Table of contents for Dec-17-15 in Rolling Stone

The Last Blues Man In RS 1248, associate editor Patrick Doyle profiled guitar great Buddy Guy [“King Bee”], who Keith Richards calls “the top honcho” and “the godfather” of the blues. ROLLING STONE readers and Guy fans responded. I WAS EXTREMELY EXCITed to read about Buddy Guy – a poignant article about a blues giant and a gentleman. Thanks to Patrick Doyle for a job well done. Mike Norcutt, Pittsburgh THIS KIND OF EXTENDED biographical piece on groundbreaking pioneers in American and British music is what Rolling Stone excels at – and why I’ve been a subscriber from Issue One. Chick DeCicco Hammonton, NJ THE BLUES IS AMERICA’S unique gift. Buddy is music royalty and as important to all blues lovers as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Long may he…

ALKI DAVID HAS SEEN THE FUture, and it looks a lot like the past. David, 47, is the owner of Hologram USA, which wants to corner the market for “live” performances by 3D images of dead superstars. The company recently announced deals with the estates of Whitney Houston as well as comedians Redd Foxx and Andy Kaufman for performances and tours in 2016. Hologram USA also owns the “resurrection” rights to Patsy Cline and Buddy Holly. In David’s vision, anything is possible. Led Zeppelin could tour with John Bonham again, or a band could simultaneously rock any number of venues around the world. “But that’s just the low-hanging fruit,” David says. “Imagine Einstein being beamed into multiple schools at the same time, to give his take on his own theorems.”…

WHEN CHRIS STAPLEton’s debut album, Traveller, hit Number One on the charts in November, no one was more surprised than Stapleton himself. “It’s wonderfully strange – not something I ever expected,” says the 37-year-old country singer. Stapleton, who comes from a long line of Kentucky coal miners, spent 14 years in Nashville, briefly fronting a bluegrass band and writing hits for Tim McGraw, Luke Bryan and Darius Rucker, before making Traveller. The album sidesteps modern Nashville slickness in favor of classic barroom twang – including a cover of “Tennessee Whiskey,” a 1983 hit for George Jones. Stapleton recently performed it with Justin Timberlake at the CMA Awards. “I love working with people, regardless of genre – country, rock & roll, whatever,” Stapleton says. “I just called Justin, and he said…

1 The Weeknd Can’t Feel My Face It was the “oooooh!” that changed everything. That single ecstatic syllable, slipping out just before each chorus, transformed Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd) from a cult R&B singer to a full-on pop star – just as decisively as a similar yelp of joy marked a new era in Michael Jackson’s career when “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” hit 36 years earlier. Max Martin’s satinsmooth production helped, too, vaulting “Can’t Feel My Face” straight to Number One on the pop charts with Scandinavian efficiency. But Tesfaye’s showstopping vocal performance is what makes it an instant classic. He spends the song remaking himself as a pop giant – cleverly disguising his obsession with drugs beneath a metaphor about a dangerously hot fling, and playing…

“Send my love to your new lover/Treat her better/We’ve got to let go of all of our ghosts.” —ADELE, “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” Adele 25 XL/Columbia Adele’s 2011 blockbuster, 21, was all about turning pain into power. Four years and 30 million albums sold later, remorse is still her muse. But where 21 was the sound of a woman soldiering through bad romance, 25 finds her queenly and resolute, lamenting the past on songs with titles like “Water Under the Bridge” and “When We Were Young.” Even “Hello” is a goodbye. The nostalgic mood is the perfect fit for an artist who reaches back decades for her influences, even as her all-or-nothing urgency feels utterly modern. Some of pop’s biggest names, from Max Martin to Bruno…

Son of Saul Géza Röhrig Directed by László Nemes AS WITH EVERY HOLOcaust film, Son of Saul will stir complaints that cinema is too trivial to encompass such profound evil. But there’s nothing trivial about this Hungarian masterwork from first-time director László Nemes. You don’t merely witness horror, you feel it in your bones. Nemes keeps his camera tightly focused on Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig), a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz. Saul temporarily escapes the ovens by serving with the Sonderkommando, Jews coerced to help execute other Jews and dispose of the bodies. We see only what Saul sees, the more heinous acts blurred in the background, but all the more terrifying for that. Tension surges when Saul finds a boy who has survived the gas. When the boy dies, Saul…

1. Leon Bridges “So Long” Can’t get enough of Bridges’ vintage-soul debut, Coming Home? Us either – but once you’re done with that, check out this Sam Cooke-ish ballad he made for Will Smith’s new movie. Lord have mercy! 2 . Trust Fund “4th August” Sweet, sad, pretty guitar pop from an up-and-coming British act that’s learned all the right tricks from all your favorite Clinton-era college-rock bands. 3. Pusha T “Untouchable” One of the coldest rappers in the game samples Biggie, disses Donald Trump and compares himself to U2 (“I am like Bono with the Edge”) – and that’s just in the first 30 seconds of this Timbaland-produced cut. We can’t wait for his upcoming King Push LP. 4. Ra Ra Riot and Rostam Batmanglij “Water” Vampire Weekend’s Batmanglij…

ONE SUNDAY NIGHT IN THE spring of 2014, David Bowie walked into 55 Bar, a 96-yearold jazz joint tucked away on a quiet side street in New York’s West Village. A friend, jazz bandleader Maria Schneider, had suggested he check out the night’s headliner, a quartet led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Bowie grabbed a table near the stage, took in their set, then left without speaking to the band. “A server was like, ‘Wait, was that David Bowie?’ ” McCaslin says. “It started dawning on people.” A few weeks later, McCaslin got an email: Bowie wanted the band to join him in the studio. “I thought, ‘This is David Bowie, and he chose me, and he’s sending me an e-mail?’ ” McCaslin says. “I tried not to think about it…

Adele in New York: Rollin’ in the Streets On the same day her new album, 25, sold a breathtaking 900,000 copies, Adele celebrated its release with a set at the tiny New York club Joe’s Pub with 200 impossibly lucky fans. (The same week, she also hit two slightly-less-underground spots, Radio City Music Hall and Saturday Night Live.) “I love New York,” says the singer, who used to divide her time between the city and London. “I was about to move there, and then I got pregnant. I have a million memories.” JIGGA WHAT, JETER WHO? Derek Jeter and Jay Z – who once called the ex-Yankee “a classic example of a winner” – bro-hugged at the Staples Center in L.A. Jay’s mood went downhill a few days later when…

Coldplay A Head Full of Dreams EMI Nashville Coldplay’s last album, 2014’s Ghost Stories, was a surprisingly dark and muted set released just months after Chris Martin’s split with Gwyneth Paltrow. A year and a half later, the frown has been turned upside down. A Head Full of Dreams, produced by Norwegian hitmakers Stargate, might be Coldplay’s brightest album ever – an eagle’s-wings whoosh of soaring melodies, happy dance beats and Martin at his most wideeyed. “There are miracles at work,” he sings on the album-opening title anthem, which sounds like U2 and New Order on a joint humanitarian mission. Coldplay flex their coalition-building strength by bringing together Beyoncé’s backing vocals and Noel Gallagher’s heroic guitar on the gingerly optimistic “Up&Up.” Bey also appears amid chirping birds on the…

From the Rolling Stone Vault Star Wars had been in theaters for only eight weeks when the cast appeared on the cover of ROLLING STONE, but the film had already grossed $54 million and become a global phenomenon. Nobody seemed more shocked than director George Lucas, who had been deluged by budget squabbles and technical hang-ups while shooting in the Tunisian desert. “I realized why directors are such horrible people,” he said. “You want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you and there is no time to be nice to people.” Lucas had already decided to hand future Star Wars films over to other directors (which he did on the franchise’s next two installments). “I figured the merchandising along with the sequels would give me…

Five Songs I Wish I’d Written The guitarist, who’s about to kick off a U.S. tour, told us about five songs that inspire him. B.B. King “You’re Still My Woman” On Live in Japan, there’s a place where the band breaks down, and he goes into this run that is so jazzy, funky, raw – and then the band comes back in perfectly. It’s inspiring as a guitar player. Alabama Shakes “Gemini” I love the way Brittany Howard sings this song. The band is in the pocket, and for her to be that vulnerable in the groove, and so expressive with her vocals, really moves me. 2Pac “Hold Ya Head” This song goes in the same category as “What’s Going On,” or Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World”…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, SIA FURLER WAS in the studio with Adele, helping write songs for what would become 25. There was a problem, in Furler’s mind at least: She worried she was being too pushy with her song ideas. “When I work with artists, I try to check my ego at the door and become their bitch,” says Furler, 39. “I e-mailed Adele, saying, ‘I’m worried it was annoying working with me.’ She wrote me back, like, ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Adele may have brushed off any problems in the studio, but she didn’t include the songs she wrote with Furler on 25. “Maybe the songs had too much my voice and not enough hers,” Furler says. Instead, the two tracks from the session – including the thrilling…

The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie’s art-house film from 1976, ends with the main character – an ageless alien played by Bowie – stranded on Earth and heartbroken after losing the love of his life. Bowie’s new off-Broadway musical, Lazarus – which opens on December 7th at the tiny New York Theatre Workshop – picks up the story 40 years later, with Dexter star Michael C. Hall taking over the role. Bowie was intimately involved in the production, writing four new songs (at least one of which appears on his new LP, Blackstar) for it. Bowie picked Belgian director Ivo van Hove to helm Lazarus. “I didn’t want it to become a jukebox musical,” van Hove says. “I wanted it to be one story all together, music and…

1 Kendrick Lamar To Pimp a Butterfly Musically, lyrically and emotionally, Kendrick Lamar’s third album is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece – a sprawling epic that’s both the year’s most bumptious party music and its most gripping therapy session. A rap superstar at last, after years on the underground grind, Lamar wrestles with the depression and survivor’s guilt that followed his success by turning to heroes from Ralph Ellison and Richard Pryor to Smokey Robinson and Tupac. He lives large. He contains multitudes. Leading the charge to bring live instrumentation back to hip-hop, he calls forth a sound as ambitious and challenging as his rhymes: sci-fifunk on “Wesley’s Theory,” free jazz on “For Free?,” steady G-funk on “King Kunta.” Over all this, Lamar interrogates himself and a country where everything from his…

ON A RAINY DAY IN MID-November, Secretary of State John Kerry stood on the bridge of the USS San Antonio, a state-of-the-art ship designed to deliver up to 800 Marines ashore via helicopters and landing craft. From the bridge, Kerry had a commanding view of Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval base in the world: aircraft carriers to the left, battleships to the right, a panorama of military power – and one that is rapidly sinking beneath the rising waters of Chesapeake Bay. As Navy officials told Kerry in an informal briefing aboard the San Antonio, the base was highly vulnerable to sea- level rise. Already, roads connecting the base to the city of Norfolk, Virginia, flood during major rainstorms. At high tide, water surges over the sea walls, threatening…

MORE THAN 150 YEARS AGO, IN 1858, AS THE NATIONAL CRISIS OVER SLAVERY HEIGHTENED, Abraham Lincoln famously remarked that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” and that the “crisis” would be “reached and passed” only when the house divided would “become all one thing or all the other.” Now, the long conflict over social equality, political democracy and American government that began during the Progressive era, followed by the New Deal and the Great Society, is reaching its inescapable conclusion. If the Republicans win the presidency in 2016, they will also almost inevitably control both the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving them virtually unfettered command over the entire federal government to go along with their domination of the great majority of the state governments. The Republican president…