Q&A: Steve-O Talks 'Jackass,' Veganism and Quitting Drugs

Steve-O is just about the last person one imagines caring about what goes into his body. The Jackass star has stapled his balls to his leg countless times, swallowed a condom full of weed and done more drugs than a bus full of Grateful Dead fans in 1978. But in the past few years he's dramatically turned his life around. He's been clean since 2008, and he's also a vegan. He even narrated a video for Farm Sanctuary, a group that saves farm animals from the slaughterhouse.

We chatted with Steve-O about living as a vegan, performing stunts off drugs and the possibility of a fourth Jackass movie. 

Where are you right now?
I'm on the road right now headed to Las Vegas. I'm doing a bunch of shows with Tom Green. We're both MTV-generation idiots that somehow turned into standup comics. We sort of relate to each other since we're both known for shit other than stand-up comedy. I start off the show with a set of standup comedy, then Tom does a set that he ends with a killer rap. He's fuckin' awesome at rapping. Then I'll finish with a bunch of gnarly stunts and we'll finish with one gnarly stunt together.

Peter Travers on 'Jackass 3D'
I've always felt that Tom is very underappreciated for his contributions to that whole scene.

Yeah, seriously, dude. Before we ever knew that Jackass was going to be a TV show I was just a kid doing skateboard videos. When The Tom Green Show came out I was huddled over the VCR recording each episode. When a commercial came I hit the pause button with precision. I had the whole fucking complete season minus the commercials. That's how much I love the guy.

Tom has been a great friend of mine for a lot of years. When I was going through my hardest times he really stuck by me, and he had no reason to do that.  

Switching gears a bit, what made you want to become a vegan?
It started back before I got sober. I was doing so many drugs that I literally started hearing voices. I considered the voices my spirit friend, and they were telling me to kill myself. Some of them were nasty characters, but other ones told me they were worried about me and this and that.

One of them told me I was going to have to answer for shit. One time I did something particularly nasty. I tried to really hurt someone's feelings with a text message. I heard a voice in my right ear say, "You're going to have to answer for that." Later I came across a YouTube video where this Krishna consciousness guy in India was talking about how it's difficult for Westerners to be saved because there's such little respect for life on the planet. This guy said, "How can you expect to be saved if you eat meat?" I put that together with the voices I was hearing and I became afraid of having some kind of spiritual punishment.

Do you ever crave a cheeseburger or anything?
Sure, man. I miss fuckin' Whoppers, but I also miss eight-balls and ganja. But I find being a vegan so rewarding that it's worth it for me. 

Do you think more people would be vegans or vegetarians if they saw what went on in slaughterhouses?
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's commonly said that if slaughterhouses had clear glass walls nobody would eat meat. I think people go out of their way to remain ignorant about how factory farm animals are treated. 

How did you get involved with Farm Sanctuary?
I got a request through my publicist to narrate this video. Generally I don't like to pull out the soapbox, but I cared enough that I'm glad I did it. I don't go around lecturing people and telling them they shouldn't eat meat. I just don't think that's terrible effective. I just try to tell people how I have personally benefitted from the vegan lifestyle. People work really hard to stay ignorant. If they didn't, if they watched this fucking video that I narrated, I think that a great number of them would stop eating meat.

Are your stunts more painful now that you're clean?
Yeah. Definitely. The stunts don't get any easier, that's for sure. The reason I've always done these stunts is that I'm an attention whore at heart. That's not something that has changed. I never did stunts because I was wasted. I did stunts because I'm an attention whore. Whenever you put a big crowd of people in front of me, it gets easy to do crazy stuff.

Are you still stapling your balls to your leg and everything?
Sure, man. I've stapled my balls a bunch of times since I got sober.

Do you think you have a higher pain tolerance than most people?
No. If any of the guys from Jackass did it, wouldn't be as interesting to watch our movies. The trepidation, apprehension and the reaction is really what makes it interesting. You just can't help but laugh when you see that look of pain on my face. It's something about human nature. It's just funny. There's also something about testosterone. You wouldn't want to see a woman in that situation.

I've seen lots of rumors about Jackass 4. Some people think it's going to be called Bad Grandpa. Is that happening?
Ah, I . . . I can tell you we're sure there's no Jackass 4 happening. 

What about Bad Grandpa, which is supposedly based around Johnny Knoxville's grandpa character?
I really can't speak for that. I certainly . . . I certainly don't have any involvement in such a project at this time. 

I've seen Bam [Margera] talk a bit about that. He says it's happening.
I can just tell you that . . . at this time I have no involvement in such a project.

OK. Is the gang still together? Have you guys splintered apart?
I mean, we're still in contact with each other, but we haven't signed onto a project together. I just don't know.

The last movie was pretty huge. Do you want it to keep going, or are you hoping to move onto other things?
I've got it in me, you know? I've got a bunch of wild ideas. I kind of feel like if there isn't going to be another Jackass movie, I really like the idea of pitching my Jackass ideas to other movies. I think that would be rad.

I think people will be disappointed seeing a Jackass guy in a movie and have that guy not do anything crazy. It's kind of a tricky situation for us to show up in other movies. It's kind of like the way I approached the roast of Charlie Sheen. I went over there, told some jokes, and then I broke my face on Mike Tyson's fist. I think that was a pretty rad call.

I'll say this, and I'm happy to have this on the record: should there never be another Jackass project or a Jackass spinoff project for me to get involved in, I'm perfectly prepared to be crazy in other forms. I've got plenty of crazy left in me. 

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Jack White Talks 'Blunderbuss,' Hidden Tracks and Bob Dylan at the Grammy Museum

Speaking with Iggy Pop prior to the 2009 death of Ron Asheton, Jack White described how he might go about producing a new Stooges album. One idea? Having the legendary Detroit proto-punks rent a house and live together, Monkees-style. "There was silence on the phone call for about 10 seconds," according to White, before Iggy Pop replied, "I’m gonna have to think about that."

The Stooges story was one tidbit White revealed Friday afternoon in an hour-long conversation at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, where the former White Stripes frontman touched down this weekend for two shows at the Shrine Auditorium in support of his first solo album, Blunderbuss. Following the Grammy talk he also played a surprise 20-minute set at Mariachi Plaza in L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood; White pulled a similar stunt last Wednesday at an auto-body shop in Denver.

Dressed in checkered slacks, a dark button-down shirt and a gray fedora, White told the Grammy Museum’s executive director, Robert Santelli, about learning to play drums at the age of 5 in the attic of his family’s home and how he only picked up the guitar when none of his pals would: "I said, 'All right, well, I’ll play guitar so we can play.'" He also described his earliest live act, in which he performed the songs from Bob Dylan’s self-titled 1962 debut – in their original order – at coffee shops around Detroit. (Asked by Santelli what it’s been like to get to know Dylan in recent years, White laughed and said, "He’s very good at making sure you don’t know him.")

Of Blunderbuss, White said he’d begun work on the album one day when RZA called at the last minute to cancel a recording date they’d set at White’s Third Man Records complex in Nashville. "I had all these musicians in the studio and needed something to do," he explained. "So I just wrote a couple of songs."

White earned the biggest reaction from the audience – which numbered approximately 200 fans and various music-biz types – with a demonstration of where he’d hidden a secret track on the vinyl edition of the Dead Weather’s Sea of Cowards album. (It’s etched into the record’s center label.) Yet despite his well-documented love of old music and old technology, White was quick to denounce what he called the "all those words that start with R-E: retro, recreate, reinterpret."

"It’s kind of ridiculous to try to emulate a certain time period or person or what they did," he said. "You could go onstage and be like, 'I love Robert Johnson so much, I’ll try to sing and play like Robert Johnson.' That doesn’t do anybody any good, and you can’t do it anyway. You need to be yourself."

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

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Jack White Talks 'Blunderbuss,' Hidden Tracks and Bob Dylan at the Grammy Museum

Speaking with Iggy Pop prior to the 2009 death of Ron Asheton, Jack White described how he might go about producing a new Stooges album. One idea? Having the legendary Detroit proto-punks rent a house and live together, Monkees-style. "There was silence on the phone call for about 10 seconds," according to White, before Iggy Pop replied, "I’m gonna have to think about that."

The Stooges story was one tidbit White revealed Friday afternoon in an hour-long conversation at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, where the former White Stripes frontman touched down this weekend for two shows at the Shrine Auditorium in support of his first solo album, Blunderbuss. Following the Grammy talk he also played a surprise 20-minute set at Mariachi Plaza in L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood; White pulled a similar stunt last Wednesday at an auto-body shop in Denver.

Dressed in checkered slacks, a dark button-down shirt and a gray fedora, White told the Grammy Museum’s executive director, Robert Santelli, about learning to play drums at the age of 5 in the attic of his family’s home and how he only picked up the guitar when none of his pals would: "I said, 'All right, well, I’ll play guitar so we can play.'" He also described his earliest live act, in which he performed the songs from Bob Dylan’s self-titled 1962 debut – in their original order – at coffee shops around Detroit. (Asked by Santelli what it’s been like to get to know Dylan in recent years, White laughed and said, "He’s very good at making sure you don’t know him.")

Of Blunderbuss, White said he’d begun work on the album one day when RZA called at the last minute to cancel a recording date they’d set at White’s Third Man Records complex in Nashville. "I had all these musicians in the studio and needed something to do," he explained. "So I just wrote a couple of songs."

White earned the biggest reaction from the audience – which numbered approximately 200 fans and various music-biz types – with a demonstration of where he’d hidden a secret track on the vinyl edition of the Dead Weather’s Sea of Cowards album. (It’s etched into the record’s center label.) Yet despite his well-documented love of old music and old technology, White was quick to denounce what he called the "all those words that start with R-E: retro, recreate, reinterpret."

"It’s kind of ridiculous to try to emulate a certain time period or person or what they did," he said. "You could go onstage and be like, 'I love Robert Johnson so much, I’ll try to sing and play like Robert Johnson.' That doesn’t do anybody any good, and you can’t do it anyway. You need to be yourself."

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

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Pop Hitmaker Benny Blanco Talks 'Payphone' Success, Ke$ha's New Sound

Benny Blanco at the 60th annual BMI Pop Awards in Beverly Hills, California

Benny Blanco knows how to make a hit. The 24-year-old producer-songwriter, who first cut his teeth with Dr. Luke, has helped architect some of the past half-decade's chart-toppers, including Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and "California Gurls," Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" and "We R Who We R," and Britney Spears' "Circus." 

For his latest gig, the Reston, Virginia native piggybacked off last year's success in producing Maroon 5's chart-crashing single, "Moves Like Jagger," with "Payphone," a pattering earworm that features rapper Wiz Khalifa. After working with Khalifa on his latest single "Work Hard, Play Hard," Blanco wanted to throw a wrench into the Maroon 5 machine by adding some hip-hop flavor to the band's sound. "I love when things don't make sense, like, 'Holy fuck!'" explains Blanco. "You don't hear him on the song at all. I like when bands dip into a whole different genre."

Co-produced with Sweden's Shellback, "Payphone" is lodged at Number One on Top 40 radio and Number Two on Billboard's Hot 100, just one Carly Rae Jepsen phenomenon away from the top slot.  The falsetto-bolstered tune is the product of a collaborative session between Blanco and writers Ammar Malik and RoboPop (a.k.a. Daniel Omelio), who constructed a piano line and demo track that Blanco molded into a proper melody, then handed off to Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine for lyric treatment.  

Five minutes before Khalifa arrived at the studio, Blanco laid the sound beds for the finger snap-driven portion of the jam. But Max Martin, who executive produced Maroon 5's latest album Overexposed, wouldn't let the original hook stand. "He was like, 'Yo, this song is so awesome, but the chorus should be a little different,'" Blanco says. "We wound up making it more acoustic sounding and wanted it to have an up-tempo feel, but have it still feel natural."

Blanco is also lending that stripped aesthetic to longtime collaborator Ke$ha for her anticipated new album, due out later this year. Recently, Ke$ha and Blanco hit the studio with producers Dr. Luke and Cirkut to work on a song that he describes as "old hippie rock," co-written with fun. lead singer Nate Ruess. "It's stomps and claps, and the chorus doesn't really have any drums in it, basically. The feeling is so good," says Blanco in his surfer drawl. "And then the verse just pops in, and it's very unexpected and it pops into electronic. So it's rock, it's big electronic breaks and drums."

Though Blanco relishes his solo success, which recently includes winning Songwriter of the Year at the BMI Pop Awards, he'd rather keep his team of pop technicians close. "When you're making music, it's meant to be shared with people. Sometimes, even if I'm writing a song, someone else brings a vibe. There's something different about it," he says. "If someone can play a better bassline than me, I'll let them do it. I'm just here to fit in and see where it goes."

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

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Pop Hitmaker Benny Blanco Talks 'Payphone' Success, Ke$ha's New Sound

Benny Blanco at the 60th annual BMI Pop Awards in Beverly Hills, California

Benny Blanco knows how to make a hit. The 24-year-old producer-songwriter, who first cut his teeth with Dr. Luke, has helped architect some of the past half-decade's chart-toppers, including Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and "California Gurls," Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" and "We R Who We R," and Britney Spears' "Circus." 

For his latest gig, the Reston, Virginia native piggybacked off last year's success in producing Maroon 5's chart-crashing single, "Moves Like Jagger," with "Payphone," a pattering earworm that features rapper Wiz Khalifa. After working with Khalifa on his latest single "Work Hard, Play Hard," Blanco wanted to throw a wrench into the Maroon 5 machine by adding some hip-hop flavor to the band's sound. "I love when things don't make sense, like, 'Holy fuck!'" explains Blanco. "You don't hear him on the song at all. I like when bands dip into a whole different genre."

Co-produced with Sweden's Shellback, "Payphone" is lodged at Number One on Top 40 radio and Number Two on Billboard's Hot 100, just one Carly Rae Jepsen phenomenon away from the top slot.  The falsetto-bolstered tune is the product of a collaborative session between Blanco and writers Ammar Malik and RoboPop (a.k.a. Daniel Omelio), who constructed a piano line and demo track that Blanco molded into a proper melody, then handed off to Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine for lyric treatment.  

Five minutes before Khalifa arrived at the studio, Blanco laid the sound beds for the finger snap-driven portion of the jam. But Max Martin, who executive produced Maroon 5's latest album Overexposed, wouldn't let the original hook stand. "He was like, 'Yo, this song is so awesome, but the chorus should be a little different,'" Blanco says. "We wound up making it more acoustic sounding and wanted it to have an up-tempo feel, but have it still feel natural."

Blanco is also lending that stripped aesthetic to longtime collaborator Ke$ha for her anticipated new album, due out later this year. Recently, Ke$ha and Blanco hit the studio with producers Dr. Luke and Cirkut to work on a song that he describes as "old hippie rock," co-written with fun. lead singer Nate Ruess. "It's stomps and claps, and the chorus doesn't really have any drums in it, basically. The feeling is so good," says Blanco in his surfer drawl. "And then the verse just pops in, and it's very unexpected and it pops into electronic. So it's rock, it's big electronic breaks and drums."

Though Blanco relishes his solo success, which recently includes winning Songwriter of the Year at the BMI Pop Awards, he'd rather keep his team of pop technicians close. "When you're making music, it's meant to be shared with people. Sometimes, even if I'm writing a song, someone else brings a vibe. There's something different about it," he says. "If someone can play a better bassline than me, I'll let them do it. I'm just here to fit in and see where it goes."

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

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Song Premiere: Of Monsters and Men, 'Little Talks' (Passion Pit Remix)

Song Premiere: Of Monsters and Men, 'Little Talks' Passion Pit Remix | Music News | Rolling Stone New IssueArchivesWelcomeAccount SettingsLogoutLog In To RS All AccessNot a member? Click here.Rolling Stone Skip to the content. Music Politics Movies Reviews Artist BlogsPhotos Videos Subscribe Now facebooktwitterRSSMore:Matt Taibbi•Peter Travers•Random Notes•RS Live•RS on Spotify•RS Fans•Women Who Rock•On the Road•Daily Download Matt TaibbiPeter TraversDavid FrickeRob SheffieldRS Politics DailyTech BlogFashion BlogRS Playlistmore Blogs »AlbumsSongsMovies Song Premiere: Of Monsters and Men, 'Little Talks' (Passion Pit Remix) Icelandic band on surprise success, ideas for second album $(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(); } ); }); Tweet Comment Of Monsters and MenCourtesy of UMG By Steve Baltin July 16, 2012 7:00 AM ET

The hottest song on alternative radio right now is Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks," an engaging track that's earning comparisons to Mumford & Sons (though it displays, at times, a much harder edge). Now it's getting the remix treatment from Passion Pit. Of Monsters and Men co-lead singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir is very impressed with the Passion Pit remix, which is premiering exclusively here.

Listen to "Little Talks (Passion Pit Remix)":

"We love it," she tells Rolling Stone. "It’s more clubby and it’s very cool. It’s a hard song to remix, too, because it has a certain structure. So I think they did a very good job."

Having a Top 10 smash opens the door to collaborations and remixes. It's a world of possibilities the group never expected. Hell, they were surprised to get out of their own country. "When we were making this album we weren’t thinking about even going out of Iceland to tour or anything like that," says Hilmarsdóttir. "It seemed like a very, very distant idea, and it is a distant idea for a young Icelandic band. We made this album with just little money and plans to raise money where we could. It wasn’t planned at all, but it happened and it’s very weird. But it’s wonderful."

Among those aspects that qualify as weird are the band's enthusiastically sold-out shows. "People in Iceland are kind of more reserved. They’re trying to play it very cool," she says. "So it’s weird and cool to see people kind of lose their minds out there."

The most wonderful moment for the band thus far was their June 29th appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, she says. "That was a very exciting thing for all of us, as we kind of grew up watching Jay Leno," she says. "We all lost our minds when we heard we were doing Leno."

The band will be touring extensively for the rest of 2012, including appearances at the Newport Folk Festival and Lollapalooza. But they are already looking ahead a bit to their second album. "Ideas are starting to come," says Hilmarsdóttir. "I think traveling as much as we’ve been doing lately has been very good for us, because there are a lot of ideas coming.

"It’s a combination of all of it – going around and meeting different people and seeing buildings and landscapes and all this stuff. It does something to you and makes you think in a different way," she says.

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Best Ever ListsOther Lists100 Greatest Guitarists100 Greatest Singers500 Greatest Albums of All Time500 Greatest Songs100 Best Albums of the 2000s100 Greatest Beatles Songs Song Stories“Maggie May”Rod Stewart | 1971

Rod Stewart plays a schoolboy in love with an older temptress in “Maggie May” (“The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age”) — he claimed it was “more or less a true story about the first woman I had sex with.” The song, a last-minute addition to Every Picture Tells a Story, was initially the B side of “Reason to Believe.” Stewart has joked that if a DJ hadn't flipped the single over, he'd have gone back to his old job: digging graves.

More Song Stories entries » Twitter   Channels Music Movies Politics Artists Photos Videos Follow Us   Facebook   Twitter   YouTube   RSS   Foursquare   Tumblr Subscribe Subscribe Give A Gift Back Issues Customer Service RS All AccessRS Cover Reprints RS Cover Reprints Additional Advertise Contact Privacy Policy Your Privacy Rights Terms of Use Sitemap Affiliates RS Fine Art Cover Series RS Wine Club RSLA Restaurant & Lounge RS Headphones Wenner Media Websites: Rolling Stone| Us Weekly| Men's Journal| Jann S. Wenner Copyright ©2012 Rolling Stone; Jann S. Wenner, editor and publisher  

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Song Premiere: Of Monsters and Men, 'Little Talks' (Passion Pit Remix)

Song Premiere: Of Monsters and Men, 'Little Talks' Passion Pit Remix | Music News | Rolling Stone New IssueArchivesWelcomeAccount SettingsLogoutLog In To RS All AccessNot a member? Click here.Rolling Stone Skip to the content. Music Politics Movies Reviews Artist BlogsPhotos Videos Subscribe Now facebooktwitterRSSMore:Matt Taibbi•Peter Travers•Random Notes•RS Live•RS on Spotify•RS Fans•Women Who Rock•On the Road•Daily Download Matt TaibbiPeter TraversDavid FrickeRob SheffieldRS Politics DailyTech BlogFashion BlogRS Playlistmore Blogs »AlbumsSongsMovies Song Premiere: Of Monsters and Men, 'Little Talks' (Passion Pit Remix) Icelandic band on surprise success, ideas for second album $(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(); } ); }); Tweet Comment Of Monsters and MenCourtesy of UMG By Steve Baltin July 16, 2012 7:00 AM ET

The hottest song on alternative radio right now is Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks," an engaging track that's earning comparisons to Mumford & Sons (though it displays, at times, a much harder edge). Now it's getting the remix treatment from Passion Pit. Of Monsters and Men co-lead singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir is very impressed with the Passion Pit remix, which is premiering exclusively here.

Listen to "Little Talks (Passion Pit Remix)":

"We love it," she tells Rolling Stone. "It’s more clubby and it’s very cool. It’s a hard song to remix, too, because it has a certain structure. So I think they did a very good job."

Having a Top 10 smash opens the door to collaborations and remixes. It's a world of possibilities the group never expected. Hell, they were surprised to get out of their own country. "When we were making this album we weren’t thinking about even going out of Iceland to tour or anything like that," says Hilmarsdóttir. "It seemed like a very, very distant idea, and it is a distant idea for a young Icelandic band. We made this album with just little money and plans to raise money where we could. It wasn’t planned at all, but it happened and it’s very weird. But it’s wonderful."

Among those aspects that qualify as weird are the band's enthusiastically sold-out shows. "People in Iceland are kind of more reserved. They’re trying to play it very cool," she says. "So it’s weird and cool to see people kind of lose their minds out there."

The most wonderful moment for the band thus far was their June 29th appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, she says. "That was a very exciting thing for all of us, as we kind of grew up watching Jay Leno," she says. "We all lost our minds when we heard we were doing Leno."

The band will be touring extensively for the rest of 2012, including appearances at the Newport Folk Festival and Lollapalooza. But they are already looking ahead a bit to their second album. "Ideas are starting to come," says Hilmarsdóttir. "I think traveling as much as we’ve been doing lately has been very good for us, because there are a lot of ideas coming.

"It’s a combination of all of it – going around and meeting different people and seeing buildings and landscapes and all this stuff. It does something to you and makes you think in a different way," she says.

$(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsBottom .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsBottom .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsBottom .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsBottom .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsBottom .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsBottom .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); Twitter | To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prevSophie Muller Talks About Making Trucker-Themed Video for No Doubt's 'Settle Down'Music MainNext'Won't Fuck Us Over' by The Hood Internet (feat. BBU, Annie Hart) - Free MP3 MUSIC 2012's Best Albums So Far: Springsteen, Apple, More MOVIES & TV Walter White's 10 Lowest Lows on 'Breaking Bad' POLITICS Power Players of Election 2012: Obama, Romney and Beyond VIDEOS Carly Rae Jepsen Recalls Origins of 'Call Me Maybe'
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Most Popular MusicPoliticsPhotosVideosAC/DC Shrug Off a Death and Rock OnRolling Stones Gather at Site of First GigFleetwood Mac to Reunite in 2013Britney Spears and 'X Factor' Judges: Why We Walked During Drag Performance50 Years Ago Today, the Rolling Stones Played Their First GigRomney's 'Free Stuff' Speech Is a New LowRachel Maddow's Quiet WarThe Scam Wall Street Learned From the MafiaVideo: Colbert on Romney's 'Amercia' AppWhy is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal? The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Ten Greatest VideosPreviously Unseen Bob Dylan Lyrics From 1965Photos: The White Stripes, From the Book 'Under Great White Northern Lights'How 18 Musicians Came OutRolling Stone Readers Pick the Best Drummers of All TimePremiere: Serj Tankian, 'Harakiri'Carly Rae Jepsen On 'Call Me Maybe'Video: Jimi Hendrix Plays Berkeley in 1970Bryan Cranston on Ending 'Breaking Bad'Travers: The Worst Movies of 2012 (So Far) Photos & VideosGo To Content

Random Notes: Hottest Rock Pictures

Go To ContentPlay Video

Video: Bryan Cranston on Ending 'Breaking Bad'

Go To Content

Gallery: How 18 Musicians Came Out

Best Ever ListsOther Lists100 Greatest Guitarists100 Greatest Singers500 Greatest Albums of All Time500 Greatest Songs100 Best Albums of the 2000s100 Greatest Beatles Songs Song Stories“Maggie May”Rod Stewart | 1971

Rod Stewart plays a schoolboy in love with an older temptress in “Maggie May” (“The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age”) — he claimed it was “more or less a true story about the first woman I had sex with.” The song, a last-minute addition to Every Picture Tells a Story, was initially the B side of “Reason to Believe.” Stewart has joked that if a DJ hadn't flipped the single over, he'd have gone back to his old job: digging graves.

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