Table of contents for September 21, 2017 in Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Correspondence

Best of Kendrick BRIAN HIATT’S INTERVIEW with the greatest rapper alive is awesome [“The Humble King,” RS 1294]. I’m a white suburban 46-year-old woman, and when I grow up, I want to be like Kendrick Lamar. Cheri CristRochester, NY KENDRICK IS GREAT, BUT Jay-Z is the greatest rapper alive. And that’s been true for more than 25 years. Nancifvia the Internet DESPITE ALL OF HIS SUCCESS over the past few years, Lamar seems very humble and grounded, and that is such a breath of fresh air. Jeff SwansonEverett, WA Sessions’ Civil War ONLY “ROLLING STONE” could make me feel sorry for a man like Jeff Sessions [“Trump’s Radical Attorney General,” RS 1294]. He may be an intractable ideologue, but I was impressed when he recused himself. I found his commitment…

3 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Bruce Beats the Bots

Bruce Springsteen’s team was cautiously optimistic on August 30th, as the first round of tickets went on sale for “Springsteen on Broadway,” a run of 79 solo acoustic shows in a small theater in New York. Springsteen knew demand for tickets would be enormous, and wanted to make sure they did not go to brokers, many of whom use advanced technology to snatch up 30 to 50 percent of tickets to high-demand shows, then resell them on sites like StubHub. Springsteen decided to try out Verified Fan, a new service that asks fans to sign up before tickets go on sale; after being vetted by the service, they receive a code that places them in a smaller pool, shutting out scalpers in the process. It worked: The next day, only…

3 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Dylan’s New Drama

‘I’D ALWAYS LIKED THE STAGE AND even more so, the theater,” Bob Dylan wrote in his memoir, Chronicles. “It seemed like the most supreme craft of all craft.” But for nearly five decades, the idea of a Dylan musical has been as elusive as the songwriter himself. In the late Sixties, poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish tried to recruit Dylan to write songs for a theatrical show called Scratch (“After hearing a few lines from the script, I didn’t see how our destinies could be intermixed,” wrote Dylan). In 2006, choreographer Twyla Tharp directed The Times They Are A-Changin’. Set at a traveling circus, it closed after three weeks. Girl From the North Country, which opened in July at London’s Old Vic Theatre, seems to have finally cracked the code.…

4 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Brandon Flowers

It’s been 13 years since the Killers exploded with their debut single, “Mr. Brightside,” and they’re still one of the biggest rock acts in the world; the Las Vegas band just headlined Lollapalooza and has an arena tour kicking off in January. “There’s still a need for what we have to offer, obviously,” says frontman Brandon Flowers. “Our shows keep growing, and the tours just keep getting more fun.” He sees their upcoming album, Wonderful Wonderful (overseen by veteran U2 and R.E.M. producer Jacknife Lee), as an improvement from their last one, 2012’s Battle Born. “We worked on that incrementally with different producers,” Flowers says. “Some of the songs I’m not so enthused about.” Wonderful Wonderful is more upbeat, with danceable tunes about everything from Mike Tyson’s historic 1990 loss…

4 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

HOUSTON: A GLOBAL WARNING

Let there be no doubt: the horrific damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey was an almost entirely man-made catastrophe, one fingerprinted by all-too-human neglect, corruption and denial. If we needed a reminder of the power of water to destroy an American city, Hurricane Harvey provided it. In Houston, a fast-growing metropolis of more than 2 million people, it wasn’t the wind that was so damaging, or a storm surge pushing in – it was just water everywhere, falling for days in biblical torrents and transforming highways into rivers, flowing into homes, killing dozens, sending tens of thousands of people fleeing for higher ground. It was a terrifying and deadly display of what happens when nature collides with urban life on a planet radically altered by climate change. Harvey is the worst…

7 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

THE OUTER LIMITS OF AWKWARD

COMEDY has taken Nathan Fielder to some pretty strange places, but nothing quite compares to the time he found himself walking a high wire between two seven-story buildings in downtown L.A. It was the finale of the third season of Nathan for You, the hit Comedy Central series in which Fielder offers preposterously elaborate assistance to small-business owners and other regular folks. For this episode, he took on his biggest project yet: transforming a deeply nerdy, semi-employed man who lives with his parents into a genuine hero. Fielder assumed the identity of Corey Calderwood, a 26-year-old from Ventura, California, complete with a movie-quality latex mask, a bodysuit and a flawless imitation of Calderwood’s voice. Then he found Calderwood a girlfriend. It all culminated in the high-wire walk, which Fielder completed…

10 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Gregg Allman’s Easygoing Final Statement

Gregg Allman Southern Blood Rounder HHH½ The final album by Gregg Allman, who died in May, is a moving farewell statement à la twilight masterworks by Leonard Cohen and David Bowie. “I know I’m not a young man, and it’s time to settle down,” Allman sings on the roadhouse blues “Love Like Kerosene,” his full-moon growl strikingly undiminished. Yet while Southern Blood is rich with intimations of mortality, it’s easygoing too, with a laid-back generosity that recalls Allman’s kindest Seventies work – see his warm take on Lowell George’s Southern-rock salvo “Willin’.” Allman steeped the album in his own history, recording with producer Don Was in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where Allman and his brother Duane recorded in the late Sixties. And while the LP is almost entirely covers, they spool…

5 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Ozzy Osbourne

What’s the best part of success? Not doing a job that you don’t really want to do. You can’t say what I do is a job – it’s a fucking gift from God. You’ve had some bumps in your marriage, including a well-publicized affair, but you and Sharon are still together after 35 years. What’s your secret? Don’t get caught with your mistress [laughs]. OK . . . It’s a rock & roll thing – you rock and you roll. You take the good with the bad. When I was a crazy fucker, I’m lucky she didn’t walk out. Now I’m coming on five years clean and sober, and I’ve realized what a fucking idiot I was. I mean, I’m still nuts, but in control of it a bit more. . . . When I said, “Don’t…

4 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

The Playlist

1. Beck “Dear Life” The follow-up to Beck’s 2014 sad-folk masterstroke, Morning Phase, will be out in October, and our latest taste of the LP has us psyched. Over a juicy hip-hop saunter and a rolling piano that recalls the Beatles’ “Martha My Dear,” he gets his hangdog groove on like it’s 1996. 2. Brand New “Can’t Get It Out” Refugees from the early ’00s emo scene are treating the return of these anthemic depressives like the Second Coming, and for good reason: “Can’t Get It Out” makes not knowing how to deal with your feelings seem like punk-rock heaven. 3. Karen and the Sorrows “Take Me for a Ride” A queer country come-on to a dream girl “in a flatbed Ford” that winks at the Eagles’ “Take It Easy.”…

1 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Inside Fall’s Hottest Tours

Paul McCartney DATES Through October 2nd McCartney is still playing marathon shows at 75 – and throwing curveballs in. He recently dusted off “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise),” in honor of the LP’s 50th anniversary, and “In Spite of All the Danger,” which he recorded with the Quarrymen in 1958. “What I try to do is have people go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know they do that one, man,’ ” says McCartney. KEY MOMENT In Tampa in July, McCartney gave a funny account of the time he fell into a piano pit at the same venue, in 2005. “I’m lucky to be here tonight,” he said to huge cheers. Depeche Mode DATES Through October 27th The synth-pop vets’ mind-blowing production features several songs from their new LP, Spirit, which wonders…

2 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Secrets of the War on Drugs

Warren Zevon In late 2015, Granduciel moved from Philly to L.A., where he rediscovered the music of local legend Warren Zevon. On long drives to the studio, Granduciel constantly played 1978’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” a diary of post-relationship loneliness. He cites Zevon’s simple but profound lines, like “The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder,” as “something that I’ll try to achieve forever.” Granduciel had that song in mind while writing “You Don’t Have to Go,” also about heartbreak. “I just had to sing and not be too worried about it being too revealing. It felt naked.” Bruce Springsteen Granduciel calls Springsteen a big influence, from his lyrics to his work ethic. Last year, Granduciel went through a Ghost of Tom Joad phase, falling in love with narratives…

3 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

The Untold Story of Vietnam

There’s a moment in ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s new PBS miniseries, The Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman talks about losing eight brothers and two sons to ground combat and bombings. It’s the sort of testimonial you might see in any war doc. But this grieving woman was also a Viet Cong soldier, one of dozens of Vietnamese citizens Burns and Novick interviewed for the film – and when she mournfully describes losing her children “on the verge of victory” in 1975, her voice reshapes a narrative that’s almost always been told as an American tragedy. “When we talk about Vietnam, we talk about ourselves,” Burns says. “But it’s only half the story. And the people we fought deserve to tell their half for the first time.” A…

3 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

TED CRUZ’S PUNK-ROCK PROBLEM

BETO O’ROURKE, THE DEMOcratic congressman from El Paso, has just finished the first of the day’s three campaign events, an early-morning house party in Tyler, Texas, and is now high-tailing toward a second meet-and-greet 115 miles away in Texarkana, determined to squeeze in an extra, unscheduled stop. O’Rourke wants to overtake “the Beto Bus” – a raucous, 45-foot vessel scooping up supporters of his long-shot bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz – currently lumbering somewhere up ahead on an East Texas highway. O’Rourke’s longtime chief of staff, David Wysong, is privately skeptical of the plan. “It has a lot of moving parts,” he mutters more than once. O’Rourke loves it. He loved it too when one of the organizers of this morning’s event pulled alongside the car to insist he…

9 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

THE SIEGE OF RAQQA

AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN ON A ROOFTOP in Raqqa, you can see the Milky Way. The Islamic State’s embattled capital in Syria, once home to hundreds of thousands of people, has been bombed back into darkness, but from the city center comes the trancelike recitation of the call to prayer. A sudden flash of red light illuminates the skyline, and a rumbling like distant thunder rolls over the rooftops. As soon as it subsides, the reading of scripture resumes, until it is again silenced by the flash and thud of an American bomb. >>> Since 2013, when ISIS fighters took control of the city, Raqqa has been the most violent place in the world, a no-go zone where medieval punishments like beheading and crucifixion are meted out in the streets…

30 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Joe Scarborough

The Morning Joe host and aspiring rock singer-guitarist just released his debut EP, Mystified. The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter” This might be the greatest rock song ever written. They retooled their sound and stopped chasing the Beatles. Elvis Costello “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” This has great music, but the lyrics are just so cutting: “I said, ‘I’m so happy I could die.’ She said, ‘Drop dead,’ then left with another guy.” The Beach Boys “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” The popular songs on Pet Sounds are very uplifting, but there’s such a darkness with songs like this. It’s unbelievable. Paul McCartney and Wings “Let Me Roll It” John Lennon was slaughtering him in the press at this point, and this was his answer back. There’s…

1 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

The Trials of St. Vincent

In 2014, annie clark’s career could not have been going better. After years of carving out her place as a cult hero, the singer-guitarist – who records as St. Vincent – found a surprising level of success with her fourth LP, St. Vincent, which reached Number 12 on the album charts. Clark toured the world, fronted Nirvana at their live reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and turned in one of the more memorable Saturday Night Live performances in recent years, playing inside a giant box and doing strange choreography between fuzz-guitar outbursts. But if you ask Clark, that period wasn’t a lot of fun. “I was going out of my mind,” she says. “I was on the road constantly and just trying to keep…

3 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

Randy Newman

‘IT’S ALMOST ALWAYS SOMEthing I play on the piano,” singer-songwriter Randy Newman says of the genesis moment in his craft, the first step he takes into a new tune and story. “It inspires a code of some kind – maybe dummy lyrics, something I can get rid of. But after a couple of lines, it will become what it’s going to become. “It’s always been a job,” says Newman, 73, one of American pop’s greatest and most acclaimed songwriters for more than a half-century and an Academy Award-winning composer for animated films. “I go to the piano, and I’m supposed to think of something. It’s always been that way – maybe because of the way I grew up.” Born in Los Angeles and raised for a time in New Orleans,…

8 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

RandomNotes

VMAs: The Dark Side of the Moon Host Katy Perry bombed, the Weeknd was a no-show and Taylor Swift’s new video caused a mass meltdown. But the 2017 VMAs still featured killer performances from Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus and DNCE with Rod Stewart, who rocked a shiny metallic tuxedo jacket during “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” Summertime Bruce Before he hunkers down to prepare for his run on Broadway this fall, Bruce Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa jetted to Ibiza, off the coast of Spain, where they relaxed on David Geffen’s yacht and chilled at the beach with Calvin Klein, Noel Gallagher and model Poppy Delevingne. Later, the couple headed to Sicily. …

2 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

The Foos Fight On

“This is my first day off in weeks,” Dave Grohl says, barefoot in his kitchen in jeans and a biker T-shirt, big goofy Dave Grohl grin on his face. The 48-year-old Foo Fighters frontman doesn’t get much downtime these days, between making records, touring, directing documentaries and gigging with pretty much anyone who asks. (Grohl: “I just like to jam!”) But today, he finds himself uncharacteristically unoccupied. “What should we do?” Grohl already dropped his two older daughters off at special-effects camp. His youngest, three-year-old Ophelia, is at pre-school, so now he has the day to himself. Next week, the Foos will hit the road in support of their ninth album, Concrete and Gold, flying first to Chicago, then Southeast Asia, Australia and Europe, then back home to throw their…

22 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

The National Go Deep Into the Darkness

“You’ve been sleeping for miles. So what did you see? Here the sky’s been falling white flowers, And there’s ice in all the trees.” —THE NATIONAL, “Find a Way” The National Sleep Well Beast 4AD HHHH By will hermes The National’s hauntingly side-eyed 2007 ode to nationalism, “Fake Empire,” has gotten big responses at their recent shows, unsurprisingly. Yet the Ohio-bred indie-rock achievers aren’t a political band per se. Frontman Matt Berninger generally turns his brooding baritone toward the dark end of relationships – with one’s self, a lover, a society – backed by a band that can sometimes suggest Wilco channeling Joy Division. Lyrically and sonically, the National’s seventh LP plumbs anxieties more deeply than ever. The result is a disarmingly potent album, not just emotionally but politically as…

2 min

Rolling Stone|September 21, 2017

New Hope for Hollywood

Nothing can beat the fun of Star Wars: The Last Jedi Remember Rey (Daisy Ridley) handing Luke (Mark Hamill) his lightsaber at the end of The Force Awakens? Want to see what’s next? Duh. Follow Luke, Rey and Finn (John Boyega), and see Leia (Carrie Fisher) take a final bow. (Dec. 15) J.Law is a hell of a mother! You’ve never seen Jennifer Lawrence like this. Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is a mind-bender about creation. You won’t know what hit you. (Sept. 15) Who needs 007 when we have Kingsman? Subtitled The Golden Circle, this hugely entertaining sequel to the 2015 hit reunites street-kid spy Eggsy (Taron Egerton) with Harry (Colin Firth), the Bond-ish mentor who only seemed to die last time. (Sept. 22) Blade Runner replicates Denis Villeneuve directs Blade…

3 min