Table of contents for May-07-15 in Rolling Stone

1. Mumford & Sons “The Wolf” Mumford & Sons have cited Bruce Springsteen as an influence for years – but we’ve never heard them put that into action the way they do on this arena-strength anthem from their upcoming Wilder Mind. 2. Boytoy “Blazed” Three minutes of dreamy guitar bliss from the New York trio. Stretch out on the beach and crank up your headphones for maximum effect. 3. Yelawolf feat. Eminem “Best Friend” Yelawolf shows his country side on this smoky ballad – but his big bro Eminem totally steals the show with one of his wildest, craziest guest verses since the Bush administration. 4. Tame Impala “Because I’m a Man” Did somebody say, “Jamiroquai”? The Aussie astronauts’ new jam is a pure, chill hit of blue-eyed funk. Cooler…

TRIBUTE PERCY SLEDGE, THE R&B SINGER WHOSE VOICE powered the 1966 classic “When a Man Loves a Woman,” died on April 14th of liver cancer at his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was 74. “Percy had a voice that touched anyone who heard it,” says Rod Stewart, “and made them think anything was possible.” Sledge was born in the tiny rural community of Leighton, Alabama, to parents who made their living picking cotton. He began singing in church and while working alongside his family. “I was 10 years old, singing songs in the field,” Sledge said in 2005. “My boss man told me one day, ‘Perce, the voice coming out of your throat, the whole world is gonna hear it one day.’ ” It was in those cotton fields…

MEMOIR It turns out that the guy who once sang “Fuck this/And fuck that/Fuck it all” has a softer side. Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored, the new memoir from former Sex Pistols and PiL frontman John Lydon, is a hilarious and at times touching account of everything from growing up in a “piss-poor” London neighborhood to helping raise his wife’s grandchildren. Lydon does as much praising as bomb-throwing – including some kind words for Mick Jagger, who helped Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious get a lawyer when he was accused of murdering Nancy Spungen. “I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Jagger for that,” Lydon, 59, tells ROLLING STONE. The singer gets candid, talking about trying heroin (once was enough) and how deeply his father’s death…

FESTIVALS Friday, April 3rd BREATHING BARELY, BREATHING THE funky urine gas they use for oxygen. I’m on American Flight 181 out of JFK, like that, direct to LAX. Not a normal seat but a dandy little personal booth, that’s what they have now, like a phone kiosk. A touch TV screen, awesome seat maneuverability, good food (!), handy surfaces to put your coffee on. I put down the crime paperback; too much effort. Technology wins, I fold out the TV monitor. Reading takes too much cerebration, too hard, a lot of work just to concentrate. Movies, the spectator can just be a jelly ball, that’ll work to kill the hours. Let’s see: entertainment, movies, new releases. Foxcatcher, this looks like some adult shit. But no, another empty, onejoke flick, actors…

BREAKING When the Osbournes became the First Family of Reality TV in 2002, Ozzy and Sharon’s eldest daughter, Aimée, opted out of the show and the massive fame that followed. But now she’s ready for the spotlight. Earlier this year, 31-year-old Aimée put out the wistful alt-pop song “Raining Gold,” her first single under the anonym ARO (her initials, though she pronounces it “arrow”). “There’s the obvious associations with my last name, and I wasn’t supercomfortable with that,” she says. A bloody, avant-garde video for “Raining Gold” – which will appear on her debut EP, out this summer – quickly became a YouTube hit, amassing close to 2 million views. Why did it take such a well-connected artist so long to get her career going? “I can’t be passionate about…

BREAKING As the son of Rhett Akins, a highly successful Nashville singer and songwriter, 25-year-old Thomas Rhett was steeped in country music. But one of his formative influences came from a different world. “When I was in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, Usher was so huge for me,” says Rhett, who mixed soul and funk with traditional twang on his excellent new single “Crash and Burn,” and took it straight to the top of iTunes’ country chart. Rhett’s 2013 debut, It Goes Like This, which yielded three Number One singles, gave him confidence to try something more adventurous this time around. His as-yet-untitled next album (which he describes as a collection of throwback sounds) will include some straight country similar to his 2012 ballad “Beer With Jesus.” But it also leans…

DOCUMENTARY What would you do if you were a talented singer in the 1970s who just happened to sound exactly like Elvis Presley? Jimmy “Orion” Ellis was an unsuccessful Alabama musician when he linked up with Sun Records head Shelby Singleton shortly after Presley’s death in 1977 and began recording uncredited songs for Sun. Presley’s grief-stricken fans bought these “new” Elvis songs, and Singleton even released an album titled Reborn. Wearing a mask to heighten the sense of mystery, Ellis played sold-out shows throughout the South. Filmmaker Jeanie Finlay details Ellis’ saga in her fascinating, tragicomic documentary Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. “On the surface, it seems like this fun, crazy idea,” Finlay says. “But his story is actually tinged…

Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, is a master archer who once worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. He was barely a blip in the first Avengers. In Age of Ultron, Hawkeye steals the show as the Everyman Avenger with the script’s tastiest lines: “We’re fighting an army of robots, and I have a bow and arrow,” he jokes. Then this loner uncovers his secret heart, which involves Linda Cardellini (Mad Men). Let me dodge spoilers to say that Jeremy Renner works miracles in the role, making the dude with no superpowers and zip fashion sense into a force to reckon with.…

RS 724/725 DEC. 28TH, 1995-JAN. 11TH, 1996 Green Day were so popular in 1995 that they appeared on the first ROLLING STONE cover of the year – and again on the last one. By that point, they were headlining arenas in support of their hit fourth album, Insomniac, and finding out that success wasn’t everything they hoped it would be. “I’ ll tell you the truth,” said bassist Mike Dirnt. “I had a lot more fun a couple of years ago. On tour, we have the most exciting lives in the world for one hour a day, and the rest of the time it’s the most boring job in the world.” For more from our archives, go to RollingStone.com/coverwall. Chart Flashback 1 One Sweet Day Mariah Carey and Boyz II…

Starr Power THRILLED TO FIND MY FAvorite drummer on the cover of Rolling Stone [“Ringo, Seriously,” RS 1232]. Anyone who’s paid attention to Ringo since he sobered up and began touring and recording again, first with Time Takes Time in 1992, realizes that he was a grandfather before he reached his creative peak as an artist. He has truly earned his solo spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Travis Truitt, Chicago IT’S RARE TO SEE RINGO’S role given as much importance as the other Beatles’. Thanks to Stephen Rodrick for losing the “and” in John, Paul, George and Ringo. This was a tale we’ve heard a zillion times, but told with a new perspective. Emma Seeley, St. Paul, MN THOSE WHO DISMISS RINGO because he didn’t tear…

OLD KISS “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” Some rock bands were doing the disco thing then, and this is one that worked. Kiss fans might say, “They sold out.” But listen, I’m not a song snob. Led Zeppelin “Wearing and Tearing” Fucking great! This was one of Zeppelin’s last songs, and sometimes when bands get close to the end, that can be the best stuff they ever did. It just rips. Classic Zeppelin. Cheap Trick “The Flame” like this song a lot. It’s a great vehicle for a singer like Robin Zander. For that genre, in that era? Perfect for them. NEW Flo Rida “G.F.D.R.” This one I had a little trouble with. I’m into rock & roll. I guess a lot of people like it, so it must…

GOOD WORKS John Legend has played the Oscars, the Grammys and festivals across America, but his latest tour is to somewhere very different: the prison system. In April, the singer played shows at two correctional facilities (including Sacramento’s Folsom Prison) for Free America, a new campaign to spotlight the staggering rise in the jailed population. “Our incarceration rate has increased 700 percent in the last few decades,” Legend says. “It’s not compassionate, and it’s racist – it’s a way to control black bodies.” He’s particularly concerned about the way young offenders are treated. “The school-to-prison pipeline is a real thing,” he says. “We’ve seen some heartbreaking stories where, instead of getting sent to the principal’s office, kids are getting sent straight to the juvenile center.” Legend hopes that prison reform…

HOT COMEDIANS ‘KIDS ARE FUCKING mean!” says the Kid Mero. The 31-yearold Bronx native, born Joel Martinez, recently translated buzz as a rambunctiously funny tweeter into regular gigs on two MTV shows, but right now he’s recalling a less glamorous time: “I worked as an aide in a junior high school. If I sucked a dick every time a kid told me to suck a dick, I’d be the world blow-bang champion!” Mero’s creative partner, Desus Nice, smiles. Several years ago, they were both working jobs they hated – Mero at the middle school, Desus (real name: Daniel Baker) at what he calls “a niche financial magazine for black people” – when they began ring on Twitter. Today the duo have fans like Seth Rogen and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig,…

PROFILE LAST YEAR, A PROMOTIONAL BILLboard went up in James McMurtry’s hometown of Austin that dubbed him “the most disinterested man in the world,” after the popular Dos Equis beer ad. It’s a distinction he’s more than earned, thanks to his deadpan, just-the-facts singing voice and non-judgmentally bleak worldview. McMurtry, 53, has been making records since the late Eighties, writing vividly observed songs that are often compared to the work of his father, Larry McMurtry, author of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning Western novel Lonesome Dove and the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. James’ writing can operate on a grand scale (his 2005 song “We Can’t Make It Here” became an anthem during the Occupy Wall Street protests). But he usually goes for a hardbitten intimacy. “My goal is to write the…

ON THE ADDICTIVE BBC America hit show Orphan Black, star Tatiana Maslany doesn’t just give one of the best performances on television – she gives nine of them, and counting. The thriller, now kicking off its third season, is centered on a mysterious government cloning program. Maslany, 29, plays wildly diff erent people with identical DNA, from the oft-terrifying, near-feral Helena to passive-aggressive suburbanite Alison. They share scenes on the show, too, via a seamless fusion of visual effects and virtuosic acting. Maslany, a native of Canada, called from the set of a movie she’s shooting in the frigid northernmost province of her home country. “We built an igloo the other day,” she says. “As you do.” It’s 50 below zero where you are, but at least you only have…

SHORT TAKE Big Time in Hollywood, FL Wednesdays, 10:30 p.m., Comedy Central All hail the loser-core glory of Comedy Central’s excellent new Big Time in Hollywood, FL. It’s like a couple of stoner slobs binge-watched Broad City and said, “This could be us, except we’re dudes living in our mom’s basement in the middle of nowhere.” Jack and Ben (Alex Anfanger and Lenny Jacobson) are a pair of twenty-or-thirty-something Florida brothers who fully believe they’re visionary indie filmmakers on the verge of discovery. Unfortunately, their parents have decided they need to move out and get jobs. So the slacker bros launch a Breaking Bad-style crime spree to fund their crummy videos and stay in that basement at all costs. The cast is one kick after another (Ben Stiller and Michael…

Blur The Magic Whip Warner Bros. In the Nineties, Oasis won the major Brit-pop battles: worldwide album sales, U.K. Number One singles and gossip-column yardage. But their archrivals, Blur, soundly beat them in exploration and legacy. Oasis wanted to be as big as the Beatles and the Who combined; Blur embodied those bands’ impatient forward march. At their studio peak – the five albums from 1993’s Modern Life Is Rubbish to 1999’s 13 – they dissected the generational malaise behind Brit-pop’s lad-ish swagger in a hook-smart rush of mod crunch, shoegazer psychedelia, dance-floor invention, sumptuous balladry and angular alternative rock. Blur now take the endurance trophy, too. Oasis broke up in 2009, while Blur’s classic lineup – singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave…

In RS 1232, contributing editor Janet Reitman told the story of three Chicago teenagers who were arrested as they attempted to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State [“The Children of ISIS”]. MSNBC’s Beth Fouhy praised Reitman’s “great, great reporting,” and ROLLING STONE readers debated exactly how the federal government should punish these misguided young zealots. NONE OF THE KIDS IN THIS family were seeking to destroy America; they were looking for validation and identification in what they perceived as the pure version of their culture. It’s violent and abhorrent but focused on a civil war abroad. We have no idea if they’d ever do anything in the U.S. Shouldn’t we be focusing on rehabilitation? Michael Giorgio Washington, DC THE AUTHORITIES stopped these naive kids at the airport, but…

IT WAS ALMOST TOO GOOD TO last: In October 2013, My Morning Jacket gathered to record their seventh album, in a hilltop mansion in Stinson Beach, the Northern California town where Jerry Garcia lived for years. The band would record during the day, then cook dinner together and walk on the beach, sometimes sharing a vaporizer pen. “There was nobody for miles and miles, like a deserted paradise,” says frontman Jim James. “At night, it was like you were inside the sky, the stars right next to your head.” Then, one day, James was moving an amp when he felt a sharp pain shoot through his back. “All of a sudden I was in bed, just in agony,” he says. He would have surgery for a herniated disc and spend…

CHECKING IN THE KILLERS HAVE BEEN LAYing low since they wrapped a big tour last summer – which doesn’t necessarily sit well with frontman Brandon Flowers. “A couple of the guys want to take a break from touring and the rat race,” the singer, 33, told Rolling Stone. “I want to keep it going.” So Flowers decided he would record a new solo album, The Desired Effect (out May 19th), a collection of spare, synth-y pop songs he cut with producer Ariel Rechtshaid (Haim, Vampire Weekend). We caught up with Flowers as he prepares for a solo tour of Europe. It sounds like you picked up some cues from Lorde on this record. Are you a fan? Yeah. There’s something really bold about how bare her songs are. That sort…

COMEDY When Aasif Mandvi first arrived in New York almost 30 years ago, the Indian-American actor started climbing the ladder of what he calls “brown-guy roles” – cabdrivers, deli owners, etc. “Then you evolve to playing doctors, dentists, maybe even a therapist. And then,” he says with a grin, “a terrorist. You know you’ve hit the big time when you get to grow a beard and say things like ‘Death to America!’ in an Arabic accent.” A lot has changed since then for Mandvi, 49, who was born in Bombay and raised in Britain and Tampa, Florida. Since 2006, his main gig has been The Daily Show, where he is the “international and Muslim correspondent.” This summer, he will appear alongside Jack Black and Tim Robbins in The Brink, a…

CHECKING IN IN THE EARLY NINETIES, DURING downtime between shows, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl recorded some demos in the eight-track basement studio of producer Barrett Jones. At the time, he thought he’d never play them for anyone. But now, after more than two decades, Grohl is putting out the previously unreleased music on a vinyl-only 10-inch, Songs From the Laundry Room. “It was just this private experiment, not something that I wanted lots of people to hear,” he says. “I didn’t necessarily like my voice, and when you’re in a band with the greatest songwriter of your generation, you don’t want to be the guy saying, ‘Look at my songs too.’ So I would record them and put them away.” Grohl rediscovered the tunes – early versions of “Big Me”…

BIOGRAPHY FORMER “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” CAST member and longtime Simpsons voice actor Harry Shearer once wrote that were it not for Mad magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman, neither SNL nor The Simpsons would exist. “Any kind of satirical work that’s ironic, that’s self-referential, that makes fun of products and celebrities, that can all be traced back to Mad and Harvey Kurtzman,” says Bill Schelly, author of a new biography, Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America. Kurtzman, who edited Mad from 1952 to 1956, went on to helm magazines that featured the likes of cartoonist R. Crumb, and launched the career of Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam. “Kurtzman felt gadflies like himself were necessary,” says Schelly of Kurtzman, who died in 1993. “He considered himself a professional…

TELEVISION “I like going for the sweaty laugh,” says Kathryn Hahn. Even if her name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve definitely seen the prolific 41-year-old actor hit her uncomfortable-comedy sweet spot. She’s the one singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” while getting it on with John C. Reilly in Step Brothers; she’s also the one getting awkward birthing help from Sacha Baron Cohen in The Dictator and the Type-A nightmare of a political consultant who keeps dropping TMI tidbits in Parks and Recreation. Last year, Hahn took a rare dramatic turn as a rabbi in Transparent (which starts filming its second season in June), but her latest role is more true to sweaty form: She plays a wife in Showtime’s HAPPYish, which includes a scene where co-star Steve Coogan fucks…

JOAN JETT STANDS AT A MICROPHONE IN A Manhattan recording studio, almost ready to sing. Dressed for rock & roll work in a tight gray jersey, weathered jeans and sneakers, she shakes her arms and bounces on her feet like an impatient boxer. Her jet-black hair is a riot of feathery spikes. And she has a fat, torpedolike joint hanging from her mouth. The smoking, Jett says later, loosens up the edges and range of her distinctively craggy voice. She also has “the best shit,” according to Kenny Laguna, Jett’s manager, co-producer and co-songwriter for the past 35 years. “Keith Richards had some of that,” he announces with a hearty laugh, as Jett rolls her number on the mixing board before the take. “Said it gave him flashbacks to 1968.”…

Best Coast California Nights Harvest “What is life?” asks Bethany Cosentino on “So Unaware.” For real, girl? Existential inquiry is an unexpected avenue for a songwriter who made her name with 2009’s “Sun Was High (So Was I)” and other beachy anthems about battling romantic blues with garage-pop melodies and bubblegum kush. On her band’s third album, it seems that coping mechanism isn’t working so well anymore. Her solution? Double down on hooks, harmonies and wall-of-sound effects; own your darkness; power through. It mostly works. “Fine Without You” and “In My Eyes” layer Cosentino’s voice into a mighty punk-pop army that sounds a little like the cheerleaders from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video formed a glee club. On “Sleep Won’t Ever Come,” girl-group doo-wop vocals bring insomnia to…

Zac Brown Band Jekyll + Hyde Varvatos/Republic/BM/Southern Ground They triangulate country bounce, classicrock flex and jam-band wiggle like crossover wizards. Their frontman has a buttery midrange tenor, can sell the heck out of a song, and keeps his lumberjack beard nicely trimmed. With the possible exception of their relentless likability, there’s nothing unlikable about the Zac Brown Band. On their fourth LP, they bang out styles with such preposterous ease – Seventies Philly soul, old-timey gospel, Celtic folk, metal, reggae, jazz – they could incorporate as a single-band music-placement agency. If only they reached a little further. “Beautiful Drug” works pharmacology-of-love metaphors into an arena-pop framework with a side of banjo. Guest Chris Cornell adds hard-rock cred to “Heavy Is the Head,” which nods to “Smoke on the Water”…