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Rihanna on the cover of Rolling Stone.Terry Richardson for RollingStone.com

Rihanna is the latest Rolling Stone cover star. In our new issue on stands Friday, January 31st, contributing editor Josh Eels accompanies the pop star around Los Angeles and visits her new Pacific Palisades mansion, where the 24-year-old opens up about her image, her seven-country Unapologetic promo tour and reconciliation with Chris Brown. "We value each other. We know exactly what we have now, and we don't want to lose that," she says.

Stay tuned for more from the cover story.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Flashback: Bruce Springsteen Surprises U2 Fans in 1987

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U2 was nearly done with their set at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium on September 25th, 1987 when a roadie brought out another microphone stand. "Anybody else want to play my guitar?" Bono asked the crowd. "Would Bruce Springsteen like to play my guitar?" As Bono literally bowed down before Springsteen, the crowd went insane. "I guess you guys know him," Bono said. "Is he a local boy or something?" They proceeded to play "Stand By Me" (though it would have been far cooler if he'd come out for the previous song: U2's groupie ode "Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl").

Bono had dislocated his shoulder during a Washington, D.C. show five days earlier, and he brought fans onstage over the next few days to play the guitar. It's unclear exactly why Springsteen was at the show that day, but Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul were opening up. It's quite possible he was catching up with his once and future bandmate and got coaxed into coming onstage.

This collaboration was filmed by filmmaker Phil Joanou for his U2 documentary Rattle and Hum, but it wound up on the cutting room floor. Somehow or another, many hours of raw footage from the film fell into the hands of fans, circulating in collector circles for years. (Maybe some day an industrious fan will edit it into a better movie.)

In 2002, Bono returned the favor by joining Springsteen and the E Street Band for "Because the Night" at a Miami show. Three years later, Springsteen inducted U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, duetting with them on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Springsteen went to MetLife Stadium in 2011 to check out U2's 360 tour, but he never made it onto the stage – though Bono did wrap up the show by reciting the lyrics to "Jungleland" as a tribute to the late Clarence Clemons.

The Flaming Lips Land New Song in Super Bowl Ad

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The Flaming Lips Land New Song in Super Bowl AdBand writes 'Sun Blows Up Today' for a Hyundai commercial $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

The Flaming Lips are one-upping fun., the Lumineers, Phillip Phillips and other acts who've boosted new singles with prominent TV commercials over the past year by writing an original song, "Sun Blows Up Today," for a Hyundai commercial set to air during the Super Bowl.

The 60-second spot stars gray-suited, bushy-haired frontman Wayne Coyne and the band eating breakfast with a bored family before leading them on a journey featuring ostriches, bikers, a garage-roof concert and, of course, a ride in a giant bubble.

The Flaming Lips Light Up New York

"It's just a fantastic opportunity," says Lori Feldman, senior vice president of brand partnerships for Warner Bros. Records, which will release the band's The Terror April 2nd, with "Sun Blows Up Today" as an iTunes bonus track. "The point here is a band like the Flaming Lips, who are really one of the greatest-kept cult secrets in the world of rock music, are going to have a truly massive audience as they head back into a new album cycle."

Last year's Super Bowl reached an audience of about 111 million people, and 30-second ads cost roughly $4 million, so the Lips stand to gain crucial exposure (and anywhere from $100,000 to more than $1 million, according to Billboard estimates) at a time of diminished album sales for almost every kind of rock band. Last year, fun.'s "We Are Young" aired in a distinctive Chevy Sonic ad during the Super Bowl, and while the song had already been on Glee, it quickly shot into the Top 10, then sold almost six million singles in 2012, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

"We thought we could bring in a little money, the record company would bring in a little money they could use to market the record and we could make a little publishing money to fund other things," says Dalton Sim, manager for fun. "You can't write these things into a marketing plan. We got lucky that the music and the ad lined up and connected with people and it worked so well."

"It's part of the new music business," adds Christen Greene, co-manager of the Lumineers, who used a Bing ad last year to help break "Ho Hey." "Ten years ago, people would call it selling out pretty hard. Now it's more powerful than radio."

The Lips' Hyundai connection came together when the car company's agency, Innocean, approached the band for its Santa Fe SUV spot. The ad people are fans of the Lips, and when the timing worked out, the band, company and record label began to work together. (Hyundai.com will give away 100,000 downloads of the song.) "It was really a painless experience," Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd says. "We went back and forth with them on the song, but it was pretty effortless, then we went out to L.A. for two days to shoot the commercial."

"It feels like a true partnership," Warner Bros.' Feldman says.

Super Bowl ads have showcased music for years, of course: a gospel choir performed Eminem's "Lose Yourself" for Chrysler in 2011, and last year's ads starred songs by Kanye West, James Brown, the Animals and Echo and the Bunnymen. The Lips' spot is different because it involves a new song, although it debuted on rollingstone.com last week. The plan is potentially risky. "Just having a song on a commercial doesn't mean it's going to become a hit on radio or sell singles," says Bob McLynn, manager of Travie McCoy, who recently wrote "All In" as an anthem for the New York Giants and Pepsi. "You've got to make sure the stuff is right as far as it being the right treatment."

Drozd says the band mostly hopes to attract viewers' attention. "I would imagine there'd be some residual curiosity of people saying, 'Hey, what was that, maybe I should check that out,' and maybe they’ll Google us and see a little bit about us," he says.

Well-known artists occasionally write new songs for TV ads – Grizzly Bear did it in 2010 for the Washington State Lottery and They Might Be Giants wrote several songs for Dunkin' Donuts in 2006. It's far more common for a record label to try to break an existing song with the help of a TV commercial, asAmerican Idol winner Phillip Phillips did last year when "Home" appeared in an American Family Insurance spot. In addition to the exposure, such advertising deals can change an artist's financial fortunes.

"It's why I do what I do," says Todd Porter, music supervisor at Goodby Silverstein, which worked on fun.'s Chevy spot last year. "I got into this by seeing directly how licensing can help out my friends' bands. They would turn to me and go, 'Wow, we can go on tour now. We just paid for our recording studio.' That's what it's about for me."

Additional reporting by Eric R. Danton

Rihanna on Chris Brown: 'We Know Exactly What We Have Now'

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Rihanna in Century City, California.

Rihanna has opened up like never before about getting back together with her ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, and what it means for her public image. "I decided it was more important for me to be happy," she tells contributing editor Josh Eells in the new issue of Rolling Stone, out Friday, January 31st. "I wasn't going to let anybody's opinion get in the way of that. Even if it's a mistake, it's my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I'd rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it."

On the Cover: Rihanna's Crazy in Love

The couple's public reconciliation comes less than four years since Brown assaulted Rihanna the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards. Brown plead guilty to assault and performed community service, but he remains on probation. "When you add up the pieces from the outside, it's not the cutest puzzle in the world," Rihanna says. "You see us walking somewhere, driving somewhere, in the studio, in the club, and you think you know. But it's different now. We don't have those types of arguments anymore. We talk about shit. We value each other. We know exactly what we have now, and we don't want to lose that."

And Rihanna says that if Brown were ever to display a hint of his past behavior towards her, she is ready to walk. "He doesn't have the luxury of fucking up again," she says. "That's just not an option. I can't say that nothing else will ever go wrong. But I'm pretty solid in the knowing that he's disgusted by that. And I wouldn't have gone this far if I ever thought that was a possibility."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

MGMT Get Even Wilder on Synth-Heavy Third Album

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MGMT at Tarbox Studios in Cassadaga, New York.

For the better part of the past year, MGMT have been holed up at a woodsy cabin outside Buffalo, New York, that resembles a Rube Goldberg version of a recording studio: Nearly every corner of every room is stuffed with keyboards, drum machines and guitars. For hours on end, the duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser program synth loops in one room, then run next door to trigger another sequence, until the entire house is vibrating with spacey, rhythmic music. "We'll get involved in what we're doing," says Goldwasser, "and the next thing we know, we've been improvising for five hours."

Three years ago, MGMT confounded fans with their second album, Congratulations, which ditched any reprise of their breakthrough 2008 hit "Kids" for far-out psychedelic sojourns. "People thought we took too many drugs, which was not the case at all," insists Goldwasser, taking a seat on a studio couch. Adds VanWyngarden, "We were less naive after Congratulations."

MGMT on Aliens, Drugs and 'Congratulations'

But rather than retreating, MGMT are getting even weirder on their follow-up, tentatively due out in June. Instead of using their live band, as they did on Congratulations, the core duo recorded alone, cherry-picking the best parts of their free-form jams to construct tracks that reflect the Aphex Twin and house records they've been listening to lately. Says Goldwasser, "We're not trying to make music that everyone understands the first time they hear it."

Swirling electronic highlights include "Mystery Disease" and "Alien Days" – which VanWyngarden explains is "about that feeling when a parasitic alien is in your head, controlling things." They also recorded a version of "Introspection," a mega-obscure Sixties garage rocker by the Long Island cult band Faine Jade. "The recording process was really strange," says co-producer Dave Fridmann. "So we did a cover just to say, 'Let's get back to planet Earth for a second.'"

Despite a U.K. press report to the contrary, the duo say their label, Columbia, hasn't pressured them to make a more accessible record this time. "There's no illusion on their part that we're going to turn into a Top 40 band," says VanWyngarden. "That's kind of comforting."

This story is from the February 14th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Backup Singer Documentary 'Twenty Feet From Stardom' Set for Summer Release

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Director of 'Twenty Feet From Stardom,' Morgan Neville.

Several years ago, former A&M Records head Gil Friesen was stoned at a Leonard Cohen concert when he became fixated on Cohen's backup singers. ??The result of Friesen's musings is Twenty Feet From Stardom, a documentary that explores the culture of such supporting singers. Friesen once quipped to its director, Morgan Neville, that the movie was "the most expensive joint I ever smoked," and the final product premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival.

"This is a story about people whose fingerprints are all over the music we know but we have no idea who they are," Neville, a self-described "hardcore music geek," tells Rolling Stone. His other credits include Troubadours, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and Johnny Cash's America. He is currently at work on a film about the rivalry between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley.

Gil Friesen, Influential Music Mogul, Dead at 75

Friesen, who passed away from cancer in December, saw the final film before his death and knew it would premiere at Sundance. It was purchased last week by the Weinstein Company's label Radius-TWC and, according to Neville, is set for a summer release.

"You could have talked about Nashville, you could have talked about girl groups. . . To me, the interesting story was the rise of these black voices from the church into the studios and onto vinyl," says the director. "What was Lou Reed singing about [in "A Walk on the Wild Side"]? This is what he was singing about."

The film includes interviews with artists who are notable for their use of backup singers, including Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and Sting. Many well-known supporting vocalists are also interviewed, including Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega, Judith Hill, Claudia Lennear, Gloria Jones and Dr. Mable John.

These performers – who Neville says "can often sing circles around lead singers" – have produced a soulful, harmonic blend for decades, one derived from the Motown, rock and R&B of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. ??"There was really kind of a heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s," Neville explains. "The Brits were coming and they were pale white guys and they thought, 'Hey, if I am really into R&B and soul, why don't I just invite black singers to come onstage with me?'"

In Twenty Feet, Neville also explores the psychology of standing in the shadows of super-stardom and the lack of individual identity – which, depending on the singer, can feel like bliss or purgatory. He also looks at how relatively recent changes in the recording business – including lead singers recording their own backing tracks – caused the backup singer scene to dry up.

"I asked them, 'When do you think it changed?' And one singer said, 'In 1993,'" Neville says. "Hip-hop, grunge in the 1990s – all those things were going on as well as changes in taste, business and technology." What hasn't changed is the talent of these artists – and soon, their story will be told.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Eric Burdon Revisits a Classic on 'Fallon'

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Eric Burdon Revisits a Classic on 'Fallon'Singer dives into 'We Gotta Get Out of This Place' with the Roots $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

After Eric Burdon tore through "Water," a song from his new album 'Til Your River Runs Dry, last night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the rock & roll veteran stuck around for a classic, performing a web-only version of "We Gotta Get Out of This Place." The Roots laid down a slinky groove on the 1965 single Burdon recorded with the Animals, and the singer growled out the lyrics as the tune built into the cathartic chorus that made it an enduring sing-along anthem.

Ohio Players Frontman Leroy 'Sugarfoot' Bonner Dead at 69

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Leroy 'Sugarfoot' Bonner of Sugarfoot's Ohio Players in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Ohio Players frontman Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner died Saturday in his hometown near Dayton, Ohio, according to his Facebook page. He was 69. No cause of death was announced.

Bonner co-founded the Ohio Players in 1964 with former members of The Ohio Untouchables, and the group scored big hits in the Seventies with "Funky Worm," "Who'd She Coo?" and most notably "Fire" and "Love Rollercoaster."

Photos: The Ohio Players

"Humble yet charismatic, soft spoken and of few words, the weight of his thoughts, lyrics, and music has influenced countless other artists, songs, and trends," reads the post on Bonner's Facebook page. "He will be missed but not forgotten as his legacy and music lives on."

Bonner toured with a version of the Ohio Players until his death. "Love Rollercoaster" found new life in the Nineties as a hit for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the band's songs have been widely used as samples in rap music. "Funky Worm" and its swirling, signature Moog sound became a staple of rap, from N.W.A's sample in 1988's "Gangsta Gangsta" to a similarly inspired outro on Kendrick Lamar's "m.A.A.d City." last year.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

'Community' Gets Senioritis in New Spoiler Clip

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'Community' Gets Senioritis in New Spoiler ClipThe Greendale crew embarks on a sweet new course $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

The end is in sight for the Greendale Community College crew, if this new clip from the upcoming Season Four premiere of Community is any indication. In it, the most eccentric study group on campus – Britta, Abed, Annie, Troy, Shirley and Pierce – reunite in the halls to celebrate their new senior status and decide how they'll fully abuse the privilege. They're also thrilled to be enrolled in a sweet and highly coveted new course, History of Ice Cream. But where is their ringleader, Jeff? Maybe he's uncharacteristically going for extra credit at Baskin Robbins.

The season premiere of Community airs on February 7th at 8 p.m. on NBC.

Whitney Houston's Mother Criticizes Bobby Brown in New Book

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Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images; Ben Gabbe/Getty Images

Whitney Houston's mother Cissy writes in her new book that she doubted from the start whether Bobby Brown was right for her daughter, and adds that Whitney might not have ended up so "deep" into drugs if they'd separated earlier, The Associated Press reports.

"I do believe her life would have turned out differently," Houston writes in Remembering Whitney. "It would have been easier for her to get sober and stay sober. Instead she was with someone who, like her, wanted to party. To me, he never seemed to be a help to her in the way she needed."

100 Greatest Singers: Whitney Houston

In an interview, Houston said she has had no contact with Brown and said she has no reason to reach out to him. "How would you like it if he had anything to do with your daughter?" she asked.

Released today, about two weeks shy of the one-year anniversary of Whitney's death, the elder Houston said she wrote the book so that the people would not believe the worst about her daughter. Houston was found drowned in a hotel bathtub in Beverley Hills, California, last year, with authorities saying her death was complicated by cocaine use and heart disease. While Cissy writes that Whitney – whom she often refers to by her childhood nickname, Nippy – could be "mean" and "difficult," even questioning in her darkest moments whether her daughter loved her, she also remembers her as "almost always the sweetest, most loving person in the room."

As for Brown, Cissy paints him as childish and impulsive, even jealous of Houston's success. In 2005, Cissy visited the couple's home in Atlanta to find the walls spray-painted with "big glaring eyes and strange faces" and Whitney's face cut out of a framed family photo. The next time Cissy returned she came with two sheriff's deputies who helped take Whitney to the hospital.

"She was so angry at me, cursing me and up and down," Cissy Houston writes. "Eventually, after a good long while, Nippy did stop being angry at me. She realized that I did what I did to protect her, and she later told people that I had saved her life."

Cissy says she was "extremely relieved" when Brown and Houston divorced in 2007, and is certain that if Whitney were alive she would still be making music. Cissy also added that she has seen Whitney's posthumous performance in Sparkle, saying she enjoyed it though the "whole movie was hard to get through."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Ohio Players Frontman Leroy 'Sugarfoot' Bonner Dead at 69

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Leroy 'Sugarfoot' Bonner of Sugarfoot's Ohio Players in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Ohio Players frontman Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner died Saturday in his hometown near Dayton, Ohio, according to his Facebook page. He was 69. No cause of death was announced.

Photos: The Ohio Players

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

MGMT Get Even Wilder on Synth-Heavy Third Album

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MGMT at Tarbox Studios in Cassadaga, New York.

MGMT on Aliens, Drugs and 'Congratulations'

This story is from the February 14th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Backup Singer Documentary 'Twenty Feet From Stardom' Set for Summer Release

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Director of 'Twenty Feet From Stardom,' Morgan Neville.

Gil Friesen, Influential Music Mogul, Dead at 75

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Dave Grohl Directs Soundgarden's Raucous 'By Crooked Steps'

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Dave Grohl Directs Soundgarden's Raucous 'By Crooked Steps' Grunge heroes make riding Segways look cooler than ever $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); });

Dave Grohl's already got one directorial project already under his belt – his upcoming documentary Sound City – and now he's trying his hand at a music video by helming the new clip for Soundgarden's "By Crooked Steps," off last year's King Animal. The video finds Chris Cornell and his bandmates playing cards, then suiting up in some badass leather jackets and hopping on their sweet rides – that is, Segways – and heading to a gig. After rolling up in style, Soundgarden plugs in and kicks out the jams for the moshing hordes, but only after they shut down a flustered laptop DJ who sics the cops on the grunge heroes.

The Flaming Lips Land New Song in Super Bowl Ad

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The Flaming Lips Light Up New York

"It feels like a true partnership," Warner Bros.' Feldman says.

Additional reporting by Eric R. Danton

How Swing-State Republicans Are Already Trying to Rig the Next Presidential Election

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BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyImages

It's no secret that the United States is undergoing a major demographic shift, and it doesn't bode well for Republicans' future presidential prospects. But rather than championing policies that appeal to America's increasingly diverse electorate, the GOP is opting for a strategy to suppress the voters they're afraid of.

Last election cycle, Rolling Stone contributor Ari Berman outlined the slew of tactics Republicans employed to block President Obama's base from getting to the polls – from racist voter ID laws to onerous limits on early voting. This effort failed miserably, and the president easily won re-election on the shoulders of students, blue-collar workers and people of color.

For Republicans, this apparently means revisiting the vote suppression drawing board. Republican legislators in several key states have devised a new plan to take back the White House in 2016: rigging the electoral system in favor of their party's presidential candidates.

Conservative lawmakers in five crucial swing states are pushing legislation that would apportion electoral votes by congressional district, instead of the traditional, winner-takes-all system currently used by all but two states. The GOP-controlled statehouses of Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are all reportedly considering plans to make the switch.

What do these five states have in common? They all voted for Obama in 2012, with significant support from non-white voters. The proposed electoral overhaul would dramatically strengthen the power of rural, white voters and stifle the voices of the urban residents who elected and re-elected our nation's first black president.

Consider the case of Michigan, a state that Obama won by more than 400,000 votes. The president received particularly strong support in Michigan districts 13 and 14, which together make up the city of Detroit. These districts contain millions of voters, who turn out to the polls at a substantially higher rate than many of their rural neighbors. Yet under the Republicans' proposed rules, each of the urban districts would get just one electoral vote, the same as any of Michigan's overwhelmingly white, rural districts. Mitt Romney would have swept those areas, carrying nine of Michigan's 16 electoral votes to Obama's seven, despite losing the state's popular vote by nearly 10 points. Detroit, where minorities make up 89 percent of the population, according to the 2010 Census, would have been rendered effectively irrelevant.

As commentators including The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie and The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates have noted, these Republican proposals would drastically weaken the effectiveness of Democratic Get Out the Vote campaigns in urban areas. Votes in Detroit – or Cincinnati, or Richmond, or Milwaukee – simply would not count as much as votes in less diverse areas. It's a scary echo of the Jim Crow era, when racist lawmakers put restrictions in place to devalue African-American votes.

And this campaign isn't merely being waged by some lowly state senators. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is all for electoral rigging: "I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Last week, Virginia lawmakers made headlines by trying to sneak in a bill that would have enacted this type of deplorable change in the rules. The measure is so blatantly wrong-headed that even Virginia's Republican governor denounced it. But clearly, much more action is needed before we can be sure that Republicans won't succeed in changing the rules of democracy in their favor.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Black Flag Reunite for Album, Live Dates

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Greg Ginn and Ron Reyes of Black Flag in Vancouver, Canada.

Black Flag founder Greg Ginn has re-formed a version of the iconic hardcore group for a new album and a handful of live shows. He's not the only one: former Black Flag members Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski and Bill Stevenson are also touring, as Flag, with Descendents member Stephen Egerton.

Ginn's band, according to a statement, is "putting finishing touches on a new album" with singer Ron Reyes, drummer Gregory Moore and bassist Dale Nixon, a pseudonym for Ginn. It's unclear who will play bass when the band performs live. Gigs so far include headline slots May 18th at the Ruhrpott Rodeo in Germany; August 4th at Hevy Fest in the U.K.; and August 31st at the Muddy Roots Music Festival in Tennessee.

500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Black Flag, 'Damaged'

Morris' band is scheduled to perform April 26th at the Monster Bash in Munich, Germany. The singer also fronts Off! with Burning Brides frontman Dimitri Coats, Redd Kross bassist Steven Shane McDonald and Hot Snakes drummer Mario Rubalcaba.

Black Flag included more than a dozen members, including four singers, during a 10-year run between 1976-86, with Ginn being the only constant member. Morris was the group's original vocalist, followed by Reyes, Dez Cadena and Henry Rollins, who isn't involved in any of this year's Black Flag-related activities.

Apart from a brief reunion for three shows in 2003, Ginn's revival of the Black Flag lineup marks the band's first new activity since the mid-Eighties: a new album would be Black Flag's first collection of all-new material since 1985's In My Head.

There has been no word yet if Morris' Flag is recording or planning an album. Both bands plan to play additional shows in the U.S. and abroad.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Whitney Houston's Mother Criticizes Bobby Brown in New Book

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Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images; Ben Gabbe/Getty Images

100 Greatest Singers: Whitney Houston

In an interview, Houston said she has had no contact with Brown and said she has no reason to reach out to him. "How would you like it if he had anything to do with your daughter?" she asked.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Rodriguez Weighs Potential Third Album

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Sixto Rodriguez in New York City

Rodriguez, the obscure Detroit songman who unknowingly earned a huge cult audience overseas, will meet with producers to discuss making a third album, his first in more than 40 years. Though adamant about having no specific plan, Rodriguez tells Rolling Stone that once he breaks from touring in June he will explore the prospect with Steve Rowland, who produced one of the lost albums resurrected in the Oscar-nominated documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

"He told me to send him a couple of tapes, so I’m gonna do that," Rodriguez said in a phone interview from his Michigan home on Friday. "I certainly want to look him up, because now he’s full of ideas."

Best Album Reissues of 2012: Rodriguez, 'Searching for Sugar Man'

Rowland, who produced 1971’s Coming From Reality and has worked with the Cure and Jerry Lee Lewis, confirmed it in an email: "We both have ideas on how the next album should go . . . We both want to work together again, but it really is up to others that are involved in his future."

Rodriguez has also talked with Irish producer David Holmes, who featured the song "Sugar Man" on a 2002 collection, about recording again. Doing so would signal a fresh start for the 70-year-old musician, whose Herculean fan base in South Africa revered Rodriguez’s 1970 debut, Cold Fact, over albums by the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Searching for Sugar Man tracks his modest career revival following a musical journey dominated by decades of speculation over whether he was even still alive.

This month Coachella added Rodriguez to its April roster, a bill he will share with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Wu-Tang Clan. Three dozen more scheduled shows, many of them sold out, include several in South Africa, the birthplace of the momentum that swept Cape Town, Johannesburg and beyond while Cold Fact flopped Stateside. The A&M imprint Sussex Records dropped Rodriguez a month after releasing Coming From Reality. He retreated into construction work, never collecting a dime on his foreign sales, while an urban legend claiming he killed himself during a performance spurred a journalist’s quest to investigate.

Rodriguez, it turned out, had never left his hometown. Born in Detroit to Mexican immigrants, he picked up the guitar as a teenager and wrote his first songs with the aid of a dictionary and thesaurus. At 27 he cut Cold Fact, a Woodstock-era set pairing lean orchestral arrangements with lyrics of outrage toward his city’s violence, poverty and crooked politics. While rampant bootlegging among his South African base prevented Rodriguez from profiting, he has received royalties since Light in the Attic Records reissued Cold Fact and Coming From Reality five years ago. They have sold a combined 113,000 units in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, with last year’s Searching for Sugar Man soundtrack selling 60,000 copies.

The lifelong Detroit resident who once ran for mayor calls himself a "music politico," an Obama supporter, and an activist for legalizing marijuana and forgiving student-loan debt. Though labels have offered contracts, Rodriguez maintains he has no short-term plan to enter a studio – he even unsuccessfully lobbied filmmakers to cut a reference to his "unfinished third album.

"To me it distracted," he said. "It almost cheapened the film, like it was a promo film.

"I’ve written about 30 songs, and that’s pretty much what the public has heard," he added, laughing when asked whether he preferred fame or obscurity. "Musicians want to be heard. So I’m not hiding. But I do like to leave it there onstage and be myself, in that sense. Because some people carry it with them."

On Thursday, Rodriguez’s three daughters will travel with him to South Africa, where he will prepare for a string of February dates.

"It’s something I’ve waited for and something I’m ready for," he said. "The Isley Brothers, there’s a group that stays together because they’re a family band. So in this case, it’s similar: it’s an ingredient, I think, of a success story."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Lenny Kravitz Honors Family in 'Looking Back on Love' - Premiere

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Lenny Kravitz Honors Family in 'Looking Back on Love' - PremiereRocker gets introspective in new documentary $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); OO.ready(function() { OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer', 'RxeG10ODqU0gsvaVWBC-xkIZQMreA08P', {'autoplay': true }); });

Lenny Kravitz's 2011 album Black and White America was the rocker's most personal, introspective album to date. The new documentary Looking Back on Love, out today, follows the recording process of Black and White America in the Bahamas and features extensive interviews with the singer-songwriter about his family and personal life.

Photos: Musicians Who Defined Nineties Style – Lenny Kravitz

"For me, it's about my life. It's about what I grew up in, what I know, what I feel comfortable in, the juxtaposition between the two," he says of the album's title in this exclusive clip. "It's also where we are today." Kravitz also reflects on the parallels between him and President Barack Obama. "This is my experience, and this is where America is right now, on the brink of, 'Is this happening? Is this not happening?'" he says. "This is really what's happening right now." Adding onto this, Kravitz sifts through memories of his parents, Sy Kravitz and The Jeffersons actress Roxie Roker. "They went through a lot to be together."

Looking Back on Love is available on iTunes.

New Eric Clapton Album 'Old Sock' Due in March

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Eric Clapton will release a new album, Old Sock, on March 12th, marking the guitar icon's 21st studio record and first since 2010's Clapton.

Due on his own Bushbranch label, Old Sock will include two new originals – "Every Little" and "Gotta Get Over" – and versions of 10 of the guitarist's favorite songs from throughout his life. The LP also includes several guests: blues legend JJ Cale lends backing vocals and guitar on "Angel," R&B singer Chaka Khan sings back-up on "Get On Over," Clapton's old Blind Faith mate Steve Winwood plays organ on "Still Got the Blues" and Paul McCartney plays bass and sings on "All of Me."

100 Greatest Artists: Eric Clapton

The tracklist finds Clapton covering a myriad of styles from rock and blues (Gary Moore's "Still Got The Blues" and Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene), reggae (Peter Tosh's "Till Your Well Runs Dry") and jazz standards ("All of Me," and George and Ira Gershwin's "Love Is Here to Stay").

Following the release of Old Sock, Clapton will embark on a U.S. arena tour this spring, culminating with his Crossroads Guitar Festival at Madison Square Garden, which will feature performances from artists including B.B. King, Buddy Guy, the Allman Brothers Band, John Mayer and Gary Clark Jr.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Cee Lo Green Professes Love to Lauriana Mae in 'Only You' – Song Premiere

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Cee Lo Green, 'Only You' featuring Lauriana Mae

Click to listen to Cee Lo Green featuring Lauriana Mae – 'Only You'

Cee Lo Green is a man of love. On his new track "Only You," the crooner swoons as he tells upstart singer Lauriana Mae that she's the only one who can "stop the bleeding." In the process, he floats over the track's unfussy bass groove, curling the end of each line with potential heartbreak, then unleashes the catchy chorus as he professes his feelings for Mae. "It's about two people on different paths, hoping for the best, hoping that those paths lead to each other," Green says. "It’s like love lost or the acknowledgment of a love lost, but it’s still optimistic."

"Only You" is from Cee Lo's forthcoming, still-untitled album. No release date has been set.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Kendrick Lamar Brings 'Swimming Pools (Drank)' to 'SNL'

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Kendrick Lamar Brings 'Swimming Pools (Drank)' to 'SNL'Rapper performs two 'Good Kid' tracks and offers financial advice $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

Kendrick Lamar hit Saturday Night Live last night with a live band and two tracks from Good Kid, m.A.A.d City. For the platinum-certified "Swimming Pools (Drank)," the L.A. rapper appeared in a stage fittingly flooded with an aqueous blue light, though he was bundled up tight against New York's wintery chill. Warmer lighting and short sleeves accompanied "Poetic Justice." Lamar also excercised his comedy chops in a Digital Short alongside host Adam Levine and the Lonely Island crew, offering financial advice in "YOLO," an ode to safety and prudence.

J.J. Abrams Confirmed as 'Star Wars' Director

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Director, producer and writer, J.J. Abrams

J.J. Abrams has been confirmed as the director of the next Star Wars film, taking over the franchise from its creator, George Lucas, Reuters reports.

The Walt Disney Company, which bought Lucasfilm Ltd. last October, announced the news on Friday night, after rumors of the move surfaced earlier in the week. Abrams will be working with a script by Michael Arndt, who won an Academy Award for his Little Miss Sunshine screenplay. Former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy will be the producer.

'Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back': Rolling Stone's 1980 Cover Story

"I've consistently been impressed with J.J. as a filmmaker and storyteller," George Lucas said in a statement on the official website for Star Wars. "He's an ideal choice to direct the new Star Wars film and the legacy couldn't be in better hands."

Abrams, who had previously said that he would be focusing on his own original material instead of taking over the series, returned the compliment. "To be a part of the next chapter of the Star Wars saga, to collaborate with Kathy Kennedy and this remarkable group of people, is an absolute honor," he said. "I may be even more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid."

Star Wars: Episode VII is set for release in 2015, with two further installments also in the works.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Coachella's Red Hot Chili Peppers Booking Came 'Down to the Wire'

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Anthony Kiedis of The Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Red Hot Chili Peppers signed on to headline Coachella about an hour before the annual Indio, California, festival announced its lineup last night, one of the band's managers tells Rolling Stone. "We've been in talks for months," says Cliff Burnstein, whose firm, Q Prime, also manages Metallica, the Black Keys and other top rock acts. "It goes down to the wire. It's a negotiation."

The Peppers, who have played Coachella twice before, abruptly emerged as the Sunday-night headliner for both the April 12th and 14th weekends after weeks of rumors that the Rolling Stones would play the festival. But Mick Jagger earlier this week told NME: "We're not gonna do Coachella, 'cos it's too early. There was a rumor we were gonna do that one, but it's very early, Coachella. It's April or something, isn't it? And we're not gonna be ready to go by April. But we're not gonna stop."

The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blur and More Set to Headline Coachella

Burnstein suggested the Stones' gross revenues for recent shows didn't square with Coachella's philosophy of "financial discipline" and "pricing integrity." (Last year's Coachella cost $285 for a three-day pass for dozens of bands, while, according to Pollstar, tickets for the Stones' four arena shows in North America last fall averaged $520.) "I heard the rumor, too," Burnstein says. "I discounted it, because I didn't think [promoter] Goldenvoice would pay the Stones' price. I mean, it's as simple as that."

Although the Peppers played the Coachella mainstage in 2003 and 2007, Burnstein says their current lineup, including two-year guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, gives renewed energy – the band's L.A. alt-rock radio play and Spotify numbers among young listeners are high for a veteran band. "We'll be right in the target demo for Coachella. It's surprising, but it's true," says Burnstein, who adds that the band plans to start writing a new album this year. "We figured out if they have 180,000 people over the two weekends, there's a good chance that 10 percent or less would've actually seen the Chili Peppers at a previous Coachella. It seemed like it would actually be, in many ways, a very fresh thing."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Nicki Minaj Brings 'Va Va Voom' and 'Freedom' to 'Kimmel'

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Nicki Minaj Brings 'Va Va Voom' and 'Freedom' to 'Kimmel'Singer performs 'Re-Up' tracks, dishes about Mariah Carey and Dubai $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); });

Nicki Minaj returned to Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday night to perform "Va Va Voom" and "Freedom," two singles off her latest Pink Friday release, The Re-Up. In the interview, she talked about nearly getting arrested for hugging a cute cop in Dubai, storming off the American Idol set and (of course) her relationship with Mariah Carey. "I wouldn't say I don't like her. I definitely think she doesn't like me," she told Kimmel. "I definitely try, because I looked up to her for a long time, so I don't want to be hating this lady."

Tina Turner Seeking Swiss Citizenship

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Tina Turner attends an Armani fashion show.ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

Tina Turner is in the process of trading in her American passport for a Swiss one, ABC News reports. The singer's petition for Swiss citizenship was recently approved by her local council after she passed a civics test and interview.

Turner has been living in the Zurich suburb of Kuesnacht since 1995, after moving to the country with her longtime manager, German record executive Erwin Bach. "I'm very happy in Switzerland and I feel at home here," Turner told the German newspaper, Blick. "I cannot imagine a better place to live." A representative for Turner told Switzerland's Zuerichsee-Zeitung newspaper that the Tennessee-born 73-year-old was making the move in order to "clarify her situation." "Tina Turner will therefore also give back her U.S. citizenship," the rep said.

Ike and Tina Turner Record Their Groove

Although the Kuesnacht government has given the green light, Turner's new citizenship still needs to get approval from Swiss federal and state authories.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

'Downton Abbey' Recap: 'Like Too Many Women Before Her'

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Jessica Brown Findlay as Lady Sybil and Allen Leech as Tom Branson in 'Downtown Abbey'

The thing about comfort food is that when someone serves you a piping hot plate of it week after week, you never suspect that one day they're going to grab it and smash it into your face.

Downton Abbey is just a soap opera, as both its admirers and detractors will tell you; what side of that divide they come down on depends on both how they feel about the genre itself and this show's impeccable version thereof. And while people die on soaps all the time, those deaths are typically tearjerkers, not gut-punchers. That's certainly been the case on Downton until this point, where the major deaths – Kemal Pamuk, Vera Bates, William, Lavinia, even the Crawley heirs whose deaths on the Titanic started it all – have meant more to us in terms of how they've affected the survivors than the dyers themselves.

So I'll admit it: Despite the ominous rumblings from across the pond, where this season aired months ago, I never saw this coming. Not when Dr. Clarkson mentioned his concerns about pre-eclampsia. Not when the family really started to fight about which doctor was in the right. Not when the childbirth seemingly went off without a hitch. Not when Sybil was issuing ominously final-sounding instructions about how her family should be treated. Not even when the panic-stricken family gathered in Sybil's room, watching her scream and pound her own head and seize and convulse and gasp for breath. Surely, surely, something could be done. That's the kind of show this is, right?

'Downton Abbey' Season Three Cheat Sheet

Wrong. And in proving it wrong, creator/writer/showrunner Julian Fellowes and actress Jessica Brown Findlay delivered more than just one of the most physically unbearable-to-watch death scenes this side of Breaking Bad or Deadwood – they served up the show's most powerful broadside against its own sexist system yet.

Every woman I know who's experienced pregnancy and childbirth has at least one jaw-dropping story of creepy or condescending or infuriating paternalism by some male medical professional or other. Well before you get into the well-documented War on Women territory of moving to convict rape victims who abort their pregnancies of felony evidence tampering, women's physical and psychological pain during this process is too often treated like an inconvenience to be brushed aside or powered through rather than treated with all due hippocratically mandated urgency. If those needs are not taken seriously, neither is the gender that generates them.

In tonight's episode, that paternalism becomes tragically literal. That tragedy is foreshadowed when an ebullient Lady Edith learns she's been offered a gig as a newspaper columnist, with a carte-blanche remit that would make a 21st-century freelancer of any gender flip the eff out. (Ahem.) Without even realizing how condescending he's being, Robert reacts as though the editor only made the offer to draught off the great Earl of Grantham's family name. When he looks at his daughter he sees neither her talent nor her need for support, only a weaker-sex reflection of himself. And among his peer group, he's a relatively open-minded guy! Downton Season Three's laser-precise exploitation of Lord Robert's weaknesses has been kind of remarkable to behold.

Enter the odiously arrogant doctor Sir Phillip, and the mistake that costs Sybil her life. Confronted with a difference in opinion among two male medical professionals – one of whom has known Sybil not just as a patient but as a person (and even a staff member, during the War) since birth and therefore reacts to her uncharacteristic appearance and behavior with alarm, the other who'd never even met her until the day before and therefore blows it off – Robert and Cora split on what should be done. Naturally, the default decision is to do what her father prefers: nothing. The delay costs them precious time, preventing them from taking the question to Sybil's husband Tom to make the final call; by this point Sybil herself is too incoherent to make the decision herself. Father knew best, until he didn't.

The irony is that the Crawleys are supposed to have it easy. But while Sybil and Edith both discovered that their life of mandatory leisure is a stultifying, potential-suppressing prison in many respects, a woman like Ethel, sentenced to a life of poverty and ignominy for the crime of getting knocked up by a deadbeat asshole, doesn't even have the leisure to fall back on. Isobel's insistence upon hiring Ethel back into service, then allowing self-righteous Mrs. Bird to quit rather than firing Ethel when presented with the senior cook's ultimatum, is a cathartic breath of fresh air, particularly in an episode like this. But Fellowes works to tarnish even this brief triumph over conformity: We sense Isobel's irritation that her good deed has been rewarded with terrible cooking and undrinkable tea, revealing the extent of her bourgeois benevolence. And we know that shitty as it is, Mrs. Bird's dramatic proclamation about Ethel, "If I tolerate her, I will be tarnished by her," is probably true, in this world. The system is kept in place by low-ranking members who cling to their few advantages over the even-lower, like a "good name," with terrifying tenacity.

Women, of course, are not the only victims of the ironclad rules and regulations for gender and sexuality. Whatever O'Brien's true knowledge of or feelings about Thomas's homosexuality may be, they weren't an obstacle to being dude's BFF for years. Now that they've fallen out, though, O'Brien's declaring open season on Thomas's closed closet door. With the exception of Dame Maggie Smith's irrepressible Dowager Countess, Downton's not known as a showcase for showy acting – this ensemble's stock in trade is restraint, not fireworks. But the portrayal of O'Brien by actor Siobhan Finneran (who, might I add, looks like this IRL) is so restrained, so rigorously controlled and subdued, it's become a kind of fireworks all its own. Simply put, O'Brien never smiles . . . until tonight, when she reacts to Jimmy's hesitant suspicions of Thomas's motives with a bone-chilling grin. That's the beauty of restraint, isn't it? The little things matter.

And despite Thomas being one of the show's least sympathetic characters, this episode went out of its way to humanize him, in the face of a coming smear campaign to which he's completely oblivious. First, it paired his somewhat transparent attempt to pick up Jimmy the Hunky Footman with his intuitive, compellingly competent, almost poetic expertise with clocks – knowledge learned at the feet of his father, no less. Then it capped his sobbing devastation over the death of Sybil, one of the only people who've ever shown him kindness and accepted it from him in return, with a touching rapprochement with Anna, whose husband he'd once tirelessly worked to destroy.

I loved, by the way, that Thomas and Anna pulled apart when Mrs. Hughes walked by, as if they were doing something illicit, despite the many, many reasons we know they're up to no such thing. That's how strict the rules against physical contact can be, and thus that's how unexpected and welcome something as simple as Anna putting her hand on Thomas to comfort him can feel. Again, the little things matter. But in a system in which freedom is so proscribed for so many, they're not enough.

Last week: 'We All Live in a Harsh World'

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Eric Burdon Gets Personal on ''Til Your River Runs Dry' - Album Premiere

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Eric Burdon, 'Til Your River Runs Dry'

It's been 50 years since Eric Burdon joined the Animals. However, even after fronting War and the Eric Burdon Band, not to mention enjoying a long solo career, Burdon has made what might be his most personal album yet. One of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Singers breaks down his new album, 'Til Your River Runs Dry, track by track, revealing how he channeled such diverse inspirations as water conservation, Fats Domino and President Barack Obama.

1)"Water" – "Having lived in the arid deserts of Southern California since the 1970s, my interest in water conservation is a very personal concern. Water! The source of life! Some people are squandering the world's most precious resource while others have too little clean water to drink. I sing this song in the hope that I can bring some balance to the issue of water, to bring some attention to the importance of water to our future on the planet."

2)"Memorial Day" – "It is a very important day in the U.S. and the U.K. When I was a child in England, it was observed as a very solemn day. Everyone would wear a red poppy in their lapel. It represented the blood of the fallen. But on Memorial Day, I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets, who started preaching peace, men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live. So it's the hippies, the poets and the spartans that I will remember on this Memorial Day."

Video: Eric Burdon Urges Conservation in 'Water'

3)"Devil and Jesus" – "This song is about the internal struggle within ourselves. Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other."

4)"Wait" – "I wrote this song for my wife. I waited for a long time and finally she came along. I had this Latin love melody in my head and I let the words breathe, like I'm whispering to her, the one I love. This song is for everyone out there who is alone and thinks they'll never find the perfect match. I'm here to tell you that it can happen to you as it happened to me. It is like learning meditation; in this crazy world, everything moves so fast. Stop and wait. Wait for your soul to catch up to you and love will find you"

5)"Old Habits Die Hard" – "The hero emerges from the gas clouds with a red bandana wrapped around his neck and a molotov cocktail in his hand. It's the spirit of youth that has to be acknowledged. It's the need for change that drives us to join forces with our brothers and sisters all around the world – but change is slow. This song is dedicated to the people in Egypt and Libya trying to throw off the shackles of all those centuries of brutality. It reminds me of Paris in 1968 when I saw the kids going up against the brutal police force or the L.A. uprising. I went through these experiences and they're still with me today. The struggle carries on. I wrote this song so I won't forget and to say, even though I'm older now, I am still out there with you."

6)"Bo Diddley Special" – "I use any excuse I can to utilize the Bo Diddley 'bilongo beat.' I just like to be at that particular place that Bo Diddley created, which has its roots in Africa. I was invited to his funeral ceremony and after hero-worshipping the guy for years, I never had the chance to meet him face-to-face, until he was lying in his coffin. As my wife and I stood looking down at Bo, in his state of grace, I was thinking to myself, 'I'll bet he's lying there listening to everything that people are saying about him.' He was so alive. I promised him then and there that I would write a farewell song to him. Bo Diddley was so important but he's been underrated in the world of modern music. Goodbye, Bo Diddley."

7)"In the Ground" – "It has a great gospel feeling to it. It reminds me of images I've seen in places like Jamaica and New Orleans, of funerals conducted by black people for black people, lifting the spirit up to the sky."

8) "27 Forever" – "I wanted to write this song in order to give a warning to all the young artists approaching the age of 27; the song is an observation, it's a warning and it's a very definite phenomena that I was almost a part of. What are we doing in our lives that makes the age of 27 so important? Is it that we realize that there is no more youth and we're now in the world of being responsible adults? Or it's just an astrological event that has to do with Saturn's return. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, Kurt Cobain and, recently, Amy Winehouse, to name a few. They all died at the age of 27. But every time I hear their voices, they are alive and well in my heart."

9)"River Is Raising" – "This song is inspired by the story of Fats Domino during Katrina. They were saying that he was missing. Then he rose up from the flood. It was such a great relief to see that he was still alive, the guy that I had hero-worshipped all my life, the sound of New Orleans. I was singing the chorus of this song before thousands of people in Europe and everybody started singing the refrain along with me. I realized that the rivers are rising all over the world. It's a global phenomenon. That's why everybody was singing with me. They all thought I was singing about their own territory. Then, returning to the US, I was pleased to record this song in New Orleans at John Cleary’s studio with some of Fats Domino's band members. We did it in two takes. One rehearsal, one take. To me, it's the greatest piece of music I've been involved with, since the musicians in New Orleans understood where I was going with this song."

10)"Medicine Man" – "I fell in love with this song as soon as I heard it. It's penned by Mark Cohn. I never met the gentleman but this song is more than brilliant. It's a great story, a novel wrapped up in the form of a song."

11)"Invitation to the White House" – "When Obama first came to the White House, like everyone else of 'our way of thinking,' it was a time of joy, a great step forward in American history, to see a black man becoming president of the most powerful country in the world. This was a phenomenon in itself – and the way Obama sold himself and projected himself to his audiences, to me was a kind of an invitation to the White House, to knock on the door, to stop by and see how he's doing and to have a conversation about current state. I thought he was different from any other President – and of course, he is, he's black, he's a brother. My visit with him was just a dream but maybe someday my dream could become a reality."

12)"Before You Accuse Me" – "This song is the wild card of this album. We were in the studio at the end of the recording session and I wanted to leave on a positive note. The message, 'Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself,' is something that everyone should live by. I wanted to pay homage to the wonderful guy who wrote this, to fulfill my promise to him to sing 'more Bo Diddley songs.'"

'Til Your River Runs Dry will be released on January 29th.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Nicki Minaj Brings 'Va Va Voom' and 'Freedom' to 'Kimmel'

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Duane Allman Celebrated With Massive Box Set

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Concord Music Group/Rounder Records

Duane Allman, one of rock's all-time greats, will get a fitting tribute to his legacy on March 5th when Rounder Records releases a comprehensive seven-disc box set. Curated and produced by Bill Levenson and Allman's daughter Galadrielle, Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective spans the guitarist's too-short career.

100 Greatest Guitarists: Duane Allman

The 129-song compilation featuring recordings from Allman's early garage-rock days in the Allman Joys, the Escorts and the Hour Glass; studio sessions with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs, Clarence Carter and more; and, of course, selections from the Allman Brothers Band and his work with Derek and the Dominoes.

The collection features liner notes from Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama author Scott Schinder, plus additional notes from Galadrielle Allman. The Allman Brothers had begun recording Eat a Peach, the follow-up to their classic At Fillmore East, shortly before Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash on October 29th, 1971. He was 24.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Q&A: Dave Grohl on His 'Sound City' Doc and Taking Risks in Music

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Dave Grohl attends the Cinema Cafe at Filmmaker Lodge during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on January 22nd, 2013.

After debuting his film Sound City – Real to Reel and his supergroup, the Sound City Players, at Sundance last week, Dave Grohl is finally ready to celebrate.

"Sundance was always our goal," he tells Rolling Stone. "If we could make the deadline, submit, get accepted, this is where we would premiere the movie. [Last year] we got trashed in a yurt up in the mountains and were like, if we come back, we're having the party here. That was exactly a year ago, and it actually fucking happened."

The Sound City Players are scheduled to play their next show in Los Angeles on January 31st, with other dates "coming soon in cool places," Grohl says. "The musicians have all really jumped on after the [Park City] show. I didn't know if Stevie [Nicks] was gonna be able to do New York, and after we did this she was like, 'I'm doing New York.'" Grohl says he'll keep crossing his fingers for an appearance from Paul McCartney.

Rolling Stone sat down with Grohl in a mountainside condo overlooking Park City and chatted with the drummer and first-time director about the Neve soundboard, sharing a stage with Lee Ving and why the film is the most important thing he's ever done.

Video: Peter Travers Picks 5 Great Films From Sundance 2013

I have a theory that Sound City is actually your memoir.
Oh yeah?

Well, it's framed with three guys from Seattle getting in a van.
The great thing about the Sound City story is that it's not just one story. I'm sure each one of these musicians would tell the story the exact same way. Their love for the studio, how important it was to them as a person, how that place changed their life, what technology has done to the way we make music and what technology has done to Sound City and the importance of the human element in making music. I bet you Neil Young and Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks and Rick Springfield could all make the same movie that I did. Because even in that introduction where I say, "We were just kids, we had these songs, and we had these dreams and we threw them in the back of a van," each one of those people can say the same thing.

I always had a strong connection to that studio because Nirvana wasn't meant to be the biggest band in the world. We just weren't. So when we went there for 16 days, we weren't making that album with the intention that we were going to change the fuckin' world. We just wanted it to sound good . . . The fact that what happened actually, happened, makes me think there's something a more than just wires and knobs in that place. Personally, I have a strong emotional connection to it.

Musically, there's something magical about that place, and when I heard that they were closing I thought, "I have a studio, I make records every day. If I could be reunited with this piece of equipment that I consider to be the best sounding board I've ever worked on and the board that's responsible for the person that I am, it would be a huge full-circle emotional reunion for me." And that's why I made the movie.

You sort of isolated the Neve, the soundboard, as the magic. Are there other elements that you think were also significant?
The room where everyone recorded, it used to be a warehouse. It's where they made Vox amplifiers. It was never acoustically designed, it was just a room. But for whatever reason, if you put a drum set in this one spot, it sounded incredible. I'm not an acoustic engineer, and I could never design a studio mathematically, because it's crazy what people go through to build these acoustically perfect rooms. But Sound City just happened. And the board and that room, those two things together. That's why everybody went there. And it wasn't planned.

How much did the aesthetic of the space affect the sound that came out of there?
Tons. You didn't feel like you were at the Mondrian. You didn't feel like you were in a laboratory – you felt like you were back to the garage where you started as a musician, and in a way it would remind you that the most important thing is how it sounds. And the most important thing is how it feels. It doesn't have anything to do with the glitz or the glamour – it's all about being badass and doing something real. And they never bought a Pro Tools rig because they thought, well, you can bring one in yourself.

How did you end up there? How did you land on Sound City?
I don't remember. I think that Nirvana had signed with the David Geffen Company and they gave us . . . maybe $100,000 to make, or $60,000 to make a record. And rather than just send us a check to Seattle, they decided they wanted us to come to L.A. so they could keep an eye on us. We couldn't afford one of the fancy places downtown, so we found out about this place that had an old Neve board. None of us had ever been there before.

And how did you decide to invite all the different artists to record with you in the film?
Part of every discussion with the musicians was about the human element of making music. Feel, imperfection, emotion, the conversation as a player, conversation between players, craft. All of those things we talk about in the film, but I thought it would make those things more clear if we demonstrated them. If you're talking about spontaneity and connecting in a moment, the McCartney/Nirvana segment makes perfect sense. I wouldn't even have to say that, you just watch it and think, Wow, they just walked into a room together and made something explosive out of nothing because of the energy in the room. It could take years to explain how or why that happens, but if you see it, those seven minutes make perfect sense.

And releasing an album was the next step?
I wanted to show that all of these musicians come from the same place. I wanted to mix up these combinations of people that might not normally make albums together. A guy from the Germs jamming with a Beatle. Rick Springfield jamming with the Foo Fighters. Those configurations are meant to show, we're all just people and we're just musicians. I started in the garage and you started in the garage and you might have gone this way and I may have gone that way, but deep down we're all still there where we began, hopefully. So it was fun to make new music and not just go back and do the old stuff.

And the Sound City Players were an outgrowth of that?
It's an extension of the same idea. You talk about music, and then show people what that means. Take it out of the movie and put it on a stage. I am not organized in the rest of my life, I can hardly fuckin' do my laundry, but for whatever reason, I can imagine these things happening, and if I can imagine them happening then I really try to make them happen. An hour beforehand, I didn't know if we were gonna be able to do it. It's hard for me to believe, but if you have these opportunities in life, why not do them? There are times where I get so nervous before performing that I almost ruin the moment, or the experience, and I've finally realized that in those moments you have to let go of that bullshit and say, "I can't ruin this moment by being scared or by being nervous, or by being insecure or thinking that I'm not going to be able to do it. It'll be much more rewarding if I actually just do it." I would be terrified to ask Tom Petty to be in my movie, but God, I'd be an idiot not to, and when I finally did he said, "Well, you can't have a movie about Sound City without me in it, now can you?" And it's like, that's the perfect answer.

What was the most surreal moment for you at the Park City show?
Having my heroes compliment me. I'm really used to praising these people that I love, but when they sort of send praise back, it's weird, man. When Fogerty's talking about, well, this couldn't have happened without Dave's childlike enthusiasm about music, I'm like, "Stop talking about me, stop talking about me!" To be onstage with Lee Ving from Fear – I swear to God, The Decline of Western Civilization, the Penelope Spheeris movie, I got the record when I was like 12, and that really inspired me to become a musician and start a band and play punk rock music. So to stand next to Lee Ving and play "Beef Bologna," it doesn't sound like it would be this profound, life-altering moment, but it really was. It was 30 years ago that I discovered this guy, and now I'm onstage playing the songs that inspired me to become a musician. That's fuckin' nuts.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

The Roots to Headline Game Day Tailgate

7:28 AM

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Questlove and Black Thought of the Roots

Before Super Bowl XLVII kicks off on February 3rd, Rolling Stone will celebrate the big game by hosting the Jeep Heroes Tailgate, with hip-hop crew the Roots headlining. In addition to a performance from the Roots, who double as the house band on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, drummer Questlove will play a DJ set at the party, which kicks of at noon at New Orleans' Generation Hall. Tickets are available here.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

'Girls' Recap: We Have So Many Memories

6:02 AM

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Lena Dunham and Andrew Rannells in 'Girls.'

I know the subject is still totes verboten, but what if Lena Dunham's depiction of her body is basically the point of her creative endeavor? Or at least the most important part of her creative endeavor as it relates to the constant discussion we’re all having about television right now? Does that sound like an overstatement? If that sentence made your butthole clamp shut with fury, you’re probably going to want to stop reading my recap, because I have a lot of THOUGHTS and FEELINGS on the subject.

Before I get into the marathon nipple-thon Dunham ran this evening, however, can we talk about her delightful critique of women-targeted websites and the personal revelations a freelancer must write about in order to make a measly buck in this dirty town? Hannah stops by for an interview at JazzHate (Right? That's what it said on the wall), an XOJane knock-off edited by an intense blond named Jame. "You don't look seem that fancy," she smirks before offering Hannah $200 an article. Guys, that's fancy money as far as I'm concerned. The catch is that Hannah is basically required to peel back the layers of her individual privacy and expose her vulnerable inner nugget to the world, preferably in a story containing group sex or drug use that people will actually click on. The whole concept makes me think of XOJane's Cat Marnell, but the idea of researching that whole saga enough to make a compelling argument about a possible connection makes my bones weary, so I'm just not going to do it. I ain't making Hannah-style money for these recaps, if you get what I’m saying.

The Ten Most Cringe-Worthy Moments on 'Girls' Season One

And so Hannah decides to do coke for the first time to have something to write about. "The reason I've never done it before is because I have weird nasal passages," she explains. Excited to finally write a story that "exposes all of my vulnerabilities to the internet" like so many young writers before her, Hannah introduces herself to her building's resident junkie, Laird. We soon learn Laird is in recovery and conflicted about playing a part in another person's drug use. Luckily he's also a creepy stalker with a crush on Hannah, so he gets her some cocaine anyway. "Um, how much can you guys hear me upstairs? 'Cause I can hear you," Laird says and smiles creepily. His investment in Marnie’s departure from their apartment was such a great, disturbing detail. "You have different magazine subscriptions and different schedules," he says with a sympathetic nod. Yikes.

Speaking of Marnie . . . let's talk about Alison Williams for a second, shall we? Maybe I'm late to the party on this one, but it's slowly dawning on me that either the show is craftily underwriting Marnie in preparation for her total meltdown, or Alison Williams . . . how should I put this? . . . is more of a novice to the craft of acting than everyone else on the program. Right? She's kind of stiff and blank a lot of the time? Shoshanna and Jessa appeared in tonight’s episode for roughly 45 seconds, meaning we had a whole lot of Marnie on our hands.

While working her hostess job, she runs into Booth, that artist who last season told her he was a man and knew how to "do things" before running away from her on the Highline. Haha, looks like we're about to learn what those "things" are! Turns out, they are having sex while lying completely flat on top of Marnie while demanding she look at and narrate the inner emotional life of an antique doll. "How is she feeling?" Booth pants. "She's feeling . . . sassy?" Marnie ventures. So, just as I had guessed, the only thing that separates the men from the boys is a sexual fixation on an off-putting porcelain homunculi.

The visual of that scene was excellent, as were the numerous details offering us insight into Booth's inner workings. ("What's the blood made out of?" Marnie ponders as she examines his dollhouse sculptures. "Oh, it's blood," he replies.) Marnie's inner workings, on the other hand, continue to be a mystery to me. Their sex scene is paralleled by Marnie's journey into the video tower, where her motionless face hides what turns out to be total awe at the experience. "What the fuck, man?" she gasps after being forced to watch babies and maggots on a howling loop. "You're so fucking talented." There is literally no way we could have known that without her explaining out loud how she felt. Marnie’s face is almost always set to "Annoyed" or "Unreadable." Now, I certainly don't mind one of the show’s characters being more opaque than Hannah. I just don't know if that's the show’s intent, or what purpose it serves. Obviously Marnie's got some stuff going on if she's letting strange artists lock her in an installation and blow loads inside her (Right? Since he asked if she's on the pill right before he came?), and I just wish we had a better idea of what that stuff was.

But back to Hannah's coke adventure, which due to human decency starts at some point after 4:00 p.m. "I'm going to get married wearing a veil," Hannah yammers excitedly before scrawling her life goals on the wall in marker. "I want to learn to write a check properly." As the night descends, she and Elijah head to a club to dance to the DJ stylings of Andrew Andrew, a pair of Genesis P-Orridge-style fun guys, and to confirm their own genius. "My greatest dream is to have sex with myself," Hannah shouts. "It is also my worst nightmare." I personally felt that all the coke scenes were an excellent depiction of the combination of youth and substances that convinces you that everything you say is a string of golden words sent directly from the mind of God, when in fact you are merely sweating and babbling over a toilet seat. "Are you kidding? Are you a mind reader?" Hannah gasps when a fellow dancer gives her his mesh shirt to wear. Hannah's boobs are out the rest of the episode, which brings me back to my larger point about the centrality of Lena Dunham's body, and how much she wants us to see to it in all its sweaty, frantic, average beauty. Beyond just showing off her nakedness as she dances maniacally, hair matted, unfettered titties flopping free, Hannah's slow-motion coke rock to "I Love It" seemed like a big fuck you to the haters sputtering and flushing over her success. Or at least I enjoyed it as such.

It goes without saying that their drugged-out evening ends with Elijah blurting out that he had sex with Marnie. "Did you fuck her like in a sexual way?" Hannah screams before dousing her head in the club's bathroom sink. "Like Rizzo says in Grease, there are worse things I could do," he scoffs. Jeez, this guy. Despite the unfairness of her expectations ("Elijah, I was meant to be your last!" she cries), Elijah is just a real tool about the whole thing. "When did you eat jerky?" he asks, cringing after Hannah surprises him with a kiss. "That is not any concern of yours," she spits. What kind of person would then let Hannah drag him (and Laird, who has apparently been stalking them this entire time) to Booth's apartment to chew out Marnie? "You're the bad friend," Hannah snarls at her stunned best friend, before demanding that her other best friend move out. Having successfully alienated those closest to her, a seething Hannah propositions Laird in the hallway of her apartment building. Lord, can someone get Donald Glover back up in here? If Hannah's types are destined to be "black Republicans" and "total psychos," I would like more of the former so we can take a break from the latter. "It's just for tonight though, for work," Hannah tells a trembling Laird, in case you thought for a second we’re supposed to sympathize with her at all after watching her vitriolic, braless emotional rampage. Can’t say I blame her! Gotta get that rent money, girl. Haters will always hate.

Last Week: I'm 100% Not Getting Weird

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

The Flaming Lips Dance as the 'Sun Blows Up Today' - Premiere

4:35 AM

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The Flaming Lips Dance as the 'Sun Blows Up Today' - PremiereBand takes psychedelic holiday in new non-album track $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); });

Though they certainly haven't been resting on their laurels, the Flaming Lips haven't released a proper studio album since 2009. That wait will finally end when the band's new record, The Terror, is released on April 2nd. Pre-orders for The Terror start January 29th and will include an instant download of a non-album track, "Sun Blows Up Today." Now you can take a listen to that cut – a peppy rocker that leaves room for a proper synth freak-out during the bridge – and take a peek at its absolutely bonkers, kaleidoscopic and certifiably Flaming Lips-ian lyric video.