Names and faces
■ Country superstar Alan Jackson revealed in an interview Tuesday that he has a degenerative nerve condition that affects his balance but he intends to keep performing. Jackson, 62, said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Today” show that he was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease a decade ago. He said it was a genetic condition and its effects on his ability to walk have been getting more noticeable. The condition does not alter his life expectancy, he said. “I know I’m stumbling around on stage,” Jackson told Jenna Bush Hager. “And now I’m having a little trouble balancing, even in front of the microphone, and so I just feel very uncomfortable.” The singer-songwriter from Newnan, Ga., released a new album “Where Have You Gone” this year and he remains one of country music’s top male artists, with more than 43 million albums sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The Country Music Hall of Famer’s best known hits include “Chattahoochee” and “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” Jackson has continued to tour despite the condition and says he wants to perform as much as he can.
■ A cassette tape with a 33-minute audio recording of John Lennon being interviewed by four Danish teenagers 51 years ago as well as an apparently unpublished song by the late Beatle fetched $58,240 at an auction in Denmark on Tuesday. The tape, recorded on Jan. 5, 1970, chiefly consists of Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, speaking about being in Denmark and world peace. It also has the couple singing two songs: 1969’s “Give Peace a Chance” and “Radio Peace,” which was made for a radio station in the Netherlands but never released. The cassette was put up for sale by Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneer in Copenhagen together with 29 still photos and a copy of the school newspaper for which the teenagers had interviewed Lennon and Ono. “It is a small item with lots of interest,” auctioneer Jesper Bruun Rasmussen said. The auction’s starting price for the Lennon lot was $15,711. The Danish teenagers did the interview in northern Denmark at the height of the Vietnam War because Lennon and Ono had “a message of peace, and that was what was important to us,” Karsten Hoejen, who made the recording on a tape recorder borrowed from the local hi-fi shop, told The Associated Press. Lennon and Ono were in the northern Danish region of Thy because Ono’s ex-husband had moved there and taken their 5-year-old daughter, Kyoko, with him.