Table of contents for March 24, 2016 in Rolling Stone

The pop-parody king will be on his Mandatory Fun tour throughout the summer, wrapping up September 24th at Radio City Music Hall. Wild Man Fischer “Merry-Go-Round” Fischer was a certified bipolar/acute-schizophrenic street musician. Hearing this loopy song about a merry-go-round on repeat might send you to an institution yourself. John Hartford “Boogie” An aggressively weird solo a cappella track to which Hartford grunts and growls about exactly how and where he’d like to “boogie-woogiewoogie” with you. The Five Blobs “The Blob” From the soundtrack to 1950s horror movie The Blob, this was one of Burt Bacharach’s first hits. Parry Gripp “Up Butt Coconut” This is a 30-second song by Parry Gripp from Nerf Herder. He’s a master at producing earworms, but this one is particularly subversive. Styx “Plexiglass Toilet” A…

ON A CHARMED NIGHT IN AUgust 1969, residents of tiny Woodstock, New York, had the choice of seeing Van Morrison or blues great Johnny Winter, who were both in town performing at intimate venues. If that wasn’t enough entertainment, Jimi Hendrix was a few blocks away, holed up in a converted Methodist church workshopping the rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” he’d make legendary just weeks later, 60 miles down the road at Max Yasgur’s farm. Veteran music journalist Barney Hoskyns’ fascinating new history of Woodstock, Small Town Talk, explores one of rock’s most mythic settings, drawing on interviews with dozens of residents and visitors, including Morrison, the Band, Todd Rundgren, Patti Smith and Bonnie Raitt, as well as memories from his own years living there during the Nineties. Hoskyns, who…

BEFORE THE STRUTS WENT ON tour last year with Mötley Crüe, Luke Spiller got a bit of fatherly advice from Nikki Sixx. “He said, ‘Look, you guys are shit-hot,’ ” says Spiller, the U.K. glam-rock group’s 27-yearold frontman. “ ‘Go easy on the drugs. Go easy on the pussy. Stay focused, and just keep it about the music.’ Those words coming from a man of his stature really mean something. You’d have to be stupid not to listen.” On this particular shit-hot afternoon in Los Angeles, the Struts are about to perform at Shaun White’s Air + Style Festival – a bleak parking-lot gathering whose lineup is a mish-mash of rock, hip-hop and EDM, and whose main event is the 16-story snowboard jump that towers on the horizon. The Struts’…

BILLY CORGAN DOESN’T know exactly where he is right now, but it’s somewhere outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman recently began work on a film project that has him traveling back roads along the old Route 66 and hanging out with the everyday Americans he encounters. “I’m still figuring it out, but I’m hoping to get it made into a series,” he says. “I’m trying to rekindle my understanding and appreciation for the core American value.” Corgan is also gearing up for the Pumpkins’ In Plainsong Tour, where they’ll play stripped-down versions of tunes from their entire catalog. “We’ve organically stumbled into a new way to play,” Corgan says. “Although I know that no matter how many interviews I give where I explain it, there will be some…

IT’S A WEIRD FEELING, CRUISing around Silicon Valley in a car driven by no one. I am in the back seat of one of Google’s selfdriving cars – a converted Lexus SUV with lasers, radar and lowres cameras strapped to the roof and fenders – as it maneuvers the streets of Mountain View, California, not far from Google’s headquarters. I grew up about five miles from here and remember riding around on these same streets on a Schwinn Sting-Ray. Now, I am riding an algorithm, you might say – a mathematical equation, which, written as computer code, controls the Lexus. The car does not feel dangerous, nor does it feel like it is being driven by a human. It rolls to a full stop at stop signs (something no Californian…

Can you teach an old dog new beats? Maybe, especially if the ideas behind them really are tried-and-true. The EDM explorers on Star Wars Headspace – a Rick Rubin-curated compilation – let 16 producers play with R2-D2 bleeps and other bits of the sound library of the world’s best-known space opera. The artists (including TroyBoi and Rustie) are of recent vintage, but the message isn’t: “Let go of your conscious self, and act on instinct,” as Obi-Wan puts it in a maxim sampled by Deadmau5 pal ATTLAS on “Sunset Over Manaan.” As befits a Hollywoodinspired project, the familiar and crassly entertaining moments deliver more value than the intellectual, so sophisticated beat thinkers like Flying Lotus and Shlohmo lose out to fist pumpers like GTA, Baauer and Rubin himself. But the…

Mike Love, Not War In RS 1255, Erik Hedegaard profiled the Beach Boys’ Mike Love, standard-bearer and grudge-holder [“Mike Love’s Cosmic Journey”]. ROLLING STONE readers responded. WHAT A TERRIFIC AND meaty profile of the talented, complicated Beach Boys singer. Yes, Love is carrying a massive chip on his shoulder, but he’s also admirably committed to the band. Mike Garfield, via the Internet MIKE LOVE IS A GREAT showman. He put a lot of bounce into Brian Wilson’s compositions. For any quirky tics Love might have, his plus factors greatly make up for them. Rob Oliver Via the Internet OVER THE YEARS, I’VE become well aware of Mike Love’s reputation as a sarcastic, somewhat meanspirited smartass. I found nothing in Hedegaard’s reporting to dispel that perception. At 74, Love still comes…

Led Zeppelin “Zeppelin were quoting Tolkien and seemed in their own mystical world,” says Spiller. “I’ve never really read books, but this kind of fantasy rock & roll thing was really cool to me. I didn’t realize it could be perceived as pretentious.” Queen “I adore Freddie Mercury, and there’s so much freedom in Queen’s music. They sound almost like Victorian rock & roll – to me, Queen was the soundtrack I’d hear if I was to enter the world of Downton Abbey.” The Darkness “I soaked them up like a sponge when I was about 15, they set me up for a lot, but it’s a sad story. Too much blow and too many wasted opportunities. I don’t want to make the same mistakes that they did.” Slade “They…

MACKLEMORE SENDS A TEXT AT A quarter to noon: “Pulling up in 1 min. I’m in a crimson Hummer.” The Hummer part’s a joke, it turns out, but right on time, the Seattle hiphop star arrives in something no less eye-popping: a black 2008 Cadillac DTS Biarritz with tinted windows, a cream-color vinyl top, whitewall tires and rows of tiny cactuses painted along its rear flanks. Macklemore – 32, Seattle-born and the hugest white rapper since Eminem – became a Cadillac obsessive as a kid, mainlining California gangsta rap through his Walkman; he bought the DTS a few years ago “with my first real rap money,” he says. He’s got an arm draped over the steering wheel and an 18-karat-gold, diamond-faced Rolex President on his wrist. Puncturing the aura of…

“Alone in the cheapo motel By the highway to hell, America’s greatest living poet Was ogling you all night.” —IGGY POP, “Gardenia” Iggy Pop Post Pop Depression Loma Vista There’s a famous early-Seventies Mick Rock photo of Iggy Pop – wild-eyed in a T. Rex T-shirt, a pack of Lucky Strikes clamped between his teeth – with his arms around David Bowie and Lou Reed: together, the troika who smacked rock & roll out of its hippie daze and into scarier, more thrilling territory. That Iggy, who once performed blood-soaked after rolling in broken glass and indulged in numerous unhealthy appetites, would be the last man standing of the group seemed inconceivable at the time. And yet, after re-forming the Stooges in 2003 and launching himself shirtless off world…

Eye in the Sky Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman Directed by Gavin Hood IT’S A SETUP FOR A MORAL debate on drone warfare. That Eye in the Sky is nowhere near that dry and academic is a tribute to director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi), who uses a tight script, by Guy Hibbert, to hold us in a vise and keep squeezing. The suspense is killer. In one corner, there’s Katherine Powell (a dynamite Helen Mirren), a British army colonel ready to order a U.S. military drone to target a known terrorist holed up in Nairobi. One complication: A young Kenyan girl is selling bread in the kill zone. Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) wants to give the goahead. But the buck needs to be passed to the Foreign Secretary (Iain Glen)…

1. Lorde “Life on Mars?” Lady Gaga’s David Bowie medley at the Grammys was more Viva Las Vegas than Ziggy Stardust. But Lorde’s incredible performance of “Life on Mars?” at the Brit Awards is the Bowie tribute we all needed. Backed by his touring band and bathed in red light, she dived deep into his towering 1971 ballad, honoring its power and making it her own. No wonder Bowie was a Lorde fan. 2. Bleached “Wednesday Night Melody” If Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino went for a midweek-day drink with Joan Jett and ended up at the studio around sundown, it might sound like this L.A. band’s radiant bubble-punk crunch. 3. Mitski “Your Best American Girl” “Your mother wouldn’t approve/Of how my mother raised me,” this Brooklyn songwriter sings against waves…

Bernie Sanders Favorite Artists The Supremes, Temptations, Abba and old-school disco like the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno,” which the senator danced to on Ellen. Go-to Rally Songs Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now,” Bob Marley’s “Revolution.” Sense a theme? Key Supporters The Atlanta rapper Killer Mike has been a vocal champion for the senator. So have rockers like Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to whom the senator endeared himself by refusing to let them pay for a venue where they played a benefit. “He said, ‘You’re a group, you’re incorporated, so I can’t accept that money,’_” says Flea. “Amazing.” History of Rock In 1987, Sanders recorded the cassette-only We Shall Overcome at the same studio where Phish made A…

11.22.63, MONDAYS, HULU The eternal stoner-philosophy question: If you could go back in time to 1963, would you save JFK from getting assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, J. Edgar Hoover, the New Orleans Mob, the CIA, the Secret Service, Fidel Castro and/or Phil Spector? Stephen King and J.J. Abrams turn the age-old butterfly-effect fantasy into a fresh time-travel thriller with Hulu’s 11.22.63, a cleverly suspenseful eight-part miniseries with a beat-theclock pace. Speaking of stoner philosophy, James Franco is the ordinary-dude divorced teacher in small-town Maine who finds out that his favorite local diner has a secret time portal in the back room, whisking him to the Mad Men days – October 1960, to be precise. Can he track down Oswald and prevent the Kennedy assassination, which will in turn prevent…

Gwen Stefani This Is What the Truth Feels Like Interscope If there’s a moment that sums up why Gwen Stefani is so eternally beloved, it’s the surreal scene from The Voice last fall when she led her team through New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” in a swirl of confetti. Only Stefani could sound so perky while threatening to kick Marilyn Manson’s ass in. This is the first solo album in a decade from one of the Nineties’ most improbably long-running superstars – the dowager countess of our nation’s ska moms. Stefani hasn’t had much spare time since the last No Doubt album, in late 2012; she’s had another baby, joined The Voice, divorced Gavin Rossdale and jumped into a highprofile tabloid romance with Voice co-star Blake Shelton.…

You’re from Louisville, Kentucky, but lately you’ve been living in Los Angeles. What’s that like? There are so many people here trying to make their dreams come true, and it’s incredibly inspiring. I’m renting an Airbnb from an artist who kinda built the place. There are two 40-yearold giant desert tortoises that live here, and they’ve been amazing to live with. They don’t need you, but they also enjoy being around you. They’re so content to do very little, and I’m trying to learn from them: “You’re just gonna climb out of your hole and sit in the sun?” “Yeah, that’s all I’m gonna do today.” You were homebound for two months after back surgery last year. How do you feel now? I feel younger than I’ve ever felt. I…