Table of contents for January 11, 2018 in Rolling Stone

Making of Musk AMAZING ARTICLE ON ELON Musk [“The Architect of Tomorrow,” RS 1301]. Maybe our future is safe with creative, motivated people like him instead of callous, greedy, power-hungry Trumpites. Musk definitely needs to pause and look within to examine how his relationships with women fail. Surely he is worthy of the care and intense focus he gives the products of his fertile imagination. Linda Olson Tacoma, WA I COMMEND MUSK FOR SHARing his life’s journey. The traumas he has endured, especially at the hands of his father, are something I could relate to. We can go on to be successful in anything we have passion for, while turning anger and resentments into driving forces that can literally change our world – whether here on Earth or one day…

THE FOUR MEMBERS of the Michigan band Greta Van Fleet look, act and sound like they were grown in the lab of some classic-rock-loving mad scientist. How else to explain a group of kids who go around dropping references to Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice and Free’s Paul Kossoff, who cover Fairport Convention and Howlin’ Wolf – and who, by the way, make huge, throwback, blues-riff-riding rock that often sounds preposterously, uncannily close to newly unearthed Led Zeppelin tracks? “We are like a bunch of old men,” acknowledges pixieish, curly-headed frontman Josh Kiszka, possessor of a blowtorch of a high tenor, with casual access to notes that Robert Plant misplaced during the Carter administration. The singer, who was starring in high school plays not long ago, is sipping tea on an…

On October 16th, 1954, Elvis Presley made his first appearance on Louisiana Hayride, performing “That’s All Right,” recorded weeks earlier. “They’ve been looking for something new in the folk-music field for a long time,” the radio show’s host Frank Page told the 19-year-old. “And I think you’ve got it.” Sixty-plus years after that moment, Presley’s revolutionary rock & roll may not seem so radical, but on Bear Family’s enormous new box set, At the Louisiana Hayride Tonight, it’s possible to hear the world start to change. Compared to its role model, Grand Ole Opry, Louisiana Hayride was an upstart, happy to take chances on unknowns such as Presley and Hank Williams. Producer Martin Hawkins compiled the 20-CD set from hundreds of hours of recordings, taking pains to “strike a balance…

THE YEAR’S FASTEST-RISING pop star is lounging backstage in Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., eating spicy Takis corn snacks and trying to figure out what to do with a rare bit of free time. In three hours, Camila Cabello will be gyrating onstage in knee-high boots and a corset, but at the moment, she’s dressed like a college kid, in an oversize gray sweater and leggings, her glossy brown hair in a bun. It’s a Monday in mid-December, the kind of frigid day in a boring city that makes Cabello, 20, wish she was back home in Miami. But there’s always Netflix. “Do you wanna watch reruns of Friends?” she asks, sounding genuinely excited about the idea. Right about now, Cabello is excited about pretty much everything, and who…

WHEN LUKE HARDING sat down with Christopher Steele in a London pub in December 2016, he hoped Steele might help him develop an admittedly thin lead that Russia covertly financed Donald Trump’s campaign. At the time, Steele was a relatively unknown former British intelligence officer, despite the fact that he had helped uncover widespread corruption at FIFA and the Kremlin’s hand in poisoning ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. During their 45-minute meeting, Steele didn’t offer much more than vague encouragement that there was a story on the Trump campaign to expose. “There was no hint he had been involved in what was the single most important investigation in decades,” Harding writes in his new book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. “Though he implied we…

“It’s true, I’m a Rubik’s, a beautiful mess. At times juvenile, yes, I goof and I jest. A flawed human, I guess.But I’m doing my best.”—EMINEM, “Walk on Water” Eminem Revival Interscope HHH½ At various points throughout his 20-year-plus career, Eminem has reigned supreme as rap’s greatest poison-tongued potty-mouth, successfully turning his petty beefs and battles with personal demons and drug problems into cinematic epics. But, at 45, he hasn’t had a good pop-culture feud in ages, and his pill-popping days of vice are behind him: “I only go to meetings court-ordered from a shrink,” he raps on a pickup line from Revival. The title of his ninth LP evokes old-timer nostalgia, and its most electric moments do look back, suggesting a confused and conciliatory man taking stock of his…

1. Charli XCX “Out of My Head” “Glitter in my sheets/Dancing on no sleep,” the punky U.K. diva sings on this darkly booming track (featuring Tove Lo and ALMA). It’s a club banger that feels like a noir thriller, and more proof she’s one of pop’s true innovators. 2. N.E.R.D feat. Future “1000” It’s great having Pharrell’s avant-rap crew N.E.R.D back to make hip-hop a weirder place. When he sings about “rainbow angst,” on “1000,” it’s a perfect way to sum up the music’s radiant vertigo flow. 3. Sorry “Lies” A top-drawer shame spiral from a great new English alt-rock band. Lead singer Asha Lorenz moans about falling to pieces, and the guitars pull her hard into the emo deep. 4. Sufjan Stevens “Tonya Harding” Stevens’ genuinely moving (and totally…

BON JOVI They’ve sold 130 million records and played almost every stadium in the world, but it took nearly a decade of eligibility for Bon Jovi to enter the Hall. It’s a chance for them to play with original bassist Alec John Such (who has been largely off the grid since he left in 1994) and guitarist Richie Sambora, who departed in 2013, citing burnout from the road. “Nobody has called me yet,” he says. “But I imagine [a reunion performance] would be protocol, and I’d be obliged. There’s no malice or anything – 31 years in a band is just a long time.” THE CARS The Ric Ocasek-led band broke up in 1987, but re-formed in 2010 for a new album, Move Like This, and a short tour. The…

BOB SEGER WAS HAVING A pretty amazing 2017. His music had finally hit streaming services, he launched a successful tour and released I Knew You When, his new album that features tributes to Glenn Frey, Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen. But on the morning of September 30th, he woke up to leg pain caused by a ruptured disc in his back. “My doctor said to me, ‘Oh, no, that’s it, you’re done with this tour,’ ” says Seger, on the phone from his Michigan estate, where he’s halfway through a three-month recovery process. He hopes to reschedule the tour for this spring. “I’m feeling better all the time,” he says. “They aren’t letting me lift anything over five pounds. I can’t do anything: no piano, no guitar, no nothing. But as…

IN 1985, SHORTLY AFTER U2 BROKE THROUGH IN AMERICA, “ROLLING Stone” named them the “band of the Eighties.” Over the course of 30 years and 16 cover stories, the magazine has forged a deep relationship with U2. The band’s new album, Songs of Experience, topped the charts in early December, meaning U2 now have a Number One album in each decade from the Eighties on. ❡ I first interviewed Bono in 2005, when we talked for 10 hours over a long weekend in Cancún, Mexico, starting an intimate dialogue about rock & roll, social justice, faith and the purpose of art. This interview picks up where that one left off, although this time the stakes are much higher. The election of Donald Trump and a rising wave of fascism in…

N.E.R.D No One Ever Really Dies Columbia HHH½ In the early ’00s, while his career as a pop hitmaker was taking off, Pharrell Williams invented his side project N.E.R.D, with Chad Hugo and Shay Haley, as a dumping ground for his most off-kilter impulses – scrambling everything from funk rock to hallucinatory soul to prog-rock. If their records sounded like a hodgepodge, that wasn’t a drawback. It was the whole liberating point. The fifth N.E.R.D LP, and first since 2010’s forgettable Nothing, feels urgent in a way their music never has, fitting our political moment while remaining as stylistically looped-out as ever. “If not me, then who?” Pharrell asks on the vertiginous booty-shaker “Lemon,” which features a scorching rap from Rihanna. “Don’t Don’t Do It,” one of two songs to…

Who are your heroes? My grandmothers, Thelma Gipson and Viola Wilson. They’re both 90. They keep me grounded. Thelma was a principal’s assistant at an elementary school. She made sure my siblings and I were properly fed, even when she was really tired. Viola worked for Rockwell International, which built the space shuttles. She and I work in the yard, paint, continuously redecorate. She bought me my first piano and made sure that if I was singing about something, it was something I knew about. What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten? Thelma would say, “Don’t call him. Let him call you.” That set the stakes for everything in life. Don’t be desperate. Set things in motion and then watch them happen. Let them grow. What music moves you the…

The Black Keys frontman will hit the road in February. Robert Finley “Medicine Woman” Someone sent me a video of Robert singing a song on the street. I co-wrote this for him. Every time he opened his mouth to sing, it parted my hair. The Beatles “Help!” This was my jam when I was a kid. They were so funny in their movies. They were always looking cool, but also goofy at the same time. It’s the perfect combination. Al Green “Love and Happiness” It’s a really personal style of gospel. You feel like you’re soul-searching when you’re listening to it. Don Williams “Lord, I Hope This Day is Good” This is very intimate, light and soulful. Nothing sounded like his records in Nashville when they came out. Willie Nelson…

STEPHEN STILLS REMEMBERS THE day well. It was late 1969 when he visited the Record Plant in New York for a day of musical fun with friend Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix was game for anything, at one point picking up a bass to back Stills on an upbeat version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.” Stills left invigorated. “Watching him play was like watching the greatest athlete you ever saw – like Muhammad Ali,” he says. “He taught me to quit thinking and let it happen.” That version of “Woodstock” appears on Both Sides of the Sky (out March 9th), an album of unheard studio recordings Hendrix made in the last two years of his life, as he stockpiled tapes to release after he resolved a contract dispute. It’s the last LP in…

The Return of Justin Timberlake When Timberlake steps onstage at the Super Bowl in Minneapolis in February, he will likely perform music from his first album in four years, which, sources say, is due out early in 2018. “The music we just made? It’s gonna put him on another plateau,” his longtime producer Timbaland told ROLLING STONE recently. Though Timberlake is pushing 40, he proved he’s still a chart-topping force with 2016’s Number One “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” Someone who’s heard the new album says it “pushes boundaries in ways you don’t expect. It’s gonna have a lot of hits” and includes a collaboration with country star Chris Stapleton. Another source confirms that Timberlake is also planning an arena tour. His last one, the 14-month 20/20 Experience world tour, earned…

SONJA FARAK depression that hasn’t responded to medication. It’s been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. She attempted suicide in high school and was hospitalized in college, but somehow soldiered through to graduate with high distinction from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. A bright, curious kid who was passionate about science, she found a job at a state drug lab and settled down with a woman she met in her twenties. But even on her best days, she felt alien and unseen, a ghost floating through her own life. Now, at 35, she’s landed in a ditch. Her performance at work has fallen off a cliff, and she walks into nightly conflict at home, where her wife, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, spends her hours surfing the…