Table of contents for May 4, 2017 in Rolling Stone

You’ve had health crises over the years, including breast cancer and a benign brain tumor. How have those affected the way you see day-to-day life? I don’t think about it anymore. I don’t think about whether my cancer’s coming back or if my brain tumor’s growing or anything like that. I’m busy with my kids – my objective is to be here as long as I can for them and to enjoy every second of it. But I would say that my life was really changed when I got diagnosed. It gave me the freedom to just say, “Hey, let’s get on with life. If you wanna have kids, either adopt or go have one, get some sperm, whatever.” I also learned how to let myself off the hook, and…

Trump Up Front IT’S OFTEN SAID ONE shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but Matt Taibbi’s Trump story is as brilliant as the issue’s cover art [“Trump the Destroyer,” RS 1284]. I was hooked from the get-go, especially with the line “He looks pleased and satisfied, like a Roman emperor who has just moved his bowels.” Ashley Paskill Hatfield, PA I ALWAYS GO TO TAIBBI FIRST. “Trump the Destroyer” is a new level even for him. Between research and observation, this article shows the bar has been set at a new high. Insightful, interesting and provocative. Frank Salvaggio Lenox, MA THE STORY IS A CHRONICLE of butt-hurt. Donald Trump was elected president because it’s time for some fundamental change in our country. Taibbi can bitch and complain all he…

January 2016. There’s a bench at the top of Primrose Hill, in London, that looks out over the skyline of the city. If you’d passed by it one winter night, you might have seen him sitting there. A lanky guy in a wool hat, overcoat and jogging pants, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Harry Styles had a lot on his mind. He had spent five years as the buoyant fan favorite in One Direction; now, an uncertain future stretched out in front of him. The band had announced an indefinite hiatus. The white noise of adulation was gone, replaced by the hushed sound of the city below. v The fame visited upon Harry Styles in his years with One D was a special kind of mania. With a self-effacing…

THE 2017 ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF Fame ceremony was full of moments fans thought they’d never see, from the classic lineup of Yes putting aside years of bad blood to play one last time, to the first performance since 1991 from Pearl Jam’s original lineup. But nothing was more surprising than the reunion of Journey. In the days before the show, the band resorted to Twitter to lobby its estranged former singer, Steve Perry, to appear with his old band onstage for the first time in 26 years. The group got its wish, with Perry showing up and embracing his bandmates as they collected their statues. Backstage, Perry made plans with guitarist Neal Schon to meet for a “way-overdue coffee.” “The night was surreal,” says Schon. “I got very…

JOHN MELLENCAMP SPENDS AN awful lot of time alone, painting. Not long ago, he went 35 days without leaving his Indiana compound, a stretch so lengthy that his 85-year-old dad told him he was worried. But whether he wants them or not, songs still come to him, as his strong, country-inflected new album, Sad Clowns and Hillbillies (made in collaboration with Carlene Carter), makes clear. “A voice in my head will go, ‘OK, put your brush down and write these words down,’ ” he says. “And I’ll be like, ‘No, I don’t want to fucking write a song.’ Then the voice will go, ‘You better write this down, you idiot.’ Then I forget about it, and I find it and go, ‘When did I write this?’ It’s a wonderful way of…