Table of contents for April 6, 2017 in Rolling Stone

TO EXPLORE OUR ARCHIVES, VISIT  ROLLINGSTONE.COM/COVERWALL  FOLLOW US ON FLASHBACK REMEMBERING TUPAC SHAKUR AWARDS 52ND ANNUAL ACM AWARDS DRUGS MARIJUANA MICRODOSING MUSIC HALL OF FAME INDUCTION ‘MUSIC NOW’ PODCAST ALL THIS AND MORE AT  ROLLINGSTONE.COM/RAMREPORT POLITICS MATT TAIBBI CULTURE ROB SHEFFIELD MOVIES PETER TRAVERS ROCK & ROLL DAVID FRICKE…

In celebration of his 50th anniversary as a recording artist, Diamond is hitting the road this year for a world tour. Lonnie Donegan “Rock Island Line” I first heard this when I started playing guitar. It was a combination of folk and rock & roll, and it angled me into the world of Woody Guthrie. The Everly Brothers “Bye Bye Love” If you were a teenager into music at this time, you loved the Everly Brothers. Anybody could do harmonies, but nobody had their sound. Peter, Paul and Mary “Blowin’ in the Wind” This actually talked about current events. It spoke about an issue that had been boiling for years and was ready to make itself known. The Rolling Stones “Satisfaction” This had a black groove, not only by white…

<div class="thin-border"></div> <div class="space"></div> Bruce Springsteen Daniel divides songwriting into two schools: “Sometimes you set out with clear intentions to write a song – I call that the Springsteen way,” he says. “Sometimes lyrics lead you. I call that the Paul Simon way.” Daniel recorded the moody rocker “Whisper I’ll Listen To Hear It” after seeing Springsteen live last year. With lyrics like “Someday you’ll be where you should go,” it’s an imaginary conversation between Daniel and his dad. “He thinks because I’m not married that I’m lonely,” Daniel says. “I’d argue with that.” The frenetic guitar solo is inspired by the sax solos on The River. “It’s a fucking blastoff,” says Alex Fischel. <div class="thin-border"></div> <div class="space"></div> Prince Daniel calls Prince and David Bowie two of his biggest influences.…

In january 1970, Hunter S. Thompson wrote Jann S. Wenner a letter praising Rolling Stone’s definitive coverage of the disastrous Altamont festival. “[Print’s] a hell of a good medium by any standard, from Hemingway to the Airplane,” Thompson wrote. “Don’t fuck it up with pompous bullshit; the demise of RS would leave a nasty hole.” A bond was formed, and over the next 30 years, Thompson would do much to redefine journalism in the pages of the magazine. He lived and wrote on the edge in a style that would come to be called Gonzo journalism. That term captured his lifestyle, but it didn’t really do justice to Thompson’s command of language, his fearless reporting or his fearsome intellect. Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, served in the Air Force,…

It’s like the campaign never ended. It’s the same all-Trump, all-the-time madness, only exponentially worse. Morning, February 24th, National Harbor, Maryland, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Chin up, eyes asquint, Donald Trump floats to the lectern on a sea of applause and adulation. The building is shaking, and as fans howl his name – Trump! Trump! Trump! – he looks pleased and satisfied, like a Roman emperor who has just moved his bowels. “Great to be back at CPAC,” he says. “The place I have really . . .” The thought flies into the air and vanishes. Last year at this time, Trump was bailing on a CPAC invite because a rat’s nest of National Review types was threatening a walkout to protest him. There was talk of 300 conservatives…

Virginia hanlon growl was a high school English teacher from 1959 to 1995. But the first time she needed a substitute was in 1992, when her son, Dave, was making an appearance on national TV. “Nirvana was playing Saturday Night Live, and I went to New York to see them,” she says. “Charles Barkley was the host, and I told my class I’d get him to sign some autographs. But if there were any [bad] reports from the substitute, then they would be null and void.” Virginia, in her late seventies, has attended dozens of her son’s shows with Nirvana and Foo Fighters over the years, and was always surprised how rarely she ran into other moms out on the road. So she decided to track some down, and ended up…

FEUD SUNDAYS, 10 P.M., FX Fame — it’s a hell of a drug. Feud is like watching Robert De Niro and Al Pacino square off in Heat, except with two of Hollywood’s living legends playing a couple of dead ones. In Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series, Susan Sarandon is Bette Davis to Jessica Lange’s Joan Crawford, toxic movie divas madly in hate with each other. As Davis famously snipped, “She has slept with every male star at MGM, except Lassie.” Feud celebrates how they basically invented the modern celebrity beef, on the set of their 1962 horror classic, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Like a great rap war, the rivalry is part theater, part sincere fear and loathing. When Crawford died in 1977, Davis declared, “You should never say bad things about…

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Wilson Woody Harrelson Directed by Craig Johnson HH ½ woody harrelson is the life of this party, based on the graphic novel by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). Harrelson has the right anarchic spirit for Clowes’ world. Wilson is a neurotic grouch who rails against the Internet and enjoys making people squirm. What sparks the plot for screenwriter Clowes and director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) is Wilson’s reunion with ex-wife Pippi (a stellar Laura Dern), a recovering junkie who tells him the baby he thought she aborted 17 years ago is living with adoptive parents. Wilson tracks down his daughter, Claire (an excellent Isabella Amara), who’s got a Wilson-wide cynical streak, and asks her to let him explain himself. Disaster awaits, but so does Clowes’ seriocomic tightrope walk. Missed opportunities…

1. Aminé “Redmercedes” Portland rapper Aminé isn’t a superstar yet, but he should be. This ecstatic ode to his ride (“Trunk so big it could fit my reverend”) is an instant hip-hop car classic. 2. Girlpool “123” This raw, minimal L.A. punk duo blew us away with the bruising intimacy of their 2015 debut, Before the World Was Big. Here, they push past that murmured intensity and go for shouty guitar catharsis, like they’re ready to leave their room and bumrush the world. 3. Alt-J “3WW” The beguiling U.K. crew returns with a prog-rock puzzle that somehow mutates into a moving, heartfelt ballad. In five minutes, you’ll go from confused to crying. 4. Low Cut Connie “Revolution Rock n Roll” If the New York Dolls had done a session with…

Chuck berry played his last concert on October 15th, 2014, three days shy of his 88th birthday, at St. Louis’ Blueberry Hill. But like many of his recent performances, it was rough. Berry had trouble hearing, causing him to play off-key, and he forgot lyrics. “The audience was with him the whole way,” says Joe Edwards, owner of Blueberry Hill, where Berry appeared once a month for 21 years. “But sometimes he’d come off and say, ‘Oh, man, I could’ve done a little better.’ ” Berry, who always drove himself to shows, told Edwards he wanted to take the winter off, so he wouldn’t have to drive in the snow. Berry has not made a public appearance since. Which is why it’s so surprising that in June he will release…

These days it’s hard to find reasons to be cheerful about the state of the nation, but an America without Duck Dynasty is a good place to start. No show in TV history has ever sucked quite like this one. And if the TV gods cooperate, no show ever will again. It’s poetic justice that 2017 is the year the Robertson family finally heads off to the duck pond in the sky. In cultural terms, Duck Dynasty was the pre-Trump Christian right’s fantasy of itself – a family of hairy bootstrappers bowing their heads in prayer. In the age of Trump, they look pitifully dated. They weren’t even fun to watch on a reality-trash level, because they were too phony to believe – so artificial in their scripted dialogue, so…

On a sweltering day last August at the University of Texas at Austin, a flock of 30 undergrads are settling into a frigid lecture hall when teaching assistant Nick Roland enters with his crimson-red tee hugging a holstered Glock 23. Three weeks earlier, Senate Bill 11, also known as “campus carry,” went into effect in Texas, allowing students on 38 public campuses to carry concealed, loaded handguns to class. Roland, 32, is pursuing a Ph.D. in history after a tour in Iraq. Before that, he was an undergraduate at Virginia Tech in 2007, during the deadliest school shooting in modern history; among the 32 students killed was Roland’s hallmate. “I’ll never forget that day,” he says. Lean and handsome, with a crop of boyish brown hair, Roland says his gun…

T2 Trainspotting Ewan McGregor Directed by Danny Boyle HHH in 1996, “trainspotting,” from Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel, emerged as one of the great British films of its era, bristling with incendiary daring. The daring dims a bit in T2 Trainspotting, though returning director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge do their damnedest to force lightning to strike twice. Two decades on, four of the slum-dwelling Scottish junkies who caught that generation-defining moment of youth in revolt have had some of the piss taken out of their characters. When we left Mark “Rent Boy” Renton (Ewan McGregor), he’d betrayed his mates in a heroin deal. He’s back to make amends. First stop is Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson (Jonny Lee Miller), who blackmails rich johns with the help of girlfriend Veronika (a…

Song to Song Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender Directed by Terrence Malick H the music scene in Austin is alive with talent and energy. But not enough to bust director Terrence Malick out of the funk of his recent work (Knight of Cups, To the Wonder). Song to Song, despite glimpses of Patti Smith, Iggy Pop and Lykke Li, has no music in its empty soul. Malick indulges in his usual visual tropes, with characters wandering around aimlessly while muttering mock-profound thoughts in voice-over. Camera master Emmanuel Lubezki’s visuals are gorgeous, but no substitute for narrative momentum. The plot revolves around Rooney Mara’s Faye, an unchanging expression in search of a character. She’s roused by Ryan Gosling’s BV, a fellow songwriter. But she screws up their relationship with bouts…