musicians to play ‘Learn To Fly’ together in a field in Cesena in 2015 to convince The Foo Fighters to play a show in Italy. The video went viral – hitting 62m views. Foo Fighters’ attention was firmly grabbed, and the band said yes. Hearts were captured worldwide as the story spread across the globe. Since then, international stadium tours have followed where people have witnessed the phenomenon of 1000 musicians playing live together.
Now, Rockin’1000 is set to release their first original song, ‘How We Roll’, featuring vocals by Chris Robertson of US hard-rock heavyweights and arena-shakers Black Stone Cherry and 100 musicians performing on the song – The record is available via the Mascot Label Group, and you can check out the video right here at RAMzine.
But a week ago, on 3rd June, in Madrid, Spain, the song was played for the first time by 1,000 musicians during the opening date of the Humans World Tour 2023.
Via their Mission Songwriting challenge – where the streets of Milan, Rome, New York, Paris and Mexico City were distributed with flyers with the words “Wanted Songwriters” and a phone number – Rockin’1000 invited its community of more than 65,000 musicians from all over the world to create the biggest work of musical co-creation ever attempted: the first song composed by 1,000 authors to be performed by 1,000 musicians.
After a lengthy study, the team of experts led by Fabio Zaffagnini, formed by the Australian Nic Cester – singer-songwriter, guitarist, and frontman of Jet; the Italians Giulio Nenna – producer, musician, and composer and Andrea DB Debernardi, sound engineer, and producer, and the Brazilian Daniel Plentz of Selton, musician, music director, and producer – last October convened about 100 musicians (including vocals, guitars, basses, and drums) at the Teatro Verdi in Cesena, Italy where it was set up for the occasion as a recording studio. An extraordinary two days of rehearsals followed.
On being involved Chris Robertson said, “I’ve been a big fan of Rockin’1000 since the first video went viral, so to sing their first original song is a huge honour for me. I can’t wait for you all to check it out.”
Shows have shaken foundations at the likes of Allianz Parque Arena, São Paulo – Brazil, Stade de France, Paris, Venice, Turin, Frankfurt, and Milan and were joined in Florence, Italy by special guest Courtney Love. Dave Grohl has spoken about how he felt about the band’s invitation in a video here.
“After creating the first draft, which included a top line with guitar accompaniment, we asked the community to arrange it and write the lyrics. We collected over 1,000 proposals, in which there was everything: punk, folk, metal, and prog versions,” revealed Fabio Zaffagnini, founder of Rockin’1000. ”Gathering materials from so many people and putting them together was long, demanding, and very interesting. Listening to hundreds of versions allowed us to understand what worked and what didn’t. The feature of Black Stone Cherry is, for us, a confirmation of the quality of the song. We are delighted. Such a result was not taken for granted when we started with this yet another crazy idea!”
After seven years of covers, marking the history of rock, Rockin’1000 is said to be proud to include a revolutionary song that conceals a world without geographical boundaries, cultural barriers, or differences in age, genre, or musical background.
ROCKIN’1000 has one big goal: to allow every person who can sing or play music to live every musician’s dream together – to travel all over the world to perform in big stadiums. For more information click here.
