50th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

Issue 1286
May 4, 2017
$6.99

SPECIAL ISSUE
The

GREATEST
CONCERTS
of the Last

50 YEARS
THE
UNHEARD
‘SGT. PEPPER’
TAPES

The
Boy-Band
Superstar
Comes
of Age

Harry
Styles
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 RS1286
“All the
News
That Fits”

Mourners
honor Chuck
Berry at his
April 9th
funeral in
St. Louis.

SPECI AL I SSUE F E AT UR E RO CK & ROL L

20 9
THE 50 GREATEST Harry Styles’ 2017 Rock and Roll
New Direction Hall of Fame
CONCERTS OF THE A year in the life of the young At the induction ceremony,
LAST 50 YEARS singer as he leaves his boy- Yes and Journey put their
WHITNEY CURTIS/“THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX

band past behind, heads into grudges aside, Joan Baez

From the Rolling Stones’ hedonistic 1972 U.S. tour to the studio to record his first
the art-rock spectacle of Radiohead’s Glastonbury show, solo album and comes of age.
the performances that have defined rock & roll. By Cameron Crowe
30
P LU S ON THE COVER
Harry Styles photographed in
THE 10 GREATEST FESTIVALS London on February 24th, 2017,
by Theo Wenner.
OF THE LAST 50 YEARS Grooming by Lou Teasdale Krystal
76 at the Book Agency. Styling by Harry
Lambert at Bryant Artists. T-shirt from
Breuer and Dawson Vintage.
called for tolerance in the
age of Trump, and Pearl Jam
proved their place in history.
14
The Galaxy’s
Hottest Mixtape
Inside the Seventies classics
of the Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 2 soundtrack.

M a y 4 , 2 017 RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 3
 ROLLINGSTONE.COM
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Leslie Feist poured her soul
into Pleasure, her first album
in six years, and she talks to us
about loneliness, making a true
solo LP and secretly recording
Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich
is rock’s biggest fan of
thoroughbred racing, and his
Kentucky Derby parties are
legendary. We got the back-
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is celebrating his 84th birthday.
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a party in her kitchen. story for the run-up to the race. anthem “On the Road Again.”

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4 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
Correspondence
Trump Up Front
it ’s of ten sa id on e
shouldn’t judge a book by its
cover, but Matt Taibbi’s Trump
story is as brilliant as the issue’s
cover art [“Trump the Destroy-
er,” RS 1284]. I was hooked from
the get-go, especially with the
line “He looks pleased and sat-
isfied, like a Roman emperor
who has just moved his bowels.”
Ashley Paskill
Hatfield, PA
i always go to taibbi first.
“Trump the Destroyer” is a new
level even for him. Between re-
search and observation, this ar-
ticle shows the bar has been set
at a new high. Insightful, inter-
esting and provocative.
Frank Salvaggio
Lenox, MA
the story is a chronicle
of butt-hurt. Donald Trump
was elected president because
it’s time for some fundamental
change in our country. Taibbi
can bitch and complain all he
wants, but things are going to
change here. Enjoy the ride.
Otis R. Needleman
Via the Internet
i a m c om f ort e d t o se e
this sentence below the arti-
cle: “Matt Taibbi will be cover-
ing the Trump administration
every month in the magazine.”
Rondi Lund-Zeiger
Huntington Beach, CA
6 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
Love Letters
& Advice
adolescent testosterone, im-
mature brain-control centers,
The Beatles Rock On booze, drugs and now loaded
guns?
R OLLING STONE contributor Rob Sheffield’s new book, Helen Hill Updike
Dreaming the Beatles, will be on sale on April 25th. In this New York
issue, he reports from London on the outtakes of the up-
coming reissue of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. i n ge orgi a , l aw m a k e r s
have passed a campus-carry
rob sheffield doesn’t With such insight seem- bill. We are waiting for the gov-
know how many Beatles ingly on every page, the ernor’s reaction. The public is
books he’s read, but it’s in book delights in dissecting against it, but lawmakers are
the triple digits. “I love them little-known moments, like relying on fake news to garner
all, even when I don’t George Harrison’s support. Let’s hope the governor
believe a word in disastrous attempts vetoes this dangerous bill before
them,” he says. In his to sing “In My Life” someone gets killed.
new book, Dream- on a 1974 solo tour, Dave Fedack
ing the Beatles, the his voice ravaged by Douglasville, GA
RS contributor ex- brandy, cocaine and
plores why “there the sorrow of los- Misty’s Long Trip
never seems to be a in his wife to Eric
point where the B pton. (“In public if parents want to warn
tles belong to th oesn’t cover it,” their children away from LSD,
past.” How else Sheffield writes. they should read your inter-
to explain that “There’s public view with Father John Misty
the band’s leg- and then there’s [Q&A, RS 1284]. About half-
end, as detailed ‘Layla .’ ”) But way through his self-indulgent
i n one c h ap - there are myster- babble, he describes himself
Sheffield
ter, reached a ne s Sheffield can’t perfectly: “If it’s vague enough,
pinnacle whe er st a nd e ven narcissists can project.”
Cobain called Meet the Bea- after a lifetime obsessing Jim Tuttle
tles his favorite album. “The over the Beatles. “When you Monterey, CA
experts slowly realized you listen to outtakes from Re-
didn’t need to live through volver and Rubber Soul, you Hunter’s Legacy
the Sixties to participate in hear how much fun they had
the Beatles,” Sheffield writes, being the Beatles,” he says. y ou r p i e c e o n h u n t e r
“just as you didn’t need to “It’s amazing that it turned Thompson lef t me feeling
witness the French Revolu- so suddenly. That’s still grateful that I can claim my
tion to love Wordsworth.” shocking to me.” own version of such an ex-
pansive writer in Matt Taibbi
[“Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” RS
Werner’s World acter study set in an authen- 1284]. Oh, maybe without the
tically grimy mid-Seventies drugs and suicide, but biting
i was excited, a nd then mise-en-scène. In what other and blessedly irreverent. And
disappointed, reading Erik film can you see a chicken in this dreadful era of journal-
Hedegaard’s article on Wer- dance so metaphorically? istic nothingness, it’s easier to
ner Herzog [“The Peculiar Mr. Tom Caufield see who is the best.
Herzog,” RS 1284]. He couldn’t Los Angeles Jim Corbin
seem to get much out of Herzog Portland, ME
except brief statements. Hede- Armed Students
gaard noted his subject’s con-
tradictions as a person, while he g ood n ews: the tedious Contact Us
should have been writing about and time-consuming college LETTERS to ROLLING STONE , 1290 Avenue
Herzog’s work. search is getting a lot easier of the Americas, New York, NY
10104-0298. Letters become the
Matthew Snope [“Inside the Fight Over Guns property of ROLLING STONE and may
Decatur, GA on Campus,” RS 1284]. Two be edited for publication.
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GRIFFIN LOTZ
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M a y 4 , 2 017
 OR STREAM IT ON
SEASON PREMIERE
APRIL 23 10PM
FROM EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS MIKE JUDGE AND ALEC BERG

CHANGING THE WAY THINGS CHANGE.

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 HITS ALL THE RIGHT NOTES
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 ARCHIVES INSIDE ‘SGT. PEPPER’ SESSIONS P. 16 | Q&A JOHN MELLENCAMP P. 18

Rock&Roll

(1) Vedder closing with

“Rockin’ in the Free
World.” (2) Journey’s
Schon (left) and Perry.
(3) Jackson Browne
inducting Baez. “Her
voice led me into the
world of folk and 3
FROM LEFT: JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME; KEVIN

blues,” he said.
1
KANE/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME; JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC

Rock Hall’s Epic Night

t he 2017 rock a n d rol l h a l l of
Fame ceremony was full of moments fans
thought they’d never see, from the clas-
sic lineup of Yes putting aside years of bad
blood to play one last time, to the first
performance since 1991 from Pearl Jam’s
original lineup. But nothing was more sur-
prising than the reunion of Journey. In the
days before the show, the band resorted to
Twitter to lobby its estranged former singer,
Journey and Yes put
old grudges aside,
and Pearl Jam bring
down the house at
moving ceremony
BY A N DY GR E E N E
Steve Perry, to appear with his old band
onstage for the first time in 26 years. The
group got its wish, with Perry showing up
and embracing his bandmates as they col-
lected their statues. Backstage, Perry made
plans with guitarist Neal Schon to meet
for a “way-overdue coffee.” “The night was
surreal,” says Schon. “I got very emotional.”
The April 7th show – which also saw
the inductions of Joan Baez, Nile Rodgers,

M a y 4 , 2 017 RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 9
 R&R

2
1

No Sleep Till
Brooklyn
(1) Pharrell
ushered in Nile
Rodgers. (2)
Lenny Kravitz paid
tribute to Prince
with “When Doves
Cry” and “The
Cross.” (3) Yes
keyboardist
Wakeman. “I just
wanted to have a
bit of fun,” he said.
(4) Lynne was
inducted by Dhani
Harrison, who
recalled dad
George taking him
to his first ELO
show when he was
seven years old.
4 3 OF FAME; JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME;
ROLL HALL OF FAME; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JAMIE MCCARTHY/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND

Electric Light Orchestra and Tupac Shakur came after. Tonight we say farewell to the folk music of the Sixties and the immense
– was the best Hall of Fame ceremony in founding father.” effect it had on popular music, including
THEO WARGO/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME

years. It began with a celebration of Chuck
Berry, who died at age 90 on March 18th.
“Thirty-two years ago, the very first person
ever inducted into the Hall of Fame was
Chuck Berry,” said Hall of Fame Founda-
tion chairman Jann S. Wenner to the au-
dience at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. “No
one in this room would be here tonight
but for this man. He’s called the father, the
inventor of rock & roll. He put the poetry
of the common man to the beat, and then
he laid on that revved-up, motorvatin’,
double-string guitar attack that laid down
the law for every rock & roll musician that
With that, inductees ELO kicked into
Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven,” which they
had covered in 1973, with frontman Jeff
Lynne breaking out a guitar solo that would
have made Berry proud. “It’s such a plea-
sure to get one of these,” said Lynne onstage
afterward. “Because I’ve watched lots, hun-
dreds, of people getting awards.”
Baez was another inductee who had
been waiting a long time for her statue. Her
old friend Jackson Browne made a case for
why the honor was long overdue. So did
Baez herself: “Though one cannot say I’m
a rock & roll artist, one cannot overlook the
rock & roll. Nor can anyone overlook the
role I played in that phenomenon.” Baez
also used her speech to call for tolerance
and inclusion in the age of Trump. Armed
with only an acoustic guitar, she converted
an arena full of rabid Pearl Jam fans with
a spooky “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” (She
altered the lyrics to note that even Donald
Trump can be saved.) She then previewed
her upcoming Four Voices Tour by bring-
ing out Mary Chapin Carpenter and the In-
digo Girls for Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee
(Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” and the Band’s
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

10 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
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 R&R
1 vorite of the night: His brief cameos on the
Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World
(1) Vedder and daughters Olivia (top) and Harper. (2) Snoop:
“[Tupac] saw more potential in me than I saw in myself.” (3)
Letterman with a guitar Vedder gave his son. (4) Yes’ Trevor
Rabin, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, Ament, Lee (from left).
Tupac became the first solo rapper to
enter the Hall of Fame. His old Death Row
Records labelmate Snoop Dogg gave a hi-
larious speech that included a story about
a trip they took to South America shortly
before Tupac’s death. “Do you know what
parasailing is?” Snoop asked. “Because
we damn sure didn’t. . . . The boat pulls
away and we start floating up in the air. We
scared as a motherfucker.” Since Tupac had
no children and his mother died in 2016,
Snoop accepted the award, and then par-
ticipated in a medley of the rapper’s songs
with Alicia Keys, YG and others.
Pharrell inducted his “Get Lucky” col-
laborator Rodgers, praising the Chic front-
man’s willingness to take a back seat while
working with fellow hitmakers. Rodgers
struck a humble note during his speech
too: “This award, which is amazing to me,
is really because of all the people that have
allowed me to come into their lives and just
join their band. Be it Mick Jagger, be it Ma-
donna, Duran Duran, Pharrell Williams,
Diana Ross, Sister Sledge. Thank you all.”
Like Journey, Yes have spent the past
several years touring without their original
12 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
2
4
lead singer. The surviving members now
tour in two warring camps: Yes and Yes
Featuring Anderson, Rabin, Wakeman.
But they all put years of animosity aside,
teaming up for a bombastic “Roundabout”
(joined by Rush bassist Geddy Lee, who
inducted the group with bandmate Alex
Lifeson) and “Owner of a Lonely Heart,”
in which Rick Wakeman ventured into the
audience with a keytar. “It was a one-off,”
says Wakeman of reuniting with his former
mates. “Never to happen again.”
Wakeman gave one of the funniest (not
to mention filthiest) speeches in Hall of
Fame history. He made virtually no men-
tion of the band, instead cracking jokes
about a prostate exam and an early sexual
experience. “My father was an Elvis im-
personator,” he deadpanned. “But there
wasn’t much call for that in 1947.” Back-
stage, Wakeman explained his approach:
“I thought, ‘Do I go on and thank all the
different guys in the band that I’ve played
with?’ Everyone is going to say that. So I
thought I’d just have a bit of fun.”
Wakeman, it turned out, was the per-
fect opening act for David Letterman, who
stepped in to induct Pearl Jam after an ill
Neil Young canceled (“He swallowed a har-
monica,” Letterman speculated).
“In 1994, these young men risked their
careers by going after those beady-eyed,
bloodthirsty weasels [at Ticketmaster],”
Letterman said of Pearl Jam. “And be-
cause they stood up to the corporations, I’m
happy to say, today every concert ticket in
the United States of America is free.” Let-
terman also proved to be a knowledgeable
Pearl Jam fan, heaping praise on their 1992
B side “Yellow Ledbetter.” At one point, he
showed off a guitar that Eddie Vedder gave
to his son, Harry, at one of Letterman’s
final broadcasts, in 2015.
Vedder was undoubtedly the crowd fa-
overhead screens through-
out the show elicited deaf-
ening chants from the
Pearl Jam army in the au-
dience. During the group’s
a c c ept a nc e sp e e c he s ,
bassist Jeff Ament staged
a quiet protest with a T-
shirt displaying the names
of 100 acts that have yet to
be inducted into the Hall
of Fame, from Hüsker Dü
to Bon Jovi. Vedder gave
moving testimony, touch-
ing on climate change and
his mother’s early support.
He also shouted out all five
of Pearl Jam’s past drum-
mers (Letterman joked
that the entire balcony was
3 full of former Pearl Jam
drummers). “We have the
great Dave Abbruzzese,” Vedder said, re-
ferring to their mid-Nineties member who
had criticized the band for not lobbying the
Hall of Fame to induct him too. “You are a
great drummer!”
Vedder remembered life before fame,
when he worked as a security guard,
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME;
KEVIN KANE/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME; JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC, 2
watching Letterman’s show to pass the
time. “Dave was my co-pilot,” the frontman
said. “To have him up here, it’s an honor. . . .
I feel like we’re about halfway to deserv-
ing an accolade of this stature. But this is
very encouraging.”
The band then blazed through three
Nineties classics: a ferocious “Alive,” with
original drummer Dave Krusen; “Given
to Fly”; and an emotional “Better Man.”
Vedder gave a shout-out to Young, before
kicking into “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
They were backed by many of the evening’s
inductees and guests, including Schon,
who was still processing the heavy emo-
tions of the night. “I had tears in my eyes,”
he said later. “I know I’ve said in the past
that I didn’t really care about the Hall of
Fame, since we were never up for induc-
tion. But I do now that we’re in.”
M a y 4 , 2 017
 R&R
SOUNDTRACK

The Galaxy’s Hottest Mixtape

Inside the oddball Seventies classics of ‘Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 2,’ the most anticipated soundtrack in years
BY BR I A N H I AT T
2

W
hil e dir ec t or ja mes 1
Gunn was finishing the 2014
sci-fi film Guardians of the
Galaxy, he kept hearing one
bit of feedback from some Marvel Studios
employees. “Nobody,” he recalls them say-
ing, “is going to want to hear this music.”
Gunn had laced the movie with eight- 3
track-era gems – Redbone’s “Come and
Get Your Love,” Blue Swede’s “Hooked on
a Feeling” – but the skeptics insisted that
using, say, Nineties Britney jams would be
a smarter move.
From the moment he got the job,
though, Gunn was intent on lending some
grounded humanity to his oddball space
SPACE JAMS
opera – where an acerbic space raccoon, (1) Pratt,
voiced by Bradley Cooper, is among the Karen Gillan
leads – by setting key scenes against dusty, (left) and Zoe
incongruous pop songs. The conceit is that Saldana. (2)
the tunes come from an ancient Walkman Soundtrack
toted around by Chris Pratt’s Earth-bred stars
character, who owns just one cassette, Fleetwood
given to him by his mom on her death- Mac and (3)
ELO’s Jeff
bed: the homemade “Awesome Mix Vol. 1.”
Lynne.
“They were songs that people had probably
heard but probably didn’t know the name
of,” says Gunn. lowed him to include familiar songs from Bit Closer” – not to mention a true obscuri-
The awesomeness of that mixtape is superstar acts: George Harrison’s “My ty like 1976’s “Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang,”
no longer in doubt. Guardians got criti- Sweet Lord,” Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” by one-hit-wonder Silver – to the Marvel-
cal raves for its wit and inventiveness, (every band member watched the scene loving masses. “One of the most exciting
and it grossed $773 million worldwide; that features the song before giving approv- things,” he says, “was knowing I would be
the soundtrack album hit Number One, al) and ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” – which scores making bands that may have been forgot-
going platinum, with iTunes reviews full of what Gunn calls “the most hugely insane ten suddenly be a topic of conversation.”
teens singing the glories of Seventies soft shot I’ve ever done,” early in the film. “It’s Along the way, he’s listened to the movie’s

rock. And, conveniently enough, the movie
ended with Pratt’s character, Peter Quill,
discovering that his late mom had left him
one more tape, “Awesome Mix Vol. 2.”
So music will be just as central to Guard-
ians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, due May 5th, with
its soundtrack album out April 21st. This
time, Gunn had a bigger budget, which al-
the perfect song to start the movie,” says
Gunn, “because it’s really joyous, but there’s
a really dark underpinning to it.”
There are, again, plenty of deep cuts on
hand, and Gunn (who once played in a band
of his own, the Icons) relished the chance to
expose the likes of Sweet’s “Fox on the Run”
and Jay and the Americans’ “Come a Little
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © MARVEL STUDIOS; RICHARD CREAMER/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/
songs over and over – but he doesn’t mind.
“The weird thing is, I’ve never gotten sick of
a Guardians song,” says Gunn, fresh from GETTY IMAGES; © MOGANE/DALLE/CACHE AGENCY; GREG DOHERTY/GETTY IMAGES
hearing “Mr. Blue Sky” yet again while su-
pervising the film’s sound mix. “Chris Pratt
listened to the first album hundreds of
times. He said the only song he got sick of
was ‘The Piña Colada Song.’”

Five Highlights From ‘Awesome Mix Vol. 2’

‘Guardians ‘Surrender’ ‘Southern ‘Brandy (You’re ‘Father and

Inferno’ By including this Nights’ a Fine Girl)’ Son’
This comedic origi- 1978 Cheap Trick Glen Campbell’s Gunn has long Gunn was inspired
nal, co-written by classic, Gunn repays groovy 1977 version adored Looking to use this 1970 Cat
Gunn and sung a favor to the band, of Allen Toussaint’s Glass’ cheeseball Stevens ballad after
by David Hasselhoff, which let him use song was a child- 1972 smash, which hearing Howard
is meant as a sort “If You Want My hood favorite of plays a key emo- Stern attempt
of Guardians take Love” in his 2011 Gunn’s: “It’s a little tional role in the new to perform it on
on Meco’s disco Hasselhoff indie film Super bit of a different fla- movie, appearing in acoustic guitar on
Star Wars theme. for nearly nothing. vor for the movie.” the very first scene. his show.

14 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 R&R
Beatles Open ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Vault
Inside the legendary album’s new 50th-anniversary box set,
featuring dozens of unreleased outtakes
T
he beatles have been noto-
riously cautious about digging
through their vaults – 1995’s
Anthology documentary project
took more than 25 years for the group to
approve and release, while films like Let
It Be remain under wraps, even though
they would be guaranteed moneymak-
ers. Which is why it’s so surprising that,
50 years after the release of the band’s
most famous album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lone-
ly Hearts Club Band, the Beatles are issu-
ing a new box set featuring 34 never-heard
tracks from the sessions – the first time
they have released unheard studio mate-
rial since Anthology.
Today, Giles Martin, the producer and
son of the late George Martin, sits at the
control board at Abbey Road’s Studio Two
in London, playing back some of the lost
treasures. The studio looks the same as it
did when the Beatles made the album here
in 1967 – even the same baffles hang on
the wall. “Abbey Road is a bit like a salad
bowl or a teapot,” says Martin. “The walls
absorb music.” While there are no entirely
new songs – not even the mythical lost
1967 psychedelic jam “Carnival of Light”
(“It’s not really part of Pepper,” says Mar-
tin) – there are revelatory outtakes of every
song: a rocked-up “Fixing a Hole,” full of
R&B harpsichord; a version of “Within
You Without You” in which George Har-
rison gives his instructions to the Indian
musicians (“OK, the main thing is the tim-
ing”). Says Martin, “My dad said record-
ing George was like watching someone
make a carpet thread
by thread, thinking
about each bit.”
Martin says that talk
of the project began
after he remixed the
Beatles’ hits collection
1 in 2015. Encouraged
by those mixes (which
didn’t include any Sgt.
Pepper songs), Paul
McCartney and Ringo Starr agreed it was
time to give the same treatment to their
psychedelic masterpiece. Fans have always
complained about the diffuse stereo mix of
the 39-minute original album; the mono
version was the one George Martin, en-
gineer Geoff Emerick and the band spent
weeks mixing, while the stereo version was
a rushed afterthought, without the group’s
16 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
BY ROB SH EF F IELD
The Fab Four’s
Buried Treasures
The biggest revelations from the
never-heard recording sessions
‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band’
The first take of the theme song is a long,
raw Hendrix-style guitar jam, stretching
out at the end as McCartney rants, “I feel
it, oh, baby, I feel it, I feel freeeee now!”
‘A Day in the Life’
The original ending, with the
Beatles humming that famous
final chord, before they decided
to do it with pianos instead.
“Have you got the note?” John
Lennon asks his bandmates.
“Stop freaking out!”
‘Getting Better’
An aggressive take driven by
McCartney’s Wurlitzer keyboard.
Lennon gives him some advice: “Sing
it – you know, ‘I gotta admit,’ and all that
– properly.”
‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’
A take with Lennon leading on acoustic
guitar, while McCartney follows on
electric keyboard. Lennon’s raw-power
vocal is a world away from the ethereal
dreaminess of the final version.
PEPPERLAND
At Abbey
Road, 1967
involvement. The remix is full of nuances
any fan will notice, especially the bottom
end – Starr’s kick drum reveals new dimen-
sions. “There’s nothing new – this is the
album they made,” Martin says. “All we do
is peel back the layers of compression that
were necessary to release music in 1967. It’s
their album now. It’s just boys in a room,
making noise.”
The project is a tribute to the band and
George Martin, who passed away in early
2016 while the work was underway. “It was
emotional, hearing the old man’s voice in
the playbacks,” Martin says. “I’ve been
working for my dad since I was 15. As his
hearing started to fade, I became his ears.”
Asked if this box will heat up the demand
for similar treatments of other LPs, such as
Abbey Road, Martin winces: “Can I have
two weeks off first?”
Even Apple Corps insiders seem sur-
prised the release came together so fast.
Martin started working on it in late 2015,
and McCartney, Starr, Olivia Harrison and
Yoko Ono had to approve it, right down to
the color scheme of the packaging.
Martin says going back to Pepper was a
discovery for the band as well. He recalls
playing McCartney various outtakes of
“Within You Without You.” “I don’t know
© APPLE CORPS LTD.
how long it had been since he’d heard that
song – probably a long time,” he says. “Paul
closed his eyes, listened and said, ‘Hey,
George was really good!’”
M a y 4 , 2 017
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 R&R
J
ohn mellencamp spends an
awful lot of time alone, paint-
ing. Not long ago, he went 35 days
without leaving his Indiana com-
pound, a stretch so lengthy that his
85-year-old dad told him he was wor-
ried. But whether he wants them or
not, songs still come to him, as his
strong, country-inflected new album,
Sad Clowns and Hillbillies (made in
collaboration with Carlene Carter),
makes clear. “A voice in my head will
go, ‘OK, put your brush down and
write these words down,’ ” he says.
“And I’ll be like, ‘No, I don’t want to
fucking write a song.’ Then the voice
will go, ‘You better write this down,
you idiot.’ Then I forget about it, and I
find it and go, ‘When did I write this?’
It’s a wonderful way of writing songs.”
How would you define your relationship
with the country-music world?
Hold it – how do the country people
define their relationship with me? I
was doing this long before they were
doing it – Scarecrow, Big Daddy, Lone-
some Jubilee. So I didn’t go to country.
They caught up with me. I hate to
sound like Little Richard, when he
kept going, “I invented rock & roll!”
But if you ask Keith Urban or Kenny
Chesney what inspired them, they’ll
tell you me.
You seemed to enjoy your recent CMT
Crossroads show with Darius Rucker.
He was so excited. When someone is
that ingratiating, it’s hard to be a cur-
mudgeon, though I tried. He made it
easy. And I’m hard to work with.
Why are you hard to work with?
My opinion is hard to deal with. I
remember arguing – not arguing, jok-
ing – with Arlo Guthrie about how
to play “This Land Is Your Land” at
a Woody event. He kept putting in
these passing chords. I said, “Guthrie,
your old man did not put those fucking
chords in there.” He goes, “That’s the
way I played it forever.” I go, “I don’t
care.” We ended up playing it my way.
You recently said that Woody Guthrie
wouldn’t get any attention today.
Well, yeah. He’d just be playing
songs for friends. You think he would
go somewhere? I just wrote a beauti-
ful fucking [protest] song called “Easy
Target.” And nobody gave a fuck.
In that song you mention “Sucker
Town.” Are Trump voters suckers?
I don’t know if it’s just this guy. It’s
been discussed for years – a certain
element of our country . . .
Who vote against their interests?
They voted for Reagan, and in the
town I live in, there would be Bush
signs up in people’s yards. I knew they
18 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
Q&A
John
Mellencamp
The singer-songwriter
explains how he invented
modern country music and
why he’ll never stop smoking
BY BR I A N H I AT T
couldn’t afford to, you know, take him
to dinner.
Some think that’s racism at work.
Well, I was in New York, and I went
on a date with a girl. We went to a
movie called – you should go to this
movie – Get Out. We walked out and we
went, “How come black people hate us?
They fuckin’ hate our guts.” And then
we both agreed that, you know, they’ve
got good reason! But it’s really fun to
go to the movies and be me. I sat down
and the guy next to me goes, “Hey,
John, you want some popcorn?” “Sure.”
Speaking of dating, your new song “Sad
Clowns” basically warns women to stay
away from you.
As soon as I wrote that, I looked
up and said, “Thanks, Ray.” Because
I know it’s a Ray Davies song, like
“Sunny Afternoon” – a self-deprecat-
ing song. I did 130 shows opening for
the Kinks in the late Seventies, and
I learned a lot. Though at the time, I
said, “This is fucking horrible.” Ray
was rough on everybody. Him and
his brother spitting on each other.
Like, “Are you kidding me?” And then
Ray wouldn’t let us eat catering. We
always had to go out to McDonald’s or
something.
You worked extensively with Stephen
King on the musical Ghost Brothers of
Darkland County. What did you guys
have in common?
I’m a hypochondriac. Steve’s a hy-
pochondriac. “Steve, I can’t possibly
have sickle cell anemia. But I think
I do.” And he’s always got some kind
of ankle disease or some shit. But he
explained it to me. He said, “Here’s
the thing, John. You and I make shit
up for a living. When we have idle
time on our hands, we turn it on our-
selves and make shit up. You don’t
have sickle cell!”
Your friend Bob Dylan shouted you out
in his MusiCares speech a couple of
years back. What did that mean to you?
That wink and a nod was worth
more than 50 Grammys. That came
from Bob, that came from his heart.
He didn’t have to fucking say that. The
girl I was with started crying. Bob
doesn’t like very many people.
What do you make of his standards
albums?
They’re great. Bob is always so far
ahead of us. He’s given me a lot of ad-
vice: “Go where they’re not.”
Are you ever going to quit smoking?
I’m smoking right now. It’s been
great for my voice. My engineer said,
“You sound like somebody.” It turned
BRAD BARKET
out to be Louis Armstrong. We A-B’d
his voice against mine. And I was like,
“Fuck, what’s wrong with that?”
M a y 4 , 2 017
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Harry
Styles’
By
Cameron
Crowe

A year in the life
of the singer as he
leaves behind his
boy-band past,
heads to Jamaica
and comes of age
Photographs by
THEO WENNER
January 2016. There’s a bench at the top of Primrose Hill,
in London, that looks out over the skyline of the city. If you’d
passed by it one winter night, you might have seen him sitting
there. A lanky guy in a wool hat, overcoat and jogging pants,
hands thrust deep into his pockets. Harry Styles had a lot on
his mind. He had spent five years as the buoyant fan favorite in
One Direction; now, an uncertain future stretched out in front
of him. The band had announced an indefinite hiatus. The white
noise of adulation was gone, replaced by the
hushed sound of the city below. v The fame RIDE WITH ME
Styles in London
visited upon Harry Styles in his years with in February.

20
R ol l i n g S t o n e

One D was a special kind of mania. With a
self-effacing smile, a hint of darkness and
the hair invariably described as “tousled,”
he became a canvas onto which millions of
fans pitched their hopes and dreams. Hell,
when he pulled over to the side of the 101
freeway in L.A. and discreetly threw up,
the spot became a fan shrine. It’s said the
puke was even sold on eBay like pieces of
the Berlin Wall. Paul McCartney has inter-
viewed him. Then there was the unauthor-
ized fan-fiction series featuring a punky,
sexed-up version of “Harry Styles.” A bil-
lion readers followed his virtual exploits.
(“Didn’t read it,” comments the nonfiction
Styles, “but I hope he gets more than me.”)
But at the height of One D-mania, Styles
took a step back. For many, 2016 was a
year of lost musical heroes and a toxic new
world order. For Styles, it was a search for
a new identity that began on that bench
overlooking London. What would a solo
“EVERY DECISION I’VE
MADE SINCE 16 WAS
made in a democracy. I felt it was time to make
a decision - and I shouldn’t rely on others.”
Harry Styles sound like? A plan came into
focus. A song cycle about women and rela-
tionships. Ten songs. More of a rock sound.
A bold single-color cover to match the
working title: Pink. (He quotes the Clash’s
Paul Simonon: “Pink is the only true rock
& roll colour.”) Many of the details would
change over the coming year – including
the title, which would end up as Harry
Styles – but one word stuck in his head.
‘H
onest,” he says, a
year later, driving
through midcity Los
Angeles in a dusty
black Range Rover.
He’s lived here off and
on for the past few years, always return-
ing to London. Styles’ car stereo pumps a
mix of country and obscure classic rock.
“I didn’t want to write ‘stories,’ ” he says.
“I wanted to write my stories, things that
happened to me. The number-one thing
was I wanted to be honest. I hadn’t done
that before.” There isn’t a yellow light he
doesn’t run as he speaks excitedly about
the band he’s put together under the tu-
telage of producer Jeff Bhasker (The Roll-
ing Stones, Kanye West, “Uptown Funk”).
Contributing editor Ca meron Crowe
wrote about Glenn Frey in January 2016.
22 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
Harry
Styles
He’s full of stories about the two-month re-
cording session last fall at Geejam, a stu-
dio and compound built into a mountain-
side near Port Antonio, a remote section of
Jamaica. Drake and Rihanna have record-
ed there, and it’s where Styles produced the
bulk of his new LP, which is due out May
12th. As we weave through traffic today, the
album no one has heard is burning a hole
in his iPhone.
We arrive at a crowded diner, and Styles
cuts through the room holding a black
notebook jammed with papers and arti-
facts from his album, looking like a college
student searching for a quiet place to study.
He’s here to do something he hasn’t done
much of in his young career: an extended
one-on-one interview. Often in the past
there was another One D member to vec-
tor questions into a charmingly evasive dis-
play of band camaraderie. Today, Styles is
a game but careful custodian of his words,
sometimes silently consulting the table-
cloth before answering. But as he recounts
the events leading up to his year out of the
spotlight, the layers begin to slip away.
It was in a London studio in late 2014
that Styles first brought up the idea of One
Direction taking a break. “I didn’t want
to exhaust our fan base,” he explains. “If
you’re shortsighted, you can think, ‘Let’s
just keep touring,’ but we all thought too
much of the group than to let that happen.
You realize you’re exhausted and you don’t
want to drain people’s belief in you.”
After much discussion, the band mu-
tually agreed to a hiatus, which was an-
nounced in August 2015 (Zayn Malik had
abruptly left One D several months earlier).
Fans were traumatized by the band’s deci-
sion, but were let down easy with a series
of final bows, including a tour that ran
through October. Styles remains a One D
advocate: “I love the band, and would never
rule out anything in the future. The band
changed my life, gave me everything.”
Still, a solo career was calling. “I want-
ed to step up. There were songs I wanted
to write and record, and not just have it
be ‘Here’s a demo I wrote.’ Every decision
I’ve made since I was 16 was made in a de-
mocracy. I felt like it was time to make a
decision about the future . . . and maybe I
shouldn’t rely on others.”
As one of the most well-known 23-year-
olds in the world, Styles himself is still
largely unknown. Behind the effervescent
stage persona, there is more lore than fact.
He likes it that way. “With an artist like
Prince,” he says, “all you wanted to do was
know more. And that mystery – it’s why
those people are so magical! Like, fuck, I
don’t know what Prince eats for breakfast.
That mystery . . . it’s just what I like.”
Styles pauses, savoring the idea of the
unknown. He looks at my digital recorder
like a barely invited guest. “More than ‘do
you keep a mystery alive?’ – it’s not that. I
like to separate my personal life and work.
It helps, I think, for me to compartmental-
ize. It’s not about trying to make my career
longer, like I’m trying to be this ‘mysteri-
ous character,’ because I’m not. When I go
home, I feel like the same person I was at
school. You can’t expect to keep that if you
show everything. There’s the work and the
personal stuff, and going between the two is
my favorite shit. It’s amazing to me.”
Soon, we head to the Beachwood Can-
yon studio of Jeff Bhasker. As we arrive,
Styles bounds up the steps to the studio,
passing a bored pool cleaner. “How are ya,”
he announces, unpacking a seriously cheer-
ful smile. The pool cleaner looks perplexed,
not quite sharing Styles’ existential joy.
Inside, the band awaits. Styles opens his
notebook and heads for the piano. He wants
to finish a song he’d started earlier that day.
It’s obvious that the band has a well-worn
frat-house dynamic, sort of like the Beatles
in Help!, as directed by Judd Apatow. Styles
is, to all, “H.” Pomegranate-scented candles
flicker around the room. Bhasker enters,
with guru-length hair, multicolored shirt,
red socks and sandals. He was initially
busy raising a new baby with his partner,
the singer and songwriter Lykke Li, so he
guided Styles to two of his producer-player
protégés, Alex Salibian and Tyler Johnson,
as well as engineer and bassist Ryan Nasci.
The band began to form. The final piece
of the puzzle was Mitch Rowland, Styles’
guitarist, who had worked in a pizza joint PREVIOUS PAGE: SUIT BY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN. SHIRT BY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
until two weeks into the sessions. “Being
FROM ONE OF A KIND VINTAGE PORTOBELLO. OPPOSITE PAGE: SHIRT BY GUCCI
around musicians like this had a big ef-
fect on me,” Styles
says. “Not being able OPEN DOOR
to pass an instru- “I would never rule
ment without sitting out anything in
down and playing the future,” Styles
it?” He shakes his says of One D.
head. It was Styles’
first full immersion into the land of musos,
and he clearly can’t get enough.
Styles starts singing some freshly written
lyrics. It’s a new song called “I Don’t Want
to Be the One You’re Waiting On.” His voice
sounds warm, burnished and intimate,
not unlike early Rod Stewart. The song is
quickly finished, and the band assembles
for a playback of the album.
M a y 4 , 2 017

“Mind if I play it loud?” asks Bhasker. It’s
a rhetorical question. Nasci cranks “Sign
of the Times,” the first single, to a seismic
level. The song began as a seven-minute
voice note on Styles’ phone, and ended
up as a sweeping piano ballad, as well as
a kind of call to arms. “Most of the stuff
that hurts me about what’s going on at the
moment is not politics, it’s fundamentals,”
Styles says. “Equal rights. For everyone,
all races, sexes, everything . . . ‘Sign of the
Times’ came from ‘This isn’t the first time
we’ve been in a hard time, and it’s not going
to be the last time.’ The song is written
from a point of view as if a mother was giv-
ing birth to a child and there’s a complica-
tion. The mother is told, ‘The child is fine,
but you’re not going to make it.’ The mother
has five minutes to tell the child, ‘Go forth
and conquer.’ ” The track was a break-
through for both the artist and the band.
“Harry really led the charge with that one,
and the rest of the album,” says Bhasker.
“I wish the album could be called Sign of
“WHO’S TO SAY YOUNG
GIRLS HAVE WORSE
taste than a 30-year-old hipster? Girls like the
Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious?”
the Times,” Styles declares.
“I don’t know,” says Bhasker. “I mean, it
has been used.”
They debate for a bit. Nasci plays more
tracks. The songs range from full-on rock
(“Kiwi”) to intricate psychedelic pop (“Meet
Me in the Hallway”) to the outright confes-
sional (“Ever Since New York,” a desperate
meditation on loss and longing). The lyrics
are full of details and references – secrets
whispered between friends, doomed dec-
larations of love, empty swimming pools
– sure to set fans scrambling for the facts
behind the mystery.
“Of course I’m nervous,” Styles admits,
jingling his keys. “I mean, I’ve never done
this before. I don’t know what the fuck I’m
doing. I’m happy I found this band and
these musicians, where you can be vulner-
able enough to put yourself out there. I’m
still learning . . . but it’s my favorite lesson.”
The album is a distinct departure from
the dance pop that permeates the airwaves.
“A lot of my influences, and the stuff that I
love, is older,” he says. “So the thing I didn’t
want to do was, I didn’t want to put out my
first album and be like, ‘He’s tried to re-cre-
ate the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nine-
ties.’ Loads of amazing music was written
then, but I’m not saying I wish I lived back
24 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
Harry
Styles
then. I wanted to do something that sounds
like me. I just keep pushing forward.”
“It’s different from what you’d expect,”
Bhasker says. “It made me realize the Harry
[in One D] was kind of the digitized Harry.
Almost like a character. I don’t think people
know a lot of the sides of him that are on
this album. You put it on and people are
like, ‘This is Harry Styles?’”
Styles is aware that his largest audience
so far has been young – often teenage -
women. Asked if he spends pressure-filled
evenings worried about proving credibility
to an older crowd, Styles grows animated.
“Who’s to say that young girls who like pop
music – short for popular, right? – have
worse musical taste than a 30-year-old
hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say.
Music is something that’s always changing.
There’s no goal posts. Young girls like the
Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not seri-
ous? How can you say young girls don’t get
it? They’re our future. Our future doctors,
lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of
keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans –
they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there.
They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and
they tell you. Which is sick.”
S
t y l e s dr i v e s t o a qu i et
dinner spot in Laurel Canyon,
at the foot of Lookout Mountain
Avenue, onetime home to many
of his Seventies songwriting he-
roes. He used to have a place
around the corner. As the later tours of One
Direction grew larger, longer and more fre-
netic, he offers with irony, “It was very rock
& roll.” He’s not a heavy drinker, he says,
maybe some tequila on ice or wine with
friends after a show, but by the band’s last
tour there wasn’t much time even for that.
John Lennon once told Rolling Stone
that behind the curtain, the Beatles’ tours
were like Fellini’s Satyricon. Styles coun-
ters that the One D tours were more like
“a Wes Anderson movie. Cut. Cut. New lo-
cation. Quick cut. New location. Cut. Cut.
Show. Shower. Hard cut. Sleep.”
Finding a table, Styles leans forward
and discusses his social-media presence,
or lack thereof. Styles and his phone have
a bittersweet, mature relationship – they
spend a lot of time apart. He doesn’t Google
himself, and checks Twitter infrequently.
“I’ll tell you about Twitter,” he continues,
discussing the volley of tweets, some good,
some cynical, that met his endorsement of
the Women’s March on Washington earlier
this year. “It’s the most incredible way to
communicate closely with people, but not
as well as in person.” When the location of
his London home was published a few years
ago, he was rattled. His friend James Cor-
den offered him a motto coined by British
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “Never
complain, never explain.”
I mention a few of the verbal Molotov
cocktails Zayn Malik has tossed at the band
in recent interviews. Here’s one: “[One D
is] not music that I would listen to. If I was
sat at a dinner date with a girl, I would play
some cool shit, you know what I mean? I
want to make music that I think is cool shit.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.”
Styles adjusts himself in his chair. “I
think it’s a shame he felt that way,” he says,
threading the needle of diplomacy, “but
I never wish anything but luck to anyone
doing what they love. If you’re not enjoying
something and need to do something else,
you absolutely should do that. I’m glad he’s
doing what he likes, and good luck to him.”
Perched on his head are the same-style
white sunglasses made famous by Kurt
Cobain, but the similarities end right there.
Styles, born two months before Cobain
exited Earth, doesn’t feel tied to any par-
ticular genre or era. In the car, he’ll just as
easily crank up the country music of Keith
Whitley as the esoteric blues-and-soul of
Shuggie Otis. He even bought a carrot cake
to present to Stevie Nicks at a Fleetwood
Mac concert. (“Piped her name onto it. She
loved it. Glad she liked carrot cake.”)
This much is clear: The classic role of
tortured artist is not one he’ll be playing.
“People romanticize places they can’t get
to themselves,” he says. “That’s why it’s fas-
cinating when people go dark – when Van
Gogh cuts off his ear. You romanticize those
people, sometimes out of proportion. It’s
the same with music. You want a piece of
that darkness, to feel their pain but also to
step back into your own [safer] life. I can’t
say I had that. I had a really nice upbring-
ing. I feel very lucky. I had a great family
and always felt loved. There’s nothing worse
than an inauthentic tortured person. ‘They
took my allowance away, so I did heroin.’
It’s like – that’s not how it works. I don’t
even remember what the question was.”
Styles wanders into the Country Store
next door. It’s a store he knows well. In-
specting the shelves, he asks if I’ve had
British rice pudding. He finds a can that
looks ancient. He collects a roll of Rown-
trees Fruit Pastilles (“since 1881”), Lindor
Swiss chocolates (“irresistibly smooth”)
and a jar of Branston Pickles. “There’s only
two shops in L.A. that stock all the British
M a y 4 , 2 017

snacks. This area’s kind of potluck,” he says,
spreading the collection on the counter.
The clerk rings up the snacks. In the most
careful, deferential way, the young worker
asks the question. “Would you . . . happen to
be . . . Harry Styles?”
“Yep.”
“Could I get a selfie?” Styles obliges, and
leans over the counter. Click. We exit into
© DANIEL DESLOVER/ZUMA PRESS
the Laurel Canyon evening.
“Hey,” shouts a grizzled-looking dude on
the bench outside the store. “Do you know
who you look like?”
Styles turns, expecting more of the
same, but this particular night denizen is
on a different track.
M a y 4 , 2 017
“River Phoenix,” the man announces, a
little sadly. “You ever heard of him? If he
hadn’t have passed, I would have said that
was you. Talented guy.”
“Yes, he was,” agrees Styles, who is in
many ways the generational opposite of
Phoenix. “Yes, he was.”
They share a silent moment, before
Styles walks to his car. He hands me the
bag filled with English snacks. “This is for
you,” he says. “This was my youth. . . .”
harry edward st yles was born in
Worcestershire, England, in true classic-
rock form, on a Tuesday Afternoon. The
family moved to Cheshire, a quiet spot in
Northern England, when he was a baby.
His older sister, Gemma, was the studious
one. (“She was always smarter than me, and
I was always jealous of that.”)
His father, Desmond, worked in finance.
He was a fan of the Rolling Stones, Fleet-
wood Mac, a lot of Queen, and Pink Floyd.
Young Harry toddled around to The Dark
Side of the Moon. “I couldn’t really get it,”
he says, “but I just remember being like –
this is really fucking cool. Then my mom
would always have Shania Twain, and Sav-
age Garden, Norah Jones going on. I had a
great childhood. I’ll admit it.”
But in fact, all was not perfection, scored
to a cool, retro soundtrack. When Harry
was seven, his parents explained to him
that Des would be moving out. Asked
about that moment today, Styles stares
straight ahead. “I don’t remember,” he says.
“Honestly, when you’re that young, you can
kind of block it out. . . . I can’t say that I re-
member the exact thing. I didn’t realize
that was the case until just now. Yeah, I
mean, I was seven. It’s one of those things.
Feeling supported and loved by my parents
never changed.”
His eyes moisten a little, but unlike the
young man who wept over an early bout
with Internet criticism, a powerful moment
in the early One Direction documentary A
Year in the Making, Styles tonight knocks
back the sentiment. Styles is still close with
his father, and served as best man to his
mom when she remarried a few years ago.
“Since I’ve been 10,” he
STADIUM reflects, “it’s kind of felt
KILLER like – protect Mom at
With One D all costs. . . . My mom
at Milwaukee’s is very strong. She has
Miller Park the greatest heart. [Her
in 2015
house in Cheshire] is
where I want to go when
I want to spend some time.”
In his early teens, Styles joined some
school friends as the singer in a mostly-
covers band, White Eskimo. “We wrote a
couple of songs,” he remembers. “One was
called ‘Gone in a Week.’ It was about lug-
gage. ‘I’ll be gone in a week or two/Trying to
find myself someplace new/I don’t need any
jackets or shoes/The only luggage I need is
you.’ ” He laughs. “I was like, ‘Sick.’”
It was his mother who suggested he try
out for the U.K. singing competition The
X Factor to compete in the solo “Boy” cat-
egory. Styles sang Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t
She Lovely.” The unforgiving reaction from
one of the judges, Louis Walsh, is now infa-
mous. Watching the video today is to watch
young Harry’s cheery disposition take a
hot bullet.
“In that instant,” he says, “you’re in the
whirlwind. You don’t really know what’s
happening; you’re just a kid on the show.
You don’t even know you’re good at any-
thing. I’d gone because my mum told me I
RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 25
 Harry
Styles
was good from singing in the car...but your
mum tells you things to make you feel good,
so you take it with a pinch of salt. I didn’t
really know what I was expecting when I
went on there.”
Styles didn’t advance in the competi-
tion, but Simon Cowell, the show’s creator,
sensed a crowd favorite. He put Styles
together with four others who’d failed to
advance in the same category, and united
the members of One D in a musical shot-
gun marriage. The marriage worked. And
worked. And worked.

Y
ou won der how a
young musician might find
his way here, to these lofty
peaks, with his head still
attached to his shoulders.
No sex tapes, no TMZ melt-
downs, no tell-all books written by the
rehab nanny? In a world where one messy
scandal can get you five seasons of a hit
reality show . . . how did Harry Styles slip
through the juggernaut?
“Family,” answers Ben Winston. “It
comes from his mom, Anne. She brought
him and his sister up incredibly well. Harry
would choose boring over exciting.... There
is more chance of me going to Mars next
week than there is of Harry having some 1
sort of addiction.”
We’re in Television City, Holly-
wood. Winston, 35, the Emmy-win-
ning executive producer of The Late
Late Show With James Corden, aban-
dons his desk and retreats to a nearby
sofa to discuss his good friend. More
than a friend, Styles became an un-
likely family member – after he be-
came perhaps the world’s most sur-
prising houseguest. 2
Their friendship was forged in the
early stages of One D’s success, when
the band debuted on The X Factor.
Winston, then a filmmaker and pro-
duction partner with Corden, asked
for a meeting, and instantly hit it off
with the group. He became a friendly
mentor to Styles, though the friend- 4
ship was soon tested. Styles had just
moved out of his family home in Cheshire, GROWN UP ALL RIGHT
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: CAL AURAND; COURTESY OF HARRY STYLES;
DAVID KRIEGER/BAUER-GRIFFIN/GC IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; SIMON

an inconvenient three hours north of Lon- (1) Styles in Jamaica. He recorded much of
don. He found a home he liked near the his album there, turning the studio complex
Winstons in Hampstead Heath. The new into a Caribbean version of Big Pink. (2) At
HARRIS/SH PHOTOGRAPHY/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES

age three. (3) With Taylor Swift in Central

house needed two weeks of work. Styles
asked if he could briefly move in with Win-
ston and his wife, Meredith. “She agreed,”
Winston says, “but only for two weeks.”
Styles parked his mattress in the Win-
stons’ attic. “Two weeks later and he hadn’t
bought his house yet,” continues Winston.
“It wasn’t going through. Then he said, ‘I’m
going to stay until Christmas, if you don’t
mind.’ Then Christmas came, and. . .”
For the next 20 months, one of the most
desired stars on the planet slept on a small
Park, 2012. (4) One Direction in 2010.
mattress in an attic. The only other bit of
house-dressing was the acoustic guitar
that would rattle into the Winstons’ bed-
room. While fans gathered at the empty
house where he didn’t live, Styles lived in-
cognito with a couple 12 years his senior.
The Winstons’ Orthodox Jewish lifestyle,
with a strong family emphasis, helped keep
him sane. 3

26 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 “Those 20 months were when they went
from being on a reality show, X Factor,
to being the biggest-selling artists in the
world,” recalls Winston. “That period of
time, he was living with us in the most
mundane suburban situation. No one ever
found out, really. Even when we went out
for a meal, it’s such a sweet family neigh-
borhood, no one dreamed it was actually
him. But he made our house a home. And
when he moved out, we were gutted.”
Styles jauntily appears at the Late Late
office. He’s clearly a regular visitor, and he
and Winston have a brotherly shorthand.
“Leaving Saturday?” asks Winston.
“Yeah, gotta buy a cactus for my friend’s
birthday,” says Styles.
“My dad might be on your flight,” says
Winston.
“The 8:50? That’d be sick.”
Winston continues the tales from the
attic. “So we had this joke. Meri and I
would like to see the girls that you would
come back with to the house. That was al-
STYLES IS AWARE AT
LEAST TWO OF SWIFT’S
songs are presumed to be about him. “She’s so
good, [those songs are] bloody everywhere.”
ways what we enjoyed, because we’d be in
bed like an old couple. We’d have our spot
cream on our faces and the door would
go off. The stairwell was right outside our
door, so we’d wait to see if Harry was com-
ing home alone or with people.”
“I was alone,” notes Styles. “I was scared
of Meri.”
“He wasn’t always alone,” corrects Win-
ston, “but it was exciting seeing the array
of A-listers that would come up and sleep
in the attic. Or he’d come and lounge with
us. We’d never discuss business. He would
act as if he hadn’t come back from playing
to 80,000 people three nights in a row in
Rio de Janeiro.”
‘L
et’s go to the beach,”
says Styles, pulling the
Range Rover onto a fog-
soa ked Pacif ic Coa st
Highway. Last night was
his tequila-fueled birth-
day party, filled with friends and karaoke
and a surprise drop-in from Adele. He’s
now officially 23. “And not too hung over,”
he notes.
Styles finds a spot at a sushi place up the
coast. As he passes through the busy dining
room, a businessman turns, recognizing
M a y 4 , 2 017
him with a face that says: My kids love this
guy! I ask Styles what he hears most from
the parents of young fans. “They say, ‘I see
your cardboard face every fucking day.’” He
laughs. “I think they want me to apologize.”
The subject today is relationships. While
Styles says he still feels like a newcomer to
all that, a handful of love affairs have deeply
affected him. The images and stolen mo-
ments tumble extravagantly through the
new songs: And promises are broken like
a stitch is. . . . I got splinters in my knuckles
crawling ’cross the floor/Couldn’t take you
home to mother in a skirt that short/But
I think that’s what I like about it.. . . I see
you gave him my old T-shirt, more of what
was once mine.... That black notebook, you
sense, is filled with this stuff.
“My first proper girlfriend,” he remem-
bers, “used to have one of those laughs.
There was also a little bit of mystery with
her because she didn’t go to our school. I
just worshipped the ground she walked on.
And she knew, probably to a fault, a little.
That was a tough one. I was 15.
“She used to live an hour and a half away
on the train, and I worked in a bakery for
three years. I’d finish on Saturdays at 4:30
and it was a 4:42 train, and if I missed it
there wasn’t one for another hour or two.
So I’d finish and sprint to the train station.
Spent 70 percent of my wages on train tick-
ets. Later, I’d remember her perfume. Little
things. I smell that perfume all the time. I’ll
be in a lift or a reception and say to some-
one, ‘A lien, right?’ And sometimes they’re
impressed and sometimes they’re a little
creeped out. ‘Stop smelling me.’”
If Styles hadn’t yet adapted to global
social-media attention, he was tested
in 2012, when he met Taylor Swift at an
awards show. Their second date, a walk
in Central Park, was caught by paparazzi.
Suddenly the couple were global news.
They broke up the next month, reportedly
after a rocky Caribbean vacation; the ro-
mance was said to have ended with at least
one broken heart.
The relationship is a subject he’s famous-
ly avoided discussing. “I gotta pee first. This
might be a long one,” he says. He rises to
head to the bathroom, then adds, “Actually,
you can say, ‘He went for a pee and never
came back.’ ”
He returns a couple of minutes later.
“Thought I’d let you stew for a while,” he
says, laughing, then takes a gulp of green
juice. He was surprised, he says, when pho-
tos from Central Park rocketed around the
world. “When I see photos from that day,”
he says, “I think: Relationships are hard, at
any age. And adding in that you don’t re-
ally understand exactly how it works when
you’re 18, trying to navigate all that stuff
didn’t make it easier. I mean, you’re a little
bit awkward to begin with. You’re on a date
with someone you really like. It should be
that simple, right? It was a learning experi-
ence for sure. But at the heart of it – I just
wanted it to be a normal date.”
He’s well aware that at least two of
Swift’s songs – “Out of the Woods” and
“Style” – are considered to be about their
romance. (“You’ve got that long hair
slicked back, white T-shirt,” she sang in
“Style.”) “I mean, I don’t know if they’re
about me or not. . . .” he says, attempting
gallant discretion, “but the issue is, she’s
so good, they’re bloody everywhere.” He
smiles. “I write from my experiences; ev-
eryone does that. I’m lucky if everything
[we went through] helped create those
songs. That’s what hits your heart. That’s
the stuff that’s hardest to say, and it’s the
stuff I talk least about. That’s the part
that’s about the two people. I’m never
going to tell anybody everything.” (Fans
wondered whether “Perfect,” a song Styles
co-wrote for One Direction, might have
been about Swift: “And if you like cameras
flashing every time we go out/And if you’re
looking for someone to write your breakup
songs about/Baby, I’m perfect.”)
Was he able to tell her that he admired
the songs? “Yes and no,” he says after a
long pause. “She doesn’t need me to tell her
they’re great. They’re great songs. . . . It’s the
most amazing unspoken dialogue ever.”
Is there anything he’d want to say to
Swift today? “Maybe this is where you
write down that I left!” He laughs, and
looks off. “I don’t know,” he finally says.
“Certain things don’t work out. There’s
a lot of things that can be right, and it’s
still wrong. In writing songs about stuff
like that, I like tipping a hat to the time
together. You’re celebrating the fact it was
powerful and made you feel something,
rather than ‘this didn’t work out, and
that’s bad.’ And if you run into that person,
maybe it’s awkward, maybe you have to get
drunk . . . but you shared something. Meet-
ing someone new, sharing those experi-
ences, it’s the best shit ever. So thank you.”
He notes a more recent relationship, pos-
sibly over now, but significant for the past
few years. (Styles has often been spotted
with Kendall Jenner, but he won’t confirm
that’s who he’s talking about.) “She’s a huge
part of the album,” says Styles. “Sometimes
you want to tip the hat, and [Cont. on 80]
RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 27
 © 2017 Levi Strauss & Co.

L E V I .C O M

C E L E B R AT I N G 5 0 Y E A R S O F M U S I C & S T Y L E
 T H E S U M M E R O F L OV E

1967 THE BIRTH OF LEVI’S ® TRUCKER JACKET

T H E F I R ST I S S U E O F R O L L I N G STO N E
BURNING
FOR MORE
Jimi Hendrix at
the Monterey
Pop Festival,
1967
50
THE

GREATEST
CONCERTS

50 YEARS
OF THE LAST

This list was born out of some pretty serious arguments.

Was Bruce Springsteen better in 1975 or 1978? When
did Kanye hit his stride? Which was more awesome,
ÒThe Joshua TreeÓ or ÒZoo TVÓ? The concerts and tours
that made the final cut weren't just huge spectacles,
they deepened the power of rock & roll itself Ð from Neil
Young thrashing out 20-minute jams with Crazy Horse
to BeyoncŽ turning stadium glitz into a personal out-
pouring. ÒYou're almost levitating on the energy from
the audience,Ó says Keith Richards. ÒAnd I miss it when
I'm not doing it.Ó Here are the people who've done it best.

31
 50 CONCERTS
GREATEST

1967 WORLDWIDE TOUR Brown confers

THE JIMI
with Boston
Mayor Kevin
White (right)
and Councilman

HENDRIX
Thomas Atkins
backstage at
Boston Garden,
1968.

EXPERIENCE
¥ JIMI HENDRIXÕS 1967 debut album,
Are You Experienced, established
his genius. The 200-some shows he
played to support the album assured
his legend. Backed by his ecstatically
indulgent English rhythm section –
bassist Noel Redding and drummer
Mitch Mitchell – Hendrix did noth-
ing short of liberate the electric gui-
tar, turning each show into a pyro-
technic exploration. “I thought, ‘My
God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid,’ ”
Eric Clapton later recalled. For the
U.S., the coming-out party was the
Monterey Pop Festival, where Hen-
drix set his guitar ablaze, terrify-
ing the fire marshal while leaving
the crowd spellbound. As the Expe-
rience toured that year, they played
alongside Pink Floyd and Cat Ste-
vens in every type of venue, from
theaters to biker bars. “We also did
a graduation ball in Paris in March
1967, a really plush place,” Mitch-
ell recalled. “There was an oompah
band on before us, and they would
not leave the stage. I remember one
of our roadies, in a final act of des-

APRIL 5, 1968 JAMES

peration, pushing the trombonist’s
slide back into his mouth – blood and
teeth everywhere.” When the shows

BOSTON GARDEN BROWN

went right, however, Hendrix was a
tour de force. His sense of showman-
ship went back to his years as a side-
man with Little Richard; dressed in
radiant psychedelic frills, he banged
the neck of his guitar, bit its strings I thought, ¥ ON APRIL 4TH, 1968, Martin Luther Mayor Kevin White that calling off
and played it behind his head. “With ‘My God, this King Jr. was assassinated in Mem- a show of that magnitude might lead
Jimi, it was a theater piece,” Soft Ma- is like Buddy phis. In the aftermath, America to even more anger and violence. “If
chine drummer and onetime Hen- Guy on acid.’ burned. There were riots in Wash- [his] concert had not occurred,” re-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: © JIM MARSHALL PHOTOGRAPHY LLC.

drix tourmate Robert Wyatt once ington, D.C.; Baltimore; Chicago; called local radio DJ James “Early”
THIS PAGE: BOB DEAN/“BOSTON GLOBE”/GETTY IMAGES

observed. “The drama, the pace,
the buildups and drops.” The peak
Summer of Love moment came in
early June, when the Experience
played London. With the Beatles in
the crowd, Hendrix opened with the
title track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band, which had been
released just two days earlier. “1967
was the best year of my life,” he de-
clared later. “I just wanted to play
and play.” KORY GROW
Kansas City, Missouri, and other
cities. In Boston, city leaders ex-
ERIC pected more violence to come. Amid
CLAPTON this tension, James Brown, the most
on seeing Hendrix explosive African-American musi-
perform
cian of the era, pulled off a miracle.
Brown and his band were booked
to play Boston Garden on April 5th.
The city considered canceling all
public events that night, but the con-
cert’s promoter, local City Coun-
cilman Thomas Atkins, convinced
Bird, “we would have had the big-
gest problem in the history of Bos-
ton since the Tea Party.”
Frustrating to Brown was the de-
cision to televise the show, a way of
keeping people out of the streets that
would also drive down ticket sales.
“But he had an obligation to honor
Dr. King,” says Brown’s saxophon-
ist and bandleader Pee Wee Ellis,
and after Brown obtained the fee he
wanted, everything was set.

32 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 “The show went on just as it had in
all the other places we had played,”
says trombone player Fred Wesley.
“It was a regular show.” Of course,
in 1968, the “regular show” meant
a display of raw energy and dy-
namic power unlike anything else
in music. Dressed in a black suit,
hair in a tight pompadour, Brown
moved with lightning quickness,
his screams rattling the rafters, as
he drove the band through his hits.
They did “I Got You (I Feel Good)” in
a double-time blur, and “Cold Sweat”
featured an incredible solo show-
case for “funky drummer” Clyde
Stubblefield.
THREE
Still, Wesley, who had only recent- ESSENTIAL
ly become a part of Brown’s band, JAMES Joplin at
remembers a palpable sense of fear BROWN the Aragon
among the band members, and ten- LIVE Ballroom
sion in the arena: “We didn’t know if ALBUMS in Chicago,
1968
there was a war against black people,
Live at the

1968 BIG BROTHER AND

or if a race war was happening. As we
got to the stage, we were still wary Apollo
1963
about what might happen.”
Maybe the
But what ended up impressing

THE HOLDING COMPANY

best live LP
him most was what amazed him ever: Brown’s

AMERICAN TOUR
about James Brown every night: 1962 set runs
his ability to hold and command a from raw
crowd. As the set reached its climax heartache to
breakneck
during Brown’s dramatic “cape act,”
soul, blasting ¥ LIKE SO MUCH of Janis Joplin’s career, the tour to support Cheap
young fans began rushing the stage, through a Thrills, her 1968 album with Big Brother and the Holding Company,
and white police officers ran in to nine-song
restore order. Shoving ensued, and
was a triumph wrought from chaos. On the eve of the tour, the singer
medley along
the moment of mayhem many had the way. A announced she was leaving the band, leading to screaming fights with
anticipated seemed to have finally mix of some of the musicians. Yet that very tension – combined with gruel-
precision and
arrived. energy few, if ing album sessions that tightened what, as drummer Dave Getz ad-
But Brown quickly interceded. any, artists mits, “wasn’t a tight band” – made for a riveting farewell. The com-
“You’re not being fair to yourself matched
and me or your race,” he told the onstage.
bination of her wild-child rasp and Big Brother’s wailing blues rock
crowd. “Now, are we together, or proved transformative. “By the end of ’68,” says Getz, “I don’t think
we ain’t?” Turning to Stubblefield, Love, Power, there was a singer in rock & roll who could touch her.” DAVID BROWNE
Peace
he ordered, “Hit the thing, man,” 1992
and the band launched into a furi- Live in Paris
ous version of “I Can’t Stand Myself
(When You Touch Me).” Brown was
in 1971, at the
height of his
AIRED DECEMBER 3, 1968 1968 FAREWELL TOUR

even joined onstage by Mayor White,
whom he announced as a “swinging
cat.” Brown exited the stage shak-
ing hands with the people up front,
as much like a political leader as a
soul star.
In the weeks to come, requests for
Brown to appear elsewhere poured
in, including one to travel to Wash-
ington, D.C., to speak to rioters. In
August that year, he’d release his
monumental message record, “Say It
Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.” “I
RON POWNALL/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
ELVIS CREAM
funk powers.
Say It Live
and Loud:
Live in Dallas ¥ ERIC CLAPTON ended Cream in
08.26.68 COMEBACK SPECIAL 1968 after only two years, burned
1998 out and sick of keeping the peace
Recorded ¥ ÒELVIS WAS HARDLY ever nervous,” between bandmates Ginger Baker
the month says drummer D.J. Fontana, re- and Jack Bruce. But even as they
he released
“Say It Loud – membering the NBC special that re- were breaking up, Cream pushed the
I’m Black and launched Presley’s career after years boundaries. “It had nothing to do
I’m Proud.” in Hollywood. “But he was then.” The with lyrics or ideas,” said Clapton. “It
highlight: an intimate sit-down set was much deeper, purely musical.” At
with his band, Fontana and guitar- Madison Square Garden, they played

was able to speak to the country dur-
ing the crisis,” he later said, “and that
was one of the things that meant the
most to me.” Almost 50 years later,
Ellis is still moved by the moment.
“I’m proud to have been part of that,”
he says. “I’m pleased that it came off
the way that it did.” JON DOLAN
ist Scotty Moore, that was almost
like catching Elvis at the Louisiana
Hayride back in 1954. “Performing
with Elvis was amazing,” remem-
bers Darlene Love, who sang back-
up for Presley on the show, “because
we didn’t really know what to expect
from him.” K.G.
a wild, nearly 20-minute “Spoon-
ful.” At San Francisco’s Fillmore,
they played under the venue’s psyche-
delic light shows as Clapton, Baker
and Bruce soloed simultaneously. As
Roger Waters, who saw them at the
time, put it, “It was an astounding
sight and an explosive sound.” K.G.

M a y 4 , 2 017 RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 33

FEBRUARY 24, 1969
JOHNNY CASH
¥ ÒI REMEMBER walking through two
sets of iron gates, and when I heard
them close, I thought, ‘Man, I hope
we get back out of here,’ ” Johnny
Cash’s guitarist Bob Wootton recalls
of his visit to San Quentin prison on
February 24th, 1969. San Quentin
was (and remains) California’s oldest
prison, as well as the largest death-
row facility in the country.
That day, as Cash stood onstage
in his usual black suit, he was greet-
ed by a sight that might have fright-
ened a different performer: 2,000
hollering, charged-up inmates. But
Cash, who always felt a special con-
nection to prisoners, seemed to real-
ize the gravity of the moment. “John
was very solemn that day,” Wootton
says. “We all were. It reminds you
how much you take for granted. John
connected with [the prisoners] in a
way I never saw him connect with
another audience.”
Cash had played prisons before
– including an earlier San Quentin
gig and, famously, California’s Fol-
som Prison. His show at San Quen-
tin in 1969 was a full-on revue fea-
turing the Carter Family, the Statler
Brothers and Carl Perkins, and was
shot for British TV. He performed
with steely intensity, when he wasn’t
cracking jokes to his audience. In a
sense, he became one of them.
Cash treated his set list more as a
guide than as a hard-and-fast pro-
gram, but ended up catering to the
inmates with songs like “Starkville
34 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
Cash and June
Carter Cash at San
Quentin, 1969
SAN QUENTIN
PRISON
City Jail” and Bob Dylan’s “Want-
ed Man.” Cash also wrote a song for
the occasion – the twangy, brood-
ing “San Quentin.” Its first line –
“San Quentin, you’ve been livin’
hell to me” – prompted hooting and
cheering from the crowd. “One more
time!” they called out. “All right,”
Cash said. “Hey, before we do it,
though, if any of the guards are still
speakin’ to me, can I have a glass of
water?” The crowd laughed, then
booed the guard.
One of the show’s standout mo-
ments was “A Boy Named Sue,”
which made its world premiere be-
fore everyone in the prison, includ-
ing the band. “I didn’t even know he
had the song,” drummer W.S. Hol-
land says with a laugh. “Back then,
we didn’t have monitors and couldn’t
hear all that much onstage. John just
started doing it. The first time I ac-
tually heard the song was [later] in
the studio.”
“A Boy Named Sue” became a
Number One country single and
crossed over to the pop charts, clear-
ing a path for greater success, much
to Cash’s amusement. “I’ve always
thought it was ironic that it was a
prison concert, with me and the con-
victs getting along just as fellow reb-
els, outsiders and miscreants should,”
he wrote in his 1997 autobiography,
“that pumped up my marketability to
the point where ABC thought I was
respectable enough to have a weekly
network TV show.” KORY GROW
1969 AMERICAN TOUR
IKE&TINA
TURNER
¥ THE ROLLING STONESÕ return to Amer-
ica in 1969, after three years away
– a period that included Beggars
Banquet and the death of guitarist
Brian Jones – was what critic Rob-
ert Christgau described as “history’s
first mythic rock & roll tour.” But on
the 17-date spin through the States,
time and again they were upstaged
by their handpicked opening act, old
friends Ike and Tina Turner and their
combustible R&B revue.
The Stones met Ike and Tina
among Phil Spector’s orbit in Eng-
MORE land. “I’d always see Mick in the
LIVE wings,” Tina remembered of perfor-
CASH mances in the mid-Sixties. “I’d come
out and watch him occasionally;
At Folsom they’d play music and Mick would
Prison beat the tambourine. He wasn’t
1968
dancing. And lo and behold, when
His most
he came to America, he was doing
legendary
jailhouse gig. everything!” Jagger later admitted
The title he “learned a lot of things from Tina.”
track became In the U.S., Ike and Tina won over
a Number a new audience with wild, sweat-
One hit. drenched covers of the new rock
The Johnny & roll canon, including a brassy
Cash Show burst through the Beatles’ “Come
1970 Together” (“I said to Ike,” recalled
Lushly Tina, “ ‘Please, please let me do that
orchestrated song onstage’ ”). They spun through
gospel and
Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart”
story-songs,
THIS PAGE: ITV/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK. OPPOSITE PAGE: © ROBERT ALTMAN/THE IMAGE WORKS
named after and a high-octane version of Cree-
his ABC dence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud
variety show. Mary” that, by 1971, would become
their biggest hit. Their take on Otis
At Madison Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too
Square
Garden Long” garnered its share of attention
2002 too, thanks to an orgasmic bridge
A wild 1969 that eventually got even raunchier.
set, featuring “I don’t think it can go any further,”
guests the Tina said in 1971, “because, as they
Carter Family
say in New York, it’s getting porn-
and the
Statler ographic.”
Brothers. At Madison Square Garden, Jop-
lin herself stopped by to assist on
“Land of 1,000 Dances.” By the tour’s
end, writers couldn’t control their
enthusiasm. “Vogue said it best,” said
Tina. “ ‘They came to see Mick Jag-
ger, but they saw Ike and Tina, and
they’ve been comin’ ever since.’ ”
CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
M a y 4 , 2 017
 Turner 1969 WORLD TOUR

LED ZEPPELIN
in 1969

¥ BEFORE THE PRIVATE planes, moun-

tains of cocaine and allegations of
black magic, Led Zeppelin were four
blokes tearing a path through Amer-
ica for the first time. They hit the
U.S. in late December 1968, just be-
fore their debut LP hit shelves. “I re-
member pulling up to a theater and
the marquee said, ‘Vanilla Fudge, Taj
Mahal and support,’ ” Robert Plant
said in 2005. “I thought, ‘Wow, here
we are: support!’”
Everyone knew their name soon
enough. A month in, they unleashed a
four-hour set at the Boston Tea Party.
“We’d played our usual one-hour set,
using all the material from the first
album,” John Paul Jones said. “The
audience just wouldn’t let us off-
stage.” Over 168 shows that year,
as they unveiled new songs like
“Whole Lotta Love,” Zep’s
live fury and future prom-
ise came into view. “This
group could become one
of the biggest bands in his-
tory,” Jones said. “I hope we
don’t blow it.” ANDY GREENE

1970 AMERICAN TOUR

BLACK
SABBATH
¥ WHEN BLACK SABBATH landed at JFK
Airport for their first U.S. tour, Ozzy
Osbourne scrawled “Satanist” as his
religion on the immigration form.
Many who saw their shows – open-
ing for the Faces, Alice Cooper and
the James Gang – didn’t know what
to make of the shaggy Brits. A turn-
ing point came at New York’s Fill-
more East. “I tore my floor tom off
the riser and threw it at the audience,”
says drummer Bill Ward. “I was like,
‘Fucking move! Do something!’ Soon
everyone was headbanging.” Relent-
less touring in Europe had turned
Sabbath into a brutal assault force.
“It was primal,” says Ward of the tour.
“There’s a lower self that went on-
stage, and it was just dynamite.” A.G.

M a y 4 , 2 017 RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 35
 50 CONCERTS
GREATEST

Townshend 1970 WINTER AMERICAN TOUR

NEIL YOUNG
in 1970

AND CRAZY
HORSE
¥ IN EARLY 1970, Neil Young had final-
ly become a star thanks to the huge
success of Crosby, Stills, Nash and
Young. During a quick break from
that band and from recording his
third solo LP, After the Gold Rush,
Young decided to introduce his new
fans to his other band, Crazy Horse
– whose garage-rock thrash sound-
ed the complete opposite of CSNY –
on a run of clubs, theaters and the oc-
casional junior-college auditorium.
“When Neil plays with Crazy Horse,
he goes into this other place and
plays deep from inside,” says drum-
mer Ralph Molina. “He becomes Neil
Young, the real Neil Young.”
It was a sound no one had heard
before. While other early jam bands
like the Allman Brothers played with
virtuosic professionalism, Crazy
Horse produced raw chaos. Each
night began with a brief solo acous-
tic set before Crazy Horse came on-
stage. Songs like “Down by the River”
and “Cowgirl in the Sand” sometimes
stretched to nearly 20 minutes,
Young trading unhinged solos with
guitarist Danny Whitten. “Danny
had a strong musical presence, prob-
ably just as strong as Neil,” says bass-
ist Billy Talbot. “We started doing
songs longer, which Neil had never
done before.”
In March, Bill Graham booked
them at the Fillmore East for four
shows in two nights, where they
shared a bill with Miles Davis and

FEBRUARY 14, 1970 UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

the Steve Miller Band. Each night,
Whitten sang “Come on Baby Let’s
Go Downtown,” a song about scor-

THE WHO
ing heroin, which he’d started using
heavily around this time. One night
backstage, Young wrote down the
phrase “I’ve seen the needle and the
damage done” on a sheet of paper.
CHRIS MORPHET/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

Within two years, Whitten was

¥ AFTER 1969Õs rock opera Tommy, the Who wanted to return to their dead, and Young’s song about him,
raw roots with a live album. Pete Townshend hated the recordings “The Needle and the Damage Done,”
they made on their U.S. tour so much he threw them onto a bonfire. would appear on Harvest, the best-
But everything clicked back home in England, in front of 2,000 rav- selling album of 1972. “It was such a
loss,” said Young. “[It taught me] you
enous fans at the University of Leeds, where the band tore through can’t count on things. You just can’t
38 songs, including a nearly 15-minute “My Generation.” Townshend take things for granted. Anything
later called it “the greatest audience we’ve ever played to.” ANDY GREENE could go at any time.” A.G.

36 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
Keurig, K-Cup, Keurig Hot, and K Logo are trademarks of Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. Used with permission.
Elton in
L.A., 1970
AUGUST 25-30, 1970
THE TROUBADOUR
¥ WHEN ELTON JOHN took the stage at
ELTON JOHN
Los Angeles’ Troubadour for the first
night of his six-date residency, he
was a little-known 23-year-old pop
singer with thick glasses and greasy
hair who had only recently changed
his name from Reginald Kenneth
Dwight. When the show was over,
Elton was a sensation. The stakes
couldn’t have been higher: His debut
LP, which had come out that spring,
wasn’t selling. After what he called a
“crisis meeting” with his label, it sent
him to the States. The label made
sure to pack the 300-capacity club
with big names like David Crosby,
Graham Nash, and Mike Love of the
Beach Boys. “The second night, Leon
Russell was in the front row, but I
didn’t see him until the last num-
ber,” Elton recalled. “Thank God I
didn’t, because at that time I slept
and drank Leon Russell.”
Neil Diamond introduced Elton.
“I’m like the rest of you,” he said.
38 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
“I’m here because of having listened
to Elton John’s album.”
But those who had heard his
album had no idea what they were
in for: a poetic singer-songwrit-
er with the flamboyance of a rock
star. Album tracks like “Take Me
to the Pilot” and “Sixty Years On”
were played with a punklike energy,
Elton falling to his knees like Jerry
Lee Lewis and knocking the piano
bench over. The set also mixed in
standards like “Great Balls of Fire”
and “Honky Tonk Women.” And the
rapturous reception he received en-
couraged him to experiment with
even more adventurous stagecraft.
“He seemed like a very quiet, sub-
dued person,” says drummer Nigel
Olsson. “All of a sudden, in front
of an American audience, he start-
ed wearing Mickey Mouse ears and
jumping up and down. That’s where
all the strange gear started.” Un-
like Elton’s debut album, which was
packed with lush strings, harp and a
synthesizer, he performed that night
accompanied only by Olsson and
bassist Dee Murray. “We just made
a lot of noise,” Murray told Rolling
Stone in 1987. “It was new. Elton
was experimenting. Plus, we had to
Before the make up for the orchestra. We just
Troubadour socked it to them.”
concerts, Elton played five more nights as
Elton and his word started to spread around town:
record label “His music is so staggeringly origi-
were in crisis
mode. After
nal,” Los Angeles Times music critic
the shows, he Robert Hilburn wrote. In the com-
was the ing weeks, “Your Song” began climb-
fastest-rising ing the charts, eventually hitting
star in Number Eight in January 1971.
America. Forty-seven years later, Elton still
looks back fondly on that first trip to
ED CARAEFF/GETTY IMAGES
America. “It was just all systems go,”
he says. “Nothing was impossible.
You’re working on adrenaline and the
sheer fact that you’re a success. I still
love what I do, and I’m 70 years old.
I love it even more.” ANDY GREENE
M a y 4 , 2 017
 Helping you feel
safe in your lane.
The 2017 Toyota Corolla’s standard Toyota Safety Sense™ P
(TSS-P)1 is designed to help keep passengers safe with a suite
of systems including Lane Departure Alert with Steering Assist.2
This feature is designed to detect visible lane markers on the
road, alert the driver if an inadvertent lane departure is detected
and may also provide slight, corrective steering inputs to help
keep the vehicle in its lane. With TSS-P’s Lane Departure Alert,
you’ll feel greater peace of mind on the road.

Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. 1. Drivers are responsible for their own safe driving. Always pay attention
to your surroundings and drive safely. Depending on the conditions of roads, weather and the vehicle, the system(s) may not work as
intended. See Owner’s Manual for additional limitations and details. 2. Lane Departure Alert with Steering Assist is designed to read
lane markers under certain conditions. It provides a visual and audible alert, and slight steering force when lane departure is detected.
It is not a collision-avoidance system or a substitute for safe and attentive driving. Effectiveness is dependent on road, weather and
vehicle conditions. See Owner’s Manual for additional limitations and details. ©2017 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
MARCH 5-7, 1971 FILLMORE WEST B.B.
King,

ARETHA FRANKLIN
1971

¥ WHEN PROMOTER Bill Graham booked the Queen of Soul for his San Francisco venue for three
nights in March 1971, no one was certain the matchup would work, including Aretha Frank-
lin herself. “I wasn’t sure how the hippies reacted to me,” she said. As Franklin’s drummer Ber-
nard Purdie recalls, “She’d been doing what you’d call Vegas-type shows. But this was a whole
SEPTEMBER 10, 1970

B.B. KING
different audience.” No one needed to worry. With saxman King Curtis leading a band that in-
cluded Billy Preston on organ, Franklin remade pop and rock classics in her own image – turn-
ing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” into call-and-response gospel and
reworking “Eleanor Rigby” as a funky stomp. The weekend of shows (portions of which were
released a few months later as Live at Fillmore West) had an appropriately glorious finale: On
the last night, Franklin pulled Ray Charles out of the crowd. Though they’d just met that day,
the two traded piano and vocal parts on an epic 19-minute version of “Spirit in the Dark.” “She
turned the thing into church,” Charles said later. “I mean, she’s on fire.” DAVID BROWNE
COOK COUNTY JAIL
¥ B.B. KING WAS playing a regular
club gig on Chicago’s Rush Street
Franklin and
Ray Charles in the late Sixties when he was
in 1971 invited to do a show at the local
Cook County Jail. “I knew the in-
mates would enjoy it,” said war-
den Clarence English. “And that
would be something they’d be be-
holden to us. . . . If you give extra
ice cream or let them stay up late
at night, [they] don’t fight and de-
stroy each other.”
King’s new manager, Sid Se-
idenberg – who was helping King
score a career resurgence by book-
ing him at venues like the Fill-
more West – saw an opportuni-
ty. He told King to take the gig,
and invited press and a recording
engineer for a future live album
(Johnny Cash had released the
successful At Folsom Prison two
years earlier). But what began as a
commercial move became some-
thing much deeper. “I couldn’t
FROM LEFT: © JIM MARSHALL PHOTOGRAPHY LLC.; PAUL SEQUEIRA/GETTY IMAGES

help but feel the oppression,” King

said later. “My heart was heavy
with feeling for the guys behind
bars.” With a full big band behind
him, King belted burning takes on
“Every Day I Have the Blues” and
“How Blue Can You Get?” with a
fury the loud assembly evident-
ly connected with. The inmates
booed when he took the stage, but
by the end they were hypnotized.
The show was released on 1971’s
Live at Cook County Jail, a doc-
ument of an electric-blues master
at the top of his game.
“There were tears in people’s
eyes,” English recalled. “In mine,
too.” WILL HERMES

M a y 4 , 2 017
ON NEWSSTANDS NOW
Also available at bn.com/rspinkfloyd.
 Duane
Allman,
1971
 MARCH 11-13, 1971
FILLMORE EAST
THE ALLMAN
BROTHERS
BAND
¥ THE ALLMANS were still young,
hungry Georgia rockers when they
booked three nights at Bill Graham’s
Fillmore East in New York in early
1971 with the idea of recording a live
album. “My brother always believed
a live album was what the Brothers
needed to do, and the record com-
pany finally agreed,” Gregg Allman
recalled. “The Fillmore was just the
logical choice. I don’t think we even
discussed another venue.” The LP
they made there, At Fillmore East,
became their defining statement.
The Allmans were initially slot-
ted into a bill headlined by John-
ny Winter. But they came out guns
blazing the first night, and when
the hall emptied out after their set,
they were promoted to headliner.
With the band order duly shuffled,
the Allmans had time to stretch out
on spectacular journeys – “On those
long jams, you climbed in and there
was no tomorrow, no yesterday,”
said drummer Butch Trucks. The
gigs were hardly trouble-free. On
the last night, a bomb scare delayed
the start of the second show until the
OPPOSITE PAGE: © JIM MARSHALL PHOTOGRAPHY LLC. THIS PAGE: JOHN SCHEELE
wee hours (“Good mornin’, every-
body!” someone announced before
“Statesboro Blues”). That early-a.m.
set ended up becoming the keeper:
“Whipping Post” sprawled over gor-
geous melodic terrain for 23 minutes;
“Mountain Jam” ascended for more
than a half-hour. Atlantic Records
engineer Tom Dowd oversaw the tap-
ing; unlike most live albums, noth-
ing needed to be redone in the stu-
dio besides a few vocal overdubs. The
LP went gold on October 25th, four
days before guitarist Duane Allman
died in a motorcycle accident. “It’s the
best-sounding live album ever,” said
the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. “It’s
just fuckin’ awesome.” WILL HERMES
M a y 4 , 2 017
ACADEMY
DECEMBER 28-31, 1971
THE BAND OF MUSIC
¥ THE BANDÕS 1978 farewell movie, The
Last Waltz, is the greatest concert
The group set the tone with a
taut, funky cover of Marvin Gaye’s
film of all time. But even that per- “Don’t Do It,” and gracefully moved
formance didn’t reach the heights of through its canon. The Band played
the Band’s four-night stand at New with intensified warmth on “Un-
York’s Academy of Music at the end faithful Servant” and “Get Up Jake”
of 1971. The shows, which were re- and jittery energy on deep album
THREE leased as a box set in 2013, captured cuts like “Smoke Signal.” “We only
MORE the Band at their tightest and funk- did it once or twice,” said Robert-
CLASSIC iest, injecting New Orleans R&B son. “Levon [Helm] did an amazing
ALLMANS swagger into their harmonious folk job on it.” They turned “Chest Fever”
SHOWS rock. It was a period of high mo-
rale and expert musicianship for
and “Rag Mama Rag” into the stuff
of a Crescent City street party, and
SUNY Stony the sometimes volatile group, the returned to their roadhouse roots
Brook, Stony result of a decade of hard touring, on Chuck Willis’ 1958 deep cut “(I
Brook, NY with Ronnie Hawkins, Bob Dylan Don’t Want to) Hang Up My Rock &
SEPTEMBER 19, 1971 and finally on their own. “There was Roll Shoes.”
One of Duane a spell that everybody was doing re- The Band saved their biggest
Allman’s most
ally, really good,” the Band’s Robbie surprise for last. During their
magnificent
shows: See the Robertson told Rolling Stone in New Year’s Eve encore, they invit-
11-minute-plus 2013. “It was a roll of the dice after ed out their old friend Dylan, who
“Blue Sky.” that. You just didn’t know what con- had been out of the spotlight for
dition somebody was going to show years. Looking like his mid-Sixties
Cow Palace, up in.” self with aviators and a Telecaster,
San Francisco
It was a moment the Band need- Dylan howled fiery takes of “Like
DECEMBER 31, 1973
Jerry
ed. Three years on from their a Rolling Stone” and “Don’t Ya Tell
Garcia, Bill groundbreaking debut, Music From Henry,” pausing only to talk through
Kreutzmann Big Pink, their two most recent stu- the arrangements. “We were being
and Boz dio a lbums, Stage
Scaggs sit Fright and Cahoots, Levon
in on New had been greeted with
Year’s jam that Helm
starts with lukewarm rev iews. onstage
“Whipping Aiming for some fresh in New
Post,” energy, Robertson re- York,
then goes cruited veteran New 1971
jukeboxing. Orleans bandlead-
er Allen Toussaint to
Beacon
Theatre, NY put together a horn
OCTOBER 28, 2014 section for their holi-
A four-hour day gigs at the Acade-
farewell my of Music. It almost
blowout at didn’t work out. To
their adopted ever yone’s hor ror,
latter-day
home base,
Toussaint’s briefcase
ending in the full of horn arrange-
a.m. on the ments was stolen on his way from a little bit bold,” said Robertson.
anniversary of New Orleans to the band’s Wood- (The horns didn’t accompany Dylan,
Duane’s death. stock headquarters, where he was though: “He looked over and saw
forced to rewrite the charts from us, jumped back from the micro-
memory. He wrote them in the phone and glared over his shades,”
wrong keys, and the Band had to says tuba player Howard Johnson.
relearn their songs in entirely new “I told everyone, ‘OK, let’s just get
keys. Robertson recalled thinking, offstage.’ ”)
“We’re doomed.” Months later, highlights of those
That anxiety lifted when they shows comprised the dazzling live
took the stage. “A chill ran through double LP Rock of Ages, which crit-
me,” Robertson said. “I thought, ics immediately called one of the
‘OK, I’m feeling some magic in the best live albums of the Seventies.
air here. . . .’ As soon as we kicked off For drummer Helm, it was simply
the first song,” he added, “we weren’t “the most fun I ever had making a
even touching the ground.” Band record.” DAVID BROWNE
RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 43

THE
1972
ROLLING
NORTH
AMERICAN
TOUR
¥ MICK JAGGER has a clear memory of
being onstage in the summer of 1972,
singing “Love in Vain,” the Robert
STONES
Johnson song the Rolling Stones had
recently reworked into a soul ballad.
Jagger still marvels at the live version
– particularly Mick Taylor’s searing
lead guitar, which slowly took over
the song and culminated in a minute
and a half of mournful, melodic vir-
tuosity. “He was playing beautiful-
ly at this point,” says Jagger. “It was
chilling. It was so sad and haunting.
And the horns were really just sub-
tly there. The beats and stops were
usually perfect. That was one of my
favorites.”
The Rolling Stones were at the
peak of their powers in the summer
of 1972: Keith Richards was play-
ing the most fearless rhythm guitar
of his career; Taylor stretched out
their music to improbable peaks; and
Jagger stalked the stage, whipping
his belt and perfecting his ability to
turn music, as critic Robert Green-
field observed, into a psychodrama.
It was the band’s first North Amer-
ican tour since Altamont, the disas-
trous, deadly California festival in
December 1969. Shaken by that de-
bacle and the death of Brian Jones,
the band hunkered down in the stu-
dio, recording three masterpieces:
1969’s Let It Bleed, 1971’s Sticky Fin-
gers and 1972’s Exile on Main Street.
Their Sixties peers – the Beatles,
Bob Dylan – were less prolific, with-
drawing from public view. In their
absence, the Stones had only grown
in stature. “After 10 years of playing
together, the Stones had somehow
become the number-one attraction
44 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST
in the world,” Greenfield wrote in
his chronicle of the tour, A Journey
Through America With the Rolling
Stones. “The only great band of the
Sixties still around in original form
playing original rock & roll. . . . They
were royalty.”
Both Jagger and Richards remem-
ber the excitement they felt ahead of
the eight-week run. If the prospect
of getting back on the road weren’t
enough, the opening act on tour was
a 22-year-old Stevie Wonder, whom
Jagger made a habit of watching
side-stage. “It was exciting, the feel-
ing of anticipation – getting back in
touch with what it is we did,” says
Richards. Adds Jagger, “We were
trying to get out of the studio, out of
the South of France, and Keith had
all these drug problems – so it was
kind of good to get out on the road.”
The Stones’ office was overload-
ed with requests for tickets, priced
at $6.50 (some fans sent in as many
as 60 postcards each). A Dick Cavett
TV special on the tour described the
strange new phenomenon of scalp-
ing (plus the new concept of group-
ies). On opening night in Vancouver,
2,000 fans tried to force their way
into the Pacific Coliseum, leaving 31
policemen injured – the first of sev-
eral violent incidents. “That was in
the day when people who didn’t have
a ticket would show up,” says Jagger,
“and be like, ‘OK, we’re here, we’re
fucking going in.’ ”
Unlike the 1969 tour – which fea-
tured slow, slogging rhythms – the
band played at breakneck speed.
“Keith was doing that,” says Jagger.
“I’m not trying to blame him for any-
thing. He kept starting it.” Says Rich-
ards, “That was probably trying to
catch up with lost time.” Songs like
“Street Fighting Man” ran several
minutes longer than the studio ver-
sions as the band ripped away. “We
were probably searching for the end-
ing,” Richards jokes.
For Richards, the highlight was
playing the new songs from Exile
on Main Street, recorded the pre-
vious summer. “Playing the Exile
stuff for the first time was a real
I got up turn-on,” says Richards. After open-
and hit in the ing with “Brown Sugar,” the band
general tore through several Exile classics:
direction of
the light and “Rocks Off,” “Rip This Joint,” “Sweet
busted the Virginia.” Unlike later tours, Jagger
guy’s camera. hung around during Richards’ songs,
Things howling away “Happy” into the same
escalated mic. “I always enjoyed doing that,”
from there. Richards says.
Then the
fucking FBI There were also a few throwbacks,
got involved. including a horn-fueled version of
“Satisfaction,” and “Bye Bye Johnny,”
a Chuck Berry song that the Stones
had been doing since 1963. Accord-
ing to Richards, they picked the deep
KEITH
cut for its rhythm: “There’s an inter-
RICHARDS
esting reverse beat going on that al-
ways intrigued us.”
On the road, the Stones encoun-
tered an older audience – one that
ranged from about age 15 to 30.
“There always used to be screamers,
and they didn’t seem to worry much
about the music,” Bill Wyman told
Cavett. As a result, the band played
KEN REGAN/CAMERA 5
with more focus. It helped that arena
sound had improved: “Now you hear
everything and you see everything,
and there’s so much tension,” said
Wyman.
M a y 4 , 2 017
Jagger in
Vancouver,
1972

Jagger and
Richards
in 1989
LET IT LOOSE: MORE
GREAT STONES TOURS
The Stones are the best live band in rock history, playing
tours that combine spectacle with a sense of danger.
Jagger reflects on five of their best
American Tour 1969
After years of controversy and the loss of Brian Jones, the
band hit the road with a dark energy that perfectly captured
the political upheaval of the time. It was the first arena
tour of its kind, with a traveling, hanging sound system and
lighting rig. “There was nothing to draw on,” says Jagger. “I
always thought of that one as groundbreaking. It was the
early days of doing arenas properly.”
ÔSome GirlsÕ Tour 1978
“That was fast and furious,” Jagger says of the tour, which
lost the props and large band of the 1975 tour and saw the
band channel punk energy in 25 mostly small venues, debut-
ing new anthems like “When the Whip Comes Down” and
“Respectable.” “It was a great tour,” says Jagger.
ÔSteel WheelsÕ Tour 1989
After seven years of fighting, the band returned for its first
“megatour,” as Richards called it. The Stones played nearly
30 songs on a stadium stage that raised the bar for everyone
else. “It was the biggest fun house,” Jagger says of the stage,
which featured steam pipes, catwalks and a revolutionary
video screen. “Just crazy big. When it was all smoking at night
and we put the lights on it, it was the most amazing thing I’ve
ever seen. No one had built anything like that before.”
Licks World Tour 2002-03
The band shook things up often by playing three shows in
the same city: a stadium gig, an arena and a theater. Jagger
liked the theater shows, where they returned to their R&B
roots, including a devastating cover of O.V. Wright’s “That’s
How Strong My Love Is.” “We hadn’t done theaters in a long
time,” he says. “But it was so much fun.”
50 and Counting 2012-13
The band celebrated its 50th anniversary by playing its best in
a decade. With fewer backing musicians, it broke out rarities
like “I Wanna Be Your Man” and “Around and Around.” “The
idea was having three really ancient numbers to open with,
and having this black-and-white look and feel to the whole
thing,” Jagger said. The tour also included the return of Bill
Wyman, who joined the band in London, and Mick Taylor,
who came onstage every night to rip on “Midnight Rambler.”
46 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST
For all the onstage professional-
ism, the backstage scene was as wild
as any rock & roll tour before or since.
The band traveled with the largest
entourage in rock history up to that
point – including a physician, label
president Marshall Chess and a press
corps Richards compared to a political
campaign. The press included photog-
rapher Annie Leibovitz, and authors
Terry Southern, Robert Greenfield,
and Truman Capote, who reluctant-
ly joined for a Rolling Stone cover
story. “For him, it was a social occa-
sion,” says Jagger, who recalls Capote
saying he hated the fact that Jagger
wore the same clothes every night.
“He would’ve liked it better now – I
have such a bigger wardrobe.” (Capote
never wrote his piece, claiming it
“didn’t interest me creatively.”)
Jagger admits that the traveling
party was “a bit distracting.” He had
to watch his drug intake in order to
perform. “I wasn’t on meth, out of my
mind or anything,” Jagger says. “But
I was having a lot of fun.” Richards’
favorite story “has got to be Bobby
Keys and me nearly burning down
the Playboy mansion,” he says. Stay-
ing at Hugh Hefner’s home, Richards
and saxophonist Keys accidentally set
fire to one of the bathrooms. “We were
going through a doctor’s bag and we
knocked over a candle,” says Richards.
At the same time, Jagger remem-
bers “all these dark moments” on the
tour. On the morning of July 17th in
Montreal, dynamite exploded be-
neath one of the band’s vans, destroy-
ing equipment. “It was kind of scary
because it was during the separatist
movement of Quebec,” says Jagger. “I
mean, it wasn’t just some random guy
trying to blow up a truck.” The show,
remarkably, went on that night, but a
riot ensued when 500 fans with coun-
terfeit tickets were turned away.
The following day, the band flew to
a small airport in Rhode Island. As
the entourage cleared customs, Rich-
ards took a nap on the side of a parked
firetruck. He woke up to the flashing
lights of a local newspaper photogra-
pher. “I just reacted,” Richards says.
“I got up and hit in the general direc-
tion of the light and busted the guy’s
camera. Things escalated from there.
Then the fucking FBI got involved.”
The photographer claimed he was
assaulted, and Richards and Jagger
were arrested and placed in a jail cell,
while an unruly audience at Boston
Garden waited. Fearing a riot, Boston
Mayor Kevin White organized their
release, and the band took the stage
after midnight. “There was never a
dull moment,” says Richards.
The offstage chaos was document-
ed by the legendary photographer
Robert Frank, who brought along a
camera for a documentary that, as
Jagger understood, would be “about
playing and about music.” Instead,
Cocksucker Blues was a cinéma vé-
rité experiment full of lurid scenes:
naked groupies having sex on an air-
plane, Jagger snorting cocaine, and
groupie heroin use. The band blocked
its release (though it became a popu-
lar bootleg). “[Robert] would initiate
things,” says Jagger. “Most documen-
tary filmmakers kind of get you to do
things that you perhaps wouldn’t do
if they weren’t there.” Jagger cites the
famous scene where Richards and
Keys threw a TV out of a Hyatt Hotel
window: “Robert would probably say
to Keith, ‘Keith, throw the TV out the
window.’ They probably weren’t going
to do that that morning.” But Rich-
ards disagrees. “Bobby Keys and I en-
gineered that,” he says. “We called the
cameraman ’round when we disman-
tled the TV. So that scene was direct-
ed by Bobby Keys and Keith fucking
Richards.”
The tour wrapped with four shows
at Madison Square Garden. Though
the Stones had played 48 shows in
only 54 days, they didn’t hold back.
The July 25th show featured a sen-
timental singalong of “You Can’t Al-
ways Get What You Want” and per-
haps the fiercest “All Down the Line”
ever played. “You almost feel like
you’re levitating on the energy from
the audience,” says Richards. “It’s a
strange experience.” The tour ended
the following night, on Jagger’s 29th
birthday. Wonder joined the band for
a raucous medley of “Uptight (Ev-
erything’s Alright)” and a revved-up,
horn-fueled take on “Satisfaction”
(Wonder said he wrote “Uptight” with
“Satisfaction” in mind). A cake was
rolled onstage, and the show ended
with a pie fight among bandmates.
The afterparty, thrown by Ahmet
Ertegun, included Muddy Waters,
Bob Dylan and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
It was the end of an era. Afterward,
Richards slid further into addiction,
and was arrested on heroin and gun
charges the next year. In 1974, after
only five years, Taylor left the band to
go solo. The Stones’ next North Ameri-
can tour, in 1975, featured stage props
like a giant inflatable phallus, and little
of the ragged charm of the 1972 tour.
PAUL NATKIN/GETTY IMAGES
“There were no sort of guidelines,”
Richards says. “You sort of made it up
and you went along. It was a good feel-
ing, that tour. A bit frenetic and a little
blurry, like an old movie, you know?
It was a bit jerky.” PATRICK DOYLE
M a y 4 , 2 017
Bowie and
Ronson in
London,
1973 1975
CBGB
PATTI SMITH
GROUP AND
TELEVISION
¥ OVER A two-month-long residency,
the Patti Smith Group went from
art project to formidable band –
and lower Manhattan’s CBGB was
well on the road to becoming one of
the most famous rock clubs in the
world. Much of the material that
ended up on Smith’s debut, Horses,
came to life at CB’s, with Smith im-
provising poetic chants as the band
brutalized simple chord patterns.
“CBGB was the ideal place to sound
a clarion call,” Smith wrote. Tele-
1972-73 WORLD TOUR

FROM TOP: ILPO MUSTO/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; © BOB GRUEN/BOBGRUEN.COM

vision, meanwhile, had just begun

DAVID BOWIE
emphasizing the guitar-weaving
tapestries they would immortalize
ZIGGY on Marquee Moon. Rock history
STARDUST was being made at a club with no
AND THE dressing rooms and an incontinent
SPIDERS
dog in residence – and the musi-
FROM MARS
cians knew it. “I remember one
¥ ÒI WANTED THE music to look like it sounded,” said David Bowie, who night standing outside CBGB, in the
doorway of the derelict hotel next
reigned over the moonage daydream of his greatest tour as a crim-
door, smoking a joint,” says Patti
son-haired, sparkly, makeup-slathered rock & roll space god. The Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, “and
music, thanks to the savage elegance of the Spiders From Mars, was realizing that this was the kind of
even wilder, with an intense symbiosis developing between Bowie and gathering of psychic energies I’d al-
chunky-toned guitarist Mick Ronson. “There was magic there,” says ways dreamed of when, say, I would
read about the San Francisco scene
keyboardist Mike Garson. Ziggymania broke out across the world,
in 1966.” WILL HERMES
and even as Bowie moved on, it never really stopped. ANDY GREENE

Smith in
New York,
1975

1973 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

VAN MORRISON
¥ IT TAKES an extraordinary band to
top the studio versions of songs like
“Domino” and “Cyprus Avenue,” but
with the 10-piece Caledonia Soul
Orchestra, Van Morrison pulled it
off night after night. With horns,
strings and blazing jazz chops, the
band was ready to “take the songs
anywhere Van wanted to take them,”
says guitarist John Platania. “Every
performance of each song was differ-
ent.” Morrison was, as usual, lost in
the music, getting so into it that he
gave himself backaches – the plat-
form shoes he was favoring at the
time probably didn’t help. He rarely
addressed the crowd, and kept his
band on its toes with subtle gestures
that sparked dynamic shifts worthy
of James Brown. “He had these sig-
nals behind his back,” says Platania.
“He would flash his hand and spread
his fingers out. We knew instantly we
had to bring it down and then build
it up again.” Morrison was stretching
out, toying with his phrasing, elon-
gating syllables like a jazz singer. The
band ended when the tour did – but
it lives on in Morrison’s It’s Too Late
to Stop Now, one of the most essen-
tial live albums of all time, recently
released in a gloriously extended
version. “We were sad to see it end,”
says Platania. “But in those days,
he would say stuff like, ‘The show
doesn’t have to go on.’ ” DAVID BROWNE

48 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
 50 CONCERTS
GREATEST

JULY 17-18, 1975

THE LYCEUM THEATRE, LONDON
¥ BOB MARLEY'S TWO con-
certs at the Lyceum The-
atre in London in July
BOB MARLEY
1975 were more than just
musically transcendent
shows: They were the tri-
umphant peak of Marley’s
first proper tour as a solo
artist and would elevate
him from cult act to in-
ternational icon – in part
thanks to Live!, a concert
document from the shows
that gave him his first in-
ternational Top 40 hit,
“No Woman, No Cry.”
“Lyceum was magic,” re-
calls Marley’s friend Nev-
ille Garrick, the Wail-
ers’ lighting designer and
art director at the time.
“It was an old theater, so
the acoustics were prop-
er....They took out all the
seats, and people were
going from the very first
song.” Booked in a small
room to drive up tick-
et demand, the Lyceum
shows sold out in a day,
and roughly 3,000 ticket-
less hopefuls mobbed the
streets outside the venue
on Marley’s first night
there, along with a pha-
lanx of cops. Some fans
nevertheless managed to
tear the fire doors off their
hinges and rush in, pack-
ing the room tighter still,
shoulder to shoulder. It
was so hot, condensation
was dripping from the ceil-
ing, and roof hatches had
to be opened to let air in.
Marley appeared before
the crowd like a proph-
et in a denim work shirt,
dreadlocks bobbing, and
few moments in pop are
as spine-tingling as the
opening of “No Woman,
No Cry,” the audience
IAN DICKSON/REX SHUTTERSTOCK

chanting the chorus like

a hymn before Marley had
even sung a word. Recalled
bassist Aston Barrett, “Ev-
Marley in
eryone onstage [got] high
London,
from the feedback of the 1975
people.” WILL HERMES

50 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 1975-76 NORTH
AMERICAN TOUR

BOB DYLAN
ROLLING THUNDER REVUE
¥ BOB DYLAN COULD have played arenas
when he toured to support 1976’s De-
sire. Instead, true to form, he did the
unexpected: He booked tiny theaters
with just days’ notice, charged less
than $9 per ticket and took along a
gaggle of friends – including Roger
McGuinn, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
and Joan Baez. Dylan had started
hanging around his old West Village
haunts with buddies from his folk-
ie days, and he wanted to take that
nostalgic spirit on the road. “We all
sing and sing and sing and laugh
until we pass out,” Baez told Roll-
i ng Ston e. “For us, it makes no
difference if we just play for 15 peo-
ple or 15,000.” Backed by one of his
best bands ever (including guitarist
Mick Ronson), Dylan stretched out
shows for as long as five hours – with
help from McGuinn, Elliott and oth-
ers, who would do their own sets and
join his. New tracks from Desire were
mixed with 1960s classics (“It Ain’t
Me Babe,” “Just Like a Woman”) and
covers (“Deportees”). The shows were
full of raw, spontaneous intimacy:
Dylan duetted with his ex-lover Baez,
did scorched-earth versions of “Idiot
Wind,” and pleaded for the release of
jailed boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Cart-
Dylan er. As Rolling Thunder participant
in 1975 Allen Ginsberg said, “Having gone
through his changes . . . Bob now has
his powers together.” ANDY GREENE

1977 GRATEFUL DEAD NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

¥ ÒOUR SECOND COMING,Ó says Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart
of the band’s 1977 North American tour. Everyone knew the Dead
could jam out infinitely. But that year they were discovering some-
thing new: that tight, songful concision could transport a crowd
just as easily. “We had a lot of new songs and wanted to get at ’em,”
says singer and guitarist Bob Weir. “And the only way to get at the
next song was to finish the one you were doing.” Ironically for a
band that had little use or patience for studios, it would be record-
ing sessions that strengthened its live approach. Terrapin Station,
of Olsen’s whip-cracking became clear as soon as the Dead went
back on the road – they tore into old favorites like “St. Stephen”
and tried new combinations, like going from the fast-paced “Scar-
let Begonias” into the churning “Fire on the Mountain,” and proved
their newly honed chops could help sculpt jams such as the 10-min-
ute “Terrapin Station.” “We felt like rock gods,” Weir says. It helped
that the band was in relatively good shape physically as well. “Jerry
was healthy,” says Hart. “That was a big thing.” The high point took
place on May 8th at Cornell University’s Barton Hall, regarded by
KEN REGAN/CAMERA 5

the group’s most recent LP, was recorded with Fleetwood Mac
producer Keith Olsen, who’d helmed their self-titled 1975 break-
through; he forced the Dead to prep and rehearse more than they
ever had. “Going in with Keith and having him organize and ar-
range all this stuff,” says Weir, “that gave us a solidity.” The results
Deadheads as the band’s greatest show ever. In the end, the 1977
tour completely changed the Dead’s sense of connection with fans,
and their own musical purpose. “That was an era where it started
to creep up on us that people came to hear the songs,” says Weir. “It
finally dawned on us: ‘Oh, that’s what it’s all about.’ ” DAVID BROWNE

52 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 Johnny
Ramone,
Liverpool,
May 1977

1977 EUROPEAN TOUR 1977-78 U.S.TOUR

THE RAMONES
¥ THE RAMONES ARRIVED in England with something to prove. The punk
revolution had broken out in London in 1977, with the Sex Pistols get-
ting wall-to-wall press and causing havoc. But no one in the nascent
CLASSIC
LIVE
PUNK LPS
The Stooges
Metallic KO
THE EAGLES
¥ THE CAREER-DEFINING two-year
stretch of shows that followed 1976’s
Hotel California saw the Eagles be-
come a stadium band. Yet in an era
in which rock shows were growing
bigger and more impersonal, the Ea-
gles’ studio perfectionists, Don Hen-
1976
U.K. punk scene was ready for the precision-strike arrival of the Ra- ley and Glenn Frey, found a way to
mones. In his memoir, Johnny Ramone wrote that at a Pistols show Elvis Costello re-create the feel and detail of their
and the albums onstage, with every harmo-
on their first night in town in December ’77, “Johnny Rotten asked Attractions ny and guitar lick seamlessly in place
me what I thought of them, and I told him . . . they stunk.” Live at the El decades before backing tapes and
Mocambo
Three days later, the Ramones unleashed a furious assault on the 1978 Auto-Tune made that process easier.
audience in Glasgow, opening with “Rockaway Beach” and not taking Hits like “Life in the Fast Lane” and
Minutemen “Take It to the Limit” were given al-
a break until 26 songs later. Playing to a punk-crazed English audi- Ballot Result most impossibly pristine treatment.
ence pushed the Ramones to play their most intense shows. The tour 1987
The tour itself was chaotic; at one
wrapped on New Year’s Eve at the Rainbow Theatre, their 148th show point, bassist Randy Meisner and
of the year. “Probably the best show the Ramones ever did,” said John- Frey got into a fistfight when Frey
IAN DICKSON/MEDIAPUNCH

ny. Amazingly, Joey had been singing through incredible pain; he’d called Meisner a “pussy.” But you
suffered third-degree burns on his neck when a makeshift humidifi- wouldn’t have known it watching
their sets. “Some critic said we used
er exploded on him. Said Ramones co-manager Linda Stein, “[John- to go out onstage and loiter,” Hen-
ny] came to me and said. . . ‘Put me in a wheelchair and get me on a ley said. “I think we accomplished a
plane before I go insane.’” He wanted to be sedated. ANDY GREENE great deal.” DAVID BROWNE

54 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
Springsteen
airborne in
Detroit,
September
1978
 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
1978
AMERICAN
TOUR AND THE E STREET BAND
¥ IT HAD BEEN three very long
years since Born to Run made
Bruce Springsteen a nation-
al star. A bitter lawsuit filed
against his former manager in
1976 left him legally unable to
enter a studio for two years be-
fore making Darkness on the
Edge of Town. “Prove It All
Night,” his new single, stalled at
Number 33 on the charts. Any-
thing radio-friendly, like “Fire”
and “Because the Night,” was
held off Darkness to maintain
the starker atmosphere Spring-
steen wanted for his set of songs
about the reality of everyday
working life. To many, all of this
was evidence that Springsteen
was in decline. So he did the
thing he could do better than al-
most anyone alive: He went on
tour. “With the burden of prov-
ing I wasn’t a has-been at 28,” he
wrote in his 2016 memoir, Born
to Run, “I headed out on the
road performing long, sweat-
drenched rock shows featuring
the new album.”
Springsteen and the E Street
Band played 115 shows across
North America, the longest se-
ries of dates they would ever
play in a single year. Even the
soundchecks were grueling.
“Literally, we would play ‘Thun-
der Road’ for a half-hour and
Bruce would walk around and
sit in every section and make
sure the sound was as good as
possible,” says drummer Max
Weinberg. “Look, Bruce took
ROBERT MATHEU/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX
his fun very seriously.” Not ev-
eryone thought it was so much
fun. “I thought it was a little
self-indulgent and a little bit
silly,” says bassist Garry Tall-
ent. “We would do four-hour
soundchecks and then a three-
and-a-half-hour show. We were
younger then.”
M a y 4 , 2 017
Sets featured the majority of
the new album, a big chunk of
Born to Run and favorites off
the first two discs, like “Spirit in
the Night” and “Rosalita (Come
Out Tonight).” After so much
time off, the band played with a
stunning mix of pent-up energy
and technical precision. “Any-
one can be great on any given
night,” says Weinberg. “To re-
ally be great every night takes
a lot of willpower, a lot of dedi-
cation, a lot of self-confidence,
a lot of respect for your audi-
ence – tremendous respect for
the audience.”
Live, the songs complete-
ly transformed from their re-
corded versions. For “Prove
It All Night,” the band added
a piano and guitar intro that
built to a furious climax, and
“Backstreets” developed an
emotional spoken-word inter-
lude about lost love that even-
tually morphed into “Drive All
Night,” from The River. “Even
at that point, the whole thing
was ‘You have to see them live
– you can’t go by the record,’ ”
says Tallent.
As the tour crisscrossed the
nation, with five shows get-
ting broadcast on the radio
and quickly hitting the boot-
leg market, a new respect for
the album took hold. “Night
after night, we sent our listen-
ers away, back to the recorded
versions of this music,” Spring-
steen wrote in Born to Run,
“newly able to hear their beau-
ty and restrained power.”
One particularly great show
took place at the tiny Agora
Ballroom in Cleveland. Open-
ing with a ferocious cover of
Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime
Blues” and wrapping up three
hours later with a wild “Twist
PROVING
IT EVERY
NIGHT
Four decades of electrifying
shows from an artist who
never took a night off
ÔBorn to RunÕ Tour 1975
New E Streeters Steven Van
Zandt, Max Weinberg and Roy
Bittan helped Springsteen live
up to the insane hype of Born
to Run and bring its wall of
sound to life night after night.
ÔGhost of Tom
JoadÕ Tour 1995-97
Springsteen hit theaters armed
with an acoustic guitar and
delivered spare, powerful
renditions of his songs. After a
down period, the tour rebooted
his entire career.
The E Street
Reunion 1999-2000
Ten years after Springsteen
fired his most famous band,
they all came back together
for an emotional tour. “We did
a run at MSG that was so over-
the-top,” says Weinberg. “Some
of the best shows we ever did.”
ÔWorking on a
DreamÕ Tour 2009
The final tour before the
death of Clemons featured
performances of Springsteen’s
classic records, ending with
Greetings From Asbury Park,
N.J. It was the perfect way to
say goodbye to the Big Man.
RollingStone.com |
and Shout,” it became one of the
most coveted bootlegs in rock
history. “It was really hot,” says
Weinberg. “Just sweltering. It
was incredibly exciting. Then
you just get on the bus and go
to the next gig. It was like that
about five nights a week with
two days off.”
Word of Springsteen’s glori-
ous return prompted CBS Rec-
ords to mount a huge billboard
of his image on the Sunset Strip,
advertising the album and tour
but making no mention of the
band. “It was the ugliest thing
I’ve ever seen,” Springsteen told
a radio DJ. One night, Spring-
steen snuck up to the roof of
a nearby building with Tall-
ent and saxophonist Clarence
Clemons. Armed with cans of
black spray paint, Springsteen
hoisted himself onto Clemons’
massive shoulders and wrote
“Prove It All Night E Street”
across the entire thing. “We
didn’t deface it,” says Tallent
with a laugh. “We corrected it.
That was our way of letting peo-
ple know to not expect the next
coming of Christ. It’s just a rock
& roll show.”
Darkness on the Edge of
Town still wasn’t a commer-
cial hit by the end of the run,
but critics across the coun-
try hailed the tour as the best
of the year, and the album re-
mained at the core of Spring-
steen’s set list for decades to
come. “[They] are perhaps the
purest distillation of what I
wanted my rock & roll music to
be about,” Springsteen wrote.
“[On the last stand of the tour]
an exploding firecracker tossed
by an inebriated ‘fan’ opened up
a small slash underneath my
eye. A little blood’d been drawn,
but we were back.” ANDY GREENE
R ol l i n g S t o n e | 57

1979 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
THE CLASH
¥ THEY CALLED IT the Pearl Harbour
Tour, and they opened each night
with a slashing version of “I’m So
Bored With the USA.” For an English
punk band trying to break through in
the States, it was an interesting mar-
keting approach. “England’s becom-
ing claustrophobic for us,” Joe Strum-
mer told Rolling Stone. “I think
touring America could be a new lease
on life.” With a touring budget of
just $30,000 from their record label
(most of which they gave to opening
act Bo Diddley), the Clash stormed
the heartland and made converts
wherever they went. During down-
time on their tour bus, they watched
a VHS copy of Star Wars over and
over. They hit the Palladium in New
York in February, blowing away a
crowd that included Andy Warhol
and Bruce Springsteen. “Every coun-
try has one thing in common, which
is they all listen to shit music,” said
co-leader Mick Jones. “We’re here to
alleviate that.” ANDY GREENE
1980-81 ÔTHE WALLÕ TOUR
PINK FLOYD
¥ PINK FLOYD'S 1979 rock opera, The
Wall, was their most ambitious
album to date, and when they took it
on the road the next year they knew a
traditional stage show would simply
not do it justice. Pushing the limits of
concert technology, they built an ac-
tual wall during the first half of every
show, then played the bulk of the sec-
ond half behind it, obscured from
the audience. “Not much spontane-
ity,” said drummer Nick Mason, “but
we’re not known for our duckwalking
and gyrating around onstage.”
The logistics were so daunting
that they staged it only 31 times
across 16 months, hitting just four
cities: Los Angeles; London; Dort-
mund, Germany; and Uniondale,
New York. The most dramatic mo-
ment of the show happened near the
end, when the wall came tumbling
down. “The first couple of bricks
would terrify people in the front
rows,” said guitarist David Gilmour.
“The audience would think they
were going to be killed.” A.G.
58 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST
1983 ÔSPEAKING IN TONGUESÕ TOUR
ÔTHE WALLÕ
TOUR:
BY THE
TALKING HEADS
¥ IT WAS AN image that defined Talk-
ing Heads for a generation of music
fans – skinny, nervous David Byrne
saw Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall off to
the side of the stage – she was danc-
ing, Mick wasn’t.” The Greek Theater
NUMBERS on the Speaking in Tongues tour, in Berkeley the following month was
The 31-date
tour was
struggling to dance in a cartoon- a similar bacchanal. “We’d begun to
the most ishly huge white suit. “What I re- get the Deadhead crowd,” Frantz
technically alized years before,” Byrne says, “is says, laughing.
complex in I had to find my own way of mov- In late 1983, the band decided
rock at that ing that wasn’t a white rock guy try- to document the tour with a con-
point. Here’s a ing to imitate black people, or bring cert film, and teamed up with direc-
look at what
went into it. some other kind of received visual tor Jonathan Demme (who would
or choreographic language into pop later win an Oscar for The Silence
Number music. . . . I just thought, ‘No, no, you of the Lambs). “We didn’t want any
of white have to invent it from scratch.’ ” of the bullshit,” says Frantz of the
fireproof, Since forming in the mid-Seven- band’s initial idea for Stop Making
reinforced
cardboard
ties, Talking Heads had gone from Sense. “We didn’t want the clichés.
boxes that CBGB New Wavers to one of the big- We didn’t want close-ups of people’s
made up gest bands in America. For the tour to fingers while they’re doing a guitar
the wall: support 1983’s Speaking in Tongues, solo. We wanted the camera to lin-
340 their most popular album to date, ger, so you could get to know the mu-
they reinvented themselves, growing sicians a little bit.”
Number from a quartet to a nine-piece funk Shot over three nights at the Pan-
of feet a mob that included P-Funk keyboard- tages Theater in Los Angeles, Stop
hydraulic
ist Bernie Worrell, Brothers Johnson Making Sense may be the greatest
lift hoisted
Gilmour guitarist Alex Weir and vocalist Lynn concert movie. It begins with Byrne
into the air Mabry. Byrne also took cues from the walking onto a deserted stage with
every night experimental visual-art world, pro- a boombox, setting it down, press-
to play his jecting abstract slides onto a spare ing “play,” then reimagining “Psy-
“Comfortably backdrop, creating a stark aesthetic cho Killer” for acoustic guitar and
Numb” solo
on top of
to match the band’s driving, unclut- 808 drum-machine beats. His band-
the wall: tered funk. The suit was inspired in mates and backing musicians join
part by Japanese Noh theater. him incrementally, song by song.
33 What emerged was arty dance- “It’s cut down,” Byrne notes, com-
Number of party transcendence. Byrne and paring the film to the two-hour
dollars the drummer Chris Frantz recall the shows, “but there were no other sub-
band earned two-night run at New York’s Forest stantial changes.”
from the Hills Tennis Stadium in August as The effect was so real, people ac-
entire tour,
a highlight. “Madonna had just re- tually got up and danced in movie
excluding
keyboardist leased her first record; she was walk- theaters. “I’d never seen that before,”
Richard ing around barefoot,” Frantz says. “I Frantz says. “Or since.” WILL HERMES
Wright, who
was fired
FELA KUTI
during the
making of the
album and
JUNE 23,
1984
was brought
on as a
hired hand:
$0.00
GLASTONBURY
¥ IF ANYONE at the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival didn’t already know Fela
Kuti, they soon learned why he was one of the planet’s most electric
artists. Before his biggest international crowd to date, Fela played
big-band Afrobeat that owed as much to James Brown’s funk as to
the high life of his native Nigeria. Fela managed just two songs in two
hours – but the grooves were so intoxicating, no one minded. “The love
the audience gave was fantastic,” recalls son Femi Kuti, who backed
him on sax that day. He left a legend in his wake. W.H.
M a y 4 , 2 017
 1986 ÔRAISING
HELLÕ TOUR

RUN-DMC
¥ ÒTHERE WAS NO concept of charts
and no concept of airplay,” says LL
Cool J, describing the landscape for
Run-DMC’s 1986 tour, which fea-
tured LL, the Beastie Boys, Who-
dini and others as openers. That
underground status changed two
months into the tour, when Run-
DMC had a breakout MTV hit with
their Aerosmith collaboration “Walk
This Way,” from their Raising Hell
album. “Motherfuckers in the front
row started looking like the Ra-
mones and Cyndi Lauper,” says DMC
of the new white fans who came to
check out their shows. “We got a
bunch of Madonnas asking for au-
tographs.” DMC also noticed that
cross-cultural appeal working the
other way as a predominantly black
audience embraced the tour’s beer-
spraying opening act, the Beastie
Boys, then months away from re-
leasing their debut LP, Licensed to
Ill. “The Beasties were crazy,” recalls
rapper Ecstasy of Whodini. “They
created an illusion that they were
happy-go-lucky and careless, but
they were on top of their shit. They
Prince in were the white Run-DMC.” Compe-
Detroit, 1985 tition among the artists was fierce. “I
wanted to chain-saw the audience,”

1984-85 ÔPURPLE RAINÕ TOUR

says LL Cool J, who was 18 years old
at the time. Toward the end of the

PRINCE
tour, a riot at a show in Long Beach,
California, provided fuel for neg-
ative media coverage. But Raising
Hell’s positive legacy is undeniable.
As DMC says today, “When Obama
first got elected, all my white friends
said, ‘That’s because of what Run-
¥ ON EACH NIGHT of the Purple Rain tour, Prince and the Revolution DMC did.’ ” CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
huddled backstage for a prayer. “It was a meaningful ritual,” says
FROM TOP: NEAL PRESTON; ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

bassist Mark Brown. “The crowds were so loud, and it was so crazy,
that we needed each other because that was the only thing you had:
each other for support.” With Prince’s movie Purple Rain catapulting
the singer toward megastardom, the 98 shows he did in support of
the soundtrack album were like Broadway productions. Prince began
the show ascending from beneath the stage on a hydraulic lift, and
went through five costume changes. “He had all these visual cues,”
recalls keyboardist Lisa Coleman. “He’d throw a hankie into the air,
and when the hankie hit the ground, that’s when we would stop.” At
the Los Angeles Forum, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna joined
Prince for the encore, which included a nearly half-hour-long ver- Run and DMC
sion of “Purple Rain.” “He wanted to tower over everybody,” says key- (from left) in
Amsterdam, 1987
boardist Matt Fink. “He was the Muhammad Ali of rock.” DAVID BROWNE

M a y 4 , 2 017 R ol l i n g S t o n e | 59
 50 CONCERTS
GREATEST

1988-89 DAMAGED JUSTICE TOUR

METALLICA
¥ IN 1988, METALLICA released their piv-
otal album . . . And Justice for All and
went from thrash-metal renegades
to mainstream stars. But when their
manager suggested an arena tour
to support the LP, the band wasn’t
convinced. “I was like, ‘Seriously?’ ”
drummer Lars Ulrich recalls. “We
knew we could do L.A., New York,
San Francisco, but the American
heartland didn’t seem like a great
idea. No band as extreme as ours
had ever done a full arena tour. So
we used Indianapolis as a yardstick.
If we were cool there, we were cool
almost anywhere. When the tick-
ets went on sale in Indianapolis, we
ended up doing 13,000 or 14,000,
which in 1988 was an insane victory.”
On the Damaged Justice Tour,
Metallica learned just how many
authenticity-starved headbangers
were really out there. The band got
the first taste of its transformative
power in the summer of 1988 when
it was booked onto the Monsters of
Rock Tour, opening for Van Halen
and Scorpions. At the L.A. Colise-
um, fans responded to Metallica’s set
by flinging their folding chairs at the
stage to create a football-field-size
mosh pit. “It was bonkers,” says bass-
ist Jason Newsted, who had recently
joined the band, replacing the late
Cliff Burton. “For a kid coming off
a farm and jumping into my favor-
ite band, it was very dreamy. I didn’t
sleep. Every day was another dream
coming true.” He also got a lesson in
how to conduct himself on the road.
“I’d walk on the crew bus of a big band
and there’s a pile of blow on the table
in the front lounge,” Newsted recalls.
“I look over there at my heroes, all
red and swollen, and I’m like, ‘Guess
what I’m not gonna do? That!’ ” The
kickoff of the Damaged Justice Tour
coincided with the success of Metal-
lica’s anti-war-themed video for their
new single, “One,” which quickly be-
came an MTV hit. At the peak of
bloated hair metal, Metallica were
playing jagged seven-to-nine-min-
ute-long thrash odysseys. But the
crowds at their shows kept growing.
“The kids know that at the end of the
day there’s something very real and
Madonna
honest about what we do,” Ulrich told
in Tokyo,
Rolling Stone in 1989. “You can’t 1990
take that away from us.” KORY GROW

62 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 1990 BLOND AMBITION TOUR

MADONNA
Cobain at
the 1991
Reading
Festival

¥ AS MADONNAÕS career was taking off
in the mid-Eighties, most of her tours
were relatively straightforward af-
fairs, based around her singing and
dancing. But for the stadium blow-
outs that supported her 1989 classic,
Ciccone, to design sets, and creat-
ing the costumes with fashion de-
signer Jean Paul Gaultier. “I tried
to make the show accommodate my
own short attention span,” she said.
“We put the songs together so there

1991 EUROPEAN TOUR

Like a Prayer, she wanted to up her was an emotional arc in the show.
game. In the process, she reinvented I basically thought of vignettes for

the pop megatour itself. “I really put
a lot of myself into it,” she said. “It’s
much more theatrical than anything
I’ve ever done.” That year, Madonna
SONIC YOUTH
every song.”
Starting out in Japan in April
1990 and hitting the U.S. the follow-
ing month, the tour grossed almost

had caused a nationwide controversy
with the video for “Like a Prayer,”
which daringly mixed sexual and re-
ligious imagery. Blond Ambition ex-
tended that provocation and upped
the spectacle.
The show opened with Madonna
climbing down a staircase into a fac-
tory world inspired by German ex-
pressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang.
She sang in a giant cathedral for
“Like a Prayer” and under a beauty-
shop hair dryer in “Material Girl.”
And, most infamously, she simulated
masturbation while wearing a cone-
shaped bustier on a crimson bed
during “Like a Virgin.” “The Blond
Ambition Tour was what really cat-
apulted her into the stratosphere,”
says Vincent Paterson, the tour’s co-
director and choreographer.
Madonna took a hands-on ap-
proach to the show, working with
her brother, painter Christopher
$63 million. But it didn’t go off with-
out any complications: Madonna
had to ditch the blond-ponytail hair
extensions she wore early in the tour
because they kept getting caught in
her headset microphone. And in To-
ronto, the masturbation sequence
almost got her and her dancers ar-
rested in what became a bonding
moment for her entire crew.
Madonna’s close relationship with
her collaborators would be a major
theme in the blockbuster 1991 tour
documentary Truth or Dare, espe-
cially in memorable scenes where
she invited her backup dancers into
her bed. Today, Blond Ambition’s
over-the-top intimacy is a staple of
live pop music, from Lady Gaga to
Miley Cyrus. In 1990, it was a revolu-
tion. “It was a kind of turning point,”
says Darryl Jones, who played bass
on the tour. “A lot of young girls were
watching.” STEVE KNOPPER
AND NIRVANA
¥ IN THE SUMMER before they released
Nevermind, Nirvana were still a
largely unknown band. They booked
a series of European festival dates,
opening for their friends Sonic Youth
– and witnessed for the first time
their power to convert and ignite
huge crowds. “It was passionate. It
was reckless,” says Thurston Moore
of Sonic Youth, who also astounded
audiences with their New York
noise-rock. “[Nirvana] were going
on at 2:00 in the afternoon, playing
a 20-minute set. But there was this
massive amount of pogo’ing going
on.” With drummer Dave Grohl on
tour with the band for the first time,
and the new Nevermind material,
Nirvana were received almost like
headliners. Kurt Cobain biographer
Charles Cross called it Cobain’s “hap-

1990 PUBLIC ENEMY

piest time as a musician.” Recalls
SIZZLING Grohl, “Everything was still very in-
SUMMER TOUR nocent.” A documentary of the tour,
1991: The Year Punk Broke, captured
¥ FOR THE TOUR to support their groundbreaking LP Fear of a Black Cobain spraying champagne all over
Planet, Public Enemy wanted a show to match their music’s com- a dressing room and Grohl and bass-
bative assault. “OK, if we’re gonna fill a stage, everything’s gotta be ist Krist Novoselic gleefully tearing
moving,” leader Chuck D recalls of the band’s approach. They’d built through a backstage cheese plate.
The high point for Moore was in
their live rep on short, explosive sets. Now they packed an hour with Brussels, where security tried to stop
Chuck as bullhorn MC and Flava Flav as his firecracker comic foil, Nirvana’s nightly ritual of smashing
leaping across the stage and diving into the crowd. In Houston, Ice their gear, and Novoselic had to be
Cube joined them to perform his guest verse on “Burn Hollywood pulled down as he tried to climb up
the closing stage curtains. “It was,”
Burn,” a song that became each night’s incendiary high point. “We says Moore, “the most perverse, de-
didn’t need to use pyro,” says Chuck. “When I see acts use pyro, I’m constructed, psychedelic freakout
like, ‘What lazy fucks.’ ” CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN concert I’ve ever seen.” JON DOLAN

M a y 4 , 2 017 RollingStone.com | R ol l i n g S t o n e | 63
1992-93

U
ZOO TV TOUR

2
¥ FOR ITS FIRST tour of the Nineties, the
biggest rock band in the world had
one simple goal: to completely rein-
vent itself as a live act. U2 had just
given their sound a full-scale make-
over with 1991’s Achtung Baby – a
groundbreaking fusion of rock, pop,
electronic dance grooves and kraut-
rock – and they needed a tour that re-
flected their sleek, challenging new
music. “We were drawn to anything
that was going to give us a chance to
get away from the Joshua Tree ear-
nestness,” said the Edge, “which had
become so stifling.”
The notion of U2 as the inheritors of
rock’s social mission had been central
to their Eighties stardom. But as the
band was well aware, it was increas-
ingly out of step with an era defined
by groups like Nirvana and Pearl Jam,

64 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
 Bono in the
Netherlands,
1993

who cast a skeptical eye at sweep-
ing Joshua Tree-style rock heroism.
For the Achtung Baby tour, U2 were
ready to loosen up and throw a dance
party, albeit a subversive one, packed
with multimedia images that were a
clear break from the stark purity of
their Eighties stage sets. “The tour
was being conceived at the same time
as the album,” Bono recalled in 2005.
“Zoo radio was a phenomenon before
reality TV, with so-called shock jocks
such as Howard Stern. It was aggres-
sive, raw radio, the precursor to The
Jerry Springer Show. The world was
getting tired of fiction. . . . We wanted
to make a tour that referenced this
zoo/reality phenomenon.”
Extensive cable news coverage was
a fact of life by the early Nineties;
during the Gulf War, images of Scud
missiles raining down on Iraq be-
came dinnertime entertainment. U2
essentially turned the Zoo TV set into
a postmodern art installation that
reflected the numbing cacophony of
the cable-TV era, playing in front of a
mosaic of TV screens that mashed up
war footage with old sitcoms, cook-
ing shows and everything in between.
Bono, meanwhile, came up with
a new, sly persona to match the new
stage set. He donned an Elvis-style
leather jacket, wraparound sun-
glasses and leather pants that evoked
Jim Morrison. He took this rock star
amalgamation and created a char-
acter called the Fly. “When I put on
those glasses, anything goes,” Bono
told Rolling Stone. “The charac-
ter is just on the edge of lunacy. It’s
megalomania and paranoia.”
Zoo TV opened in Florida on Feb-
ruary 29th, 1992. If the staging and
Bono’s wild get-up weren’t enough in-
dications this was a new U2, the band
kicked things off with eight consecu-
tive songs from Achtung Baby. “Peo-
ple went for it,” Bono said to Roll-
ing Stone later that year. “The first
show, you just didn’t know. ‘How is
this going to go down?’ And they
went for it. I think our audiences
are smart and that they expect us to
push and pull them a bit. They had to
swallow blues on Rattle and Hum, for
God’s sake! They can take it.”
The tour’s first leg coincided with
the 1992 presidential race, and every
night from the stage Bono called the
White House and asked to speak
with President Bush. “Operator Two
and I had a great relationship,” Bono
said. “She tried not to show it, but I
could tell she was very amused, as we
rang her night after night.”
Bush never took the call, but a
young Arkansas governor was all
66 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST
too happy to talk to the band. U2
met with Bill Clinton in Chicago in
September 1992 during the tour and
forged what became an enduring re-
lationship. The sitting president was
unmoved. “I have nothing against
U2,” Bush told a crowd in Bowling
Green, Ohio, that month. “You may
not know this, but they tried to call
me at the White House every night
during their concert. But the next
time we face a foreign-policy crisis, I
will work with John Major and Boris
Yeltsin, and Bill Clinton can consult
with Boy George.”
For opening acts, U2 chose artists
who enhanced the idea of the band
as a gathering point for pop music
in an increasingly fragmented era –
from Public Enemy to the Ramones,
Velvet Underground and Pearl Jam.
Eddie Vedder was initially skepti-
cal about the scale of Zoo TV, but he
came around. “[I eventually] under-
stood that these weren’t decisions
they were making out of fashion or
simply being clever,” Vedder said. “It
was like an edict they’d created as a
new philosophy for the group, to re-
ally explore the avenues of connect-
ing to people on a large level.”
During a break in early 1993, U2
recorded Zooropa, which took the
experiments of Achtung Baby fur-
ther. When the tour resumed, Bono
devised a new character: MacPhis-
to, a devilish figure with white face
paint and horns. “The character was
a great device for saying the opposite
of what you meant,” said the Edge.
“One highlight was calling the minis-
ter of fisheries in Norway, young Jan
Henri Olsen, to congratulate him on
whaling, which was forbidden by the
European Union but legal in Norway.
He actually took the call and invited
Bono to come and have a whale steak
with him.”
Those phone calls became a major
part of each performance – some
nights Bono ordered pizzas for the
crowd; on another he rang Madonna
on her cellphone (she didn’t pick up).
As venues got bigger, U2 kept things
intimate by adding a miniset to the
show, playing on a tiny stage.
The wall-to-wall video screens
also set the scene for every pop spec-
tacle that followed, from Lady Ga-
ga’s Monster Ball to Kanye West’s
Glow in the Dark Tour. “Zoo TV
wasn’t a set piece, it was a state of
mind,” said the Edge. For Bono, the
experience was life-changing: “I’ve
had to stop ‘not drinking.’ I’ve had
to smoke incessantly. I’ve learned to
be insincere. I’ve learned to lie. I’ve
never felt better!” ANDY GREENE
On the
360° Tour,
Australia,
2010
FIVE MORE U2 TOURS
FOR THE AGES
U2 established themselves as one of rock’s greatest
live bands by crafting spectacles full of inventiveness
and emotion. And every one was totally distinct
'War' Tour 1982-83
U2 were still mainly a club act when they decided to shoot
a concert movie at Colorado’s Red Rocks. Despite playing in
a torrential downpour, the band put on a show that would
define its image as flag-waving rock redeemers. “After Red
Rocks,” said Bono, “the band went into overdrive.”
'The Joshua Tree' Tour 1987
While most bands in the Eighties went for pomp and excess,
U2 headed in the opposite direction. Right from the opening
number – “Where the Streets Have No Name,” played before
a solid-red backdrop – they found power in simplicity. “We
didn’t have any tricks,” said Adam Clayton. “We had a fervent
belief that the music was...big enough to fill a stadium.”
Elevation Tour 2001
After spending the 1990s in stadiums, the group decided
it was time to scale things back for the tour in support of
PREVIOUS SPREAD: GERT VAN KESTERN/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX. THIS PAGE: MATT JELONEK/WIREIMAGE
2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. U2 made arenas feel
like nightclubs by putting fans in the center of a heart-shape
stage and mixing in hits with new classics like “Beautiful Day.”
“It felt like we were reconnecting with our audience,” said
Larry Mullen. “And they with us.”
U2 360° Tour 2009-11
U2 couldn’t keep their stadium itch at bay forever. For the
360° tour, they placed a 164-foot-tall stage set – the largest
ever constructed – in midfloor to allow great views from every
seat. The stage was buttressed by giant four-legged supports;
the band likened it to a spaceship and displayed messages
from the International Space Station during the show. “We’re
at the absolute limit when you consider the economics and
the practicality of transportation,” said the Edge.
Innocence + Experience Tour 2015
U2’s 2014 LP Songs of Innocence was an extremely personal
collection of songs about Bono’s childhood. The band
wanted the supporting tour to capture that intimacy. Playing
on a stage that spanned the entire arena, U2 performed
while walking through gigantic LED screens projecting
images from throughout their lives. “The breaking down
of the fourth wall has been the theme of all of U2’s live
shows,” said Bono.
M a y 4 , 2 017

JUNE 28, 1997 GLASTONBURY
RADIOHEAD
¥ THE SCENE RADIOHEAD encoun-
tered at 1997’s Glastonbury Fes-
tival looked more like a war zone
than a concert. It had been pour-
ing rain for days, forcing the 90,000
fans at the remote field in Somer-
set, England, to live like refugees
in a monsoon. Two stages sank into
the mud, and some fans actually
came down with the World War
I-era malady trench foot. Early in
Radiohead’s set, Thom Yorke’s mon-
itor melted down. The lighting rig
was shining directly into his face,
meaning he couldn’t see in addi-
tion to being unable to hear himself
play. “If I’d found the guy who was
running the PA system that day,”
Yorke told a journalist, “I would have
gone backstage and throttled him.
Everything was going wrong. Every-
thing blew up.”
68 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
Yorke
in Los
Angeles
Weeks after releasing their ca-
reer-defining album, OK Comput-
er, it looked like Radiohead might
flop during a headlining set at the
world’s biggest music festival. In-
stead, the chaos inspired one of
the band’s greatest performances.
Rage poured through Yorke all night
long, giving extra fire to eight songs
from OK Computer, plus nearly all
of The Bends – and even a crowd-
pleasing version of their first hit,
“Creep.” It was a transcendent per-
formance, even if Yorke didn’t real-
ize it at the time. “I thundered off-
stage at the end, really ready to kill,”
he said. “And my girlfriend grabbed
me, made me stop, and said, ‘Lis-
ten!’ And the crowd were just going
wild. It was amazing.” In 2006, Q
magazine voted it the greatest con-
cert in British history. ANDY GREENE
1997 AMERICAN TOUR
SLEATER-
KINNEY
¥ IN EARLY 1997, the most exciting new
band in rock was a trio of young
women driving their own van across
the country, with only their friend
Tim along as a roadie. “We’d get to
the club,” recalls Sleater-Kinney
singer-guitarist Corin Tucker, “and
the sound man would be like, ‘Wait.
You’re the band? You? You girls?’ ”
But playing songs from its album
Dig Me Out, the group bulldozed the
staid indie-rock scene with unbridled
punk-rock exuberance. “In Atlanta,
THE 10 women got onstage and took their
EVOLUTION OF shirts off and danced with us,” says
RADIOHEADÕS co-leader Carrie Brownstein. “I don’t
know if they’d ever felt that freedom
STADIUM-SIZE before, and I was really proud to pro-
ART ROCK vide the soundtrack for that.” JON DOLAN
May 27, 1994
This version of
“My Iron Lung”
ended up on Vedder
The Bends. in 1998
July 4, 2000
A sneak preview
of Kid A that left
Berlin stunned.
June 17, 2006
At Bonnaroo,
playing early
versions of In
Rainbows songs.
1998 AMERICAN TOUR
PEARL JAM
¥ BY THE MID-NINETIES, Pearl Jam
were in serious danger of implod-
ing, thanks to intraband tensions
and a self-defeating war against
Ticketmaster that had left them al-
most unable to tour. But they started
over with 1998’s aptly named Yield,
their most collaborative album yet,
FROM LEFT: MARTY TEMME; KENEI SATO/NEWSCOM
and when they hit the road with a
new drummer, Soundgarden’s Matt
Cameron, the shows fulfilled their
promise as one of rock’s all-time
great live acts. New tracks (“Given
to Fly,” “Do the Evolution”) were in-
stant crowd favorites, and classics
like “Alive” sounded bigger than ever.
“We’re making up for lost time here,”
Eddie Vedder told the crowd one
night. “Thanks for waiting.” A.G.
M a y 4 , 2 017
 Launching a
smooth tequila with
a not-so-smooth name.
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DECEMBER 31, 1999 2006-07 DAFT PUNK ALIVE
TOUR

PHISH
BIG CYPRESS
¥ FOR PHISHÕS Trey Anastasio, this co-
lossal one-band festival, at a South
Florida Native American reservation,
was “the culmination” of the band’s
first run. “Eighty thousand people
came from all over,” he said, “and
virtually nothing went wrong.” The
fest’s final set began around mid-
night, and went on for more than
seven hours, displaying every side
of peak Phish, a singular mix of in-
joke quirks and ESP-level improv.
¥ IN THE EARLY AUGHTS, electronic-dance live “performances” were rare-
ly more than one or two dudes nodding their heads around laptops.
All that changed at Coachella on April 29th, 2006, when Daft Punk
unveiled their genre’s most dazzling musical spectacle. In the over-
heated, overcrowded darkness of the festival’s Sahara Tent, two hel-
meted, robotlike figures – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de
Homem-Christo – stood inside a 24-foot aluminum pyramid cov-
ered in high-intensity LED panels and performed their catalog as a
megamix to nearly 40,000 fans. “It was the most synced-up we ever
felt,” Bangalter said. What might have been a legendary one-off be-
came a 2007 tour that blew minds across Europe, the U.S., Japan
and Australia, inspiring the likes of Skrillex and untold others. W.H.
PHISH'S
WILDEST
SHOWS 2008-13 WORLDWIDE TOUR

LEONARD COHEN
Toward the end came an unforget-
Tweezerfest
table take on the “Sunrise” section of DALLAS, 1994
“Also Sprach Zarathustra,” played as With the
the sun actually rose. “I will never lis- Who’s
ten to that tape because I know what “Sparks” and
a letdown it would be compared to Prince’s
“Purple Rain”
what it was actually like,” Anastasio popping up
¥ IT STARTED AS a finan-
said. “When that sun came up, and along the cial rescue mission.
the sky was blazing pink, it was an way. After Leonard Cohen
indescribable moment.” WILL HERMES learned, at age 70, that
Glens his manager/sometime-
Falls, NY lover had absconded
1994
with most of his life sav-

FEBRUARY 20, 2004

Phish play
the Beatles’ ings, he realized that his
entire White only chance of replen-

BRIAN WILSON
Album. ishing his funds was to
go on tour. Cohen wasn’t
Las Vegas sure how many fans
2014
A spooky he had left, so he first
instrumental agreed only to a test run
second of theater dates in far-
THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL set with
haunted-
flung Canadian towns. Cohen in
Though he’d never Holland,
house sound
¥ FOR DECADES, Brian Wilson avoid- effects.
much enjoyed touring, 2008
ed even talking about Smile, the Cohen was a unique-
psychedelic follow-up to the Beach ly charismatic live performer. Even new songs and stretching the run-
Boys’ Pet Sounds he shelved under those first shows stretched past the ning time to three and a half hours,
the stresses of drug abuse and psy- two-hour mark, mixing elegant re- even skipping offstage before the en-
chiatric problems. At a 2002 Pet arrangements of 1960s classics like cores. “Leonard was really good at
Sounds show in London, though, “Suzanne” and “Bird on the Wire” conserving his strength and block-
someone said to the promoter, “How with more recent tunes like “Waiting ing out distractions and prioritiz-
can we possibly top this?” The idea for the Miracle” and “Boogie Street.” ing his energy,” says Robinson. “He
of a Smile tour came up. “We all kind His voice had deepened considerably, lived an almost monastic lifestyle
of chuckled,” says Wilson keyboard- but that only gave it more authority even though he wasn’t a real monk.”
ist Darian Sahanaja. But 20 months and character. “It’s like he was whis- By the time he played his final
later, after poring over the old Smile pering into your ear,” says longtime show, in Auckland, New Zealand,
tapes, Wilson walked onstage and backup singer Sharon Robinson. Cohen had gone from cult favor-
ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

finally delivered on his decades- The shows were spectacular, and ite to cross-generational icon. After
old promise of a “teenage sympho- word-of-mouth spread quickly. By he closed that performance with a
ny to God,” bringing rock’s most 2009, Cohen was selling out arenas sprightly “Save the Last Dance for
famous unheard album back to life. all over Europe, and eventually he hit Me,” he doffed his hat, took a deep
From the first celestial harmonies 20,000-seaters in America, includ- bow and walked off the stage, smil-
of “Our Prayer” much of the audi- ing Madison Square Garden. The ing. “I want to thank you,” he said
ence was in tears. Backstage after- tour eventually ran for 387 shows to the audience. “Not just for to-
ward, Wilson was exultant, shout- across five years. Even as he neared night, but for all the years you’ve paid
ing, “I did it!” ANDY GREENE his 80th birthday, he kept adding attention to my songs.” A.G.

70 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
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C E R E M O N Y

Bono and
Jagger in
New York,
2009
OCTOBER 29-30, 2009 25TH-ANNIVERSARY CONCERT
ROCK AND ROLL
HALL OF FAME
¥ THE IDEA WAS to celebrate the 25th
anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame with no less than the most
important multi-artist concert in
history. “I knew the anniversary had
potency,” said Hall of Fame Founda-
tion chairman (and Rolling Stone
founder) Jann Wenner. “I thought
that we had earned the right and re-
sponsibility to do this thing. It was an
opportunity not to be missed.”
The organizers were determined
to put on a show that was far more
ambitious than any of the previous
megashows, while capturing the in-
timate, collaborative spirit of the
annual induction ceremonies and
telling the story of rock & roll. “[I
kept saying], ‘If this is just minicon-
certs of greatest hits, I’m bored,’” re-
called co-producer Robbie Robert-
son. “ ‘What do we have to offer that
you can’t get anywhere else?’ ”
The shows, held over two nights
at New York’s Madison Square Gar-
den, were a rock fan’s dream, with
all the artists delivering blister-
ing, unforgettable sets, no doubt in-
spired by the presence of so many of
their peers and the event’s grandeur.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street
Band, who closed the first night, per-
formed at their absolute peak, turn-
72 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST
GREAT
HALL OF
FAME
MOMENTS
1995
Neil Young
and Led
Zeppelin rip
through
“When the
Levee
Breaks.”
2002
Talking Heads
put aside
years of
bitterness for
one final set.
2004
ing themselves into a soul revue as Prince honors
they backed Billy Joel, John Foger- George
ty, Tom Morello and Darlene Love.
U2 brought Springsteen back the
Harrison with
a smoking
“While My
next night, but the biggest moment Guitar Gently
came near the end of their set, when Weeps” solo.
they kicked into “Gimme Shelter,”
and – out of nowhere – an unbilled
Mick Jagger appeared onstage to the
stunned delight of the crowd.
The first night began with a nod
to rock’s origins: Jerry Lee Lewis
pounding out “Whole Lotta Shakin’
Goin’ On.” Next were Crosby, Stills
and Nash (joined by Bonnie Raitt,
Jackson Browne and James Taylor),
Stevie Wonder (with guests Smokey
Robinson, John Legend, B.B. King,
Sting and Jeff Beck) and a note-
perfect Simon and Garfunkel. On
the closing night, Aretha Franklin
sang with Annie Lennox and Lenny
Kravitz; Jeff Beck jammed with
Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons and Sting;
and Metallica backed Ray Davies, Kanye
Ozzy Osbourne and Lou Reed. and Jay Z
“For a lot of us here, rock & roll
means just one word: liberation. Po-
litical, sexual, spiritual liberation,”
Bono said onstage, before Spring-
steen interrupted him with the
other side of the equation: “Let’s
have some fun with it!” ANDY GREENE
APRIL 2, 2011 MADISON
SQUARE
GARDEN
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM
¥ ÒITÕS YOUR SHOW,Ó LCD Soundsystem
frontman James Murphy shouted to
a sold-out Madison Square Garden.
The raging farewell by Murphy’s be-
loved group was a Last Waltz for New
York’s early-’00s dance-rock scene.
“I thought it would be really sad,”
recalls keyboardist-vocalist Nancy
Whang. “But it was just fun. The en-
ergy in the room was really charged.”
Fans danced to near-exhaustion as
LCD played songs from their entire
catalog. With barely two months to
prepare the nearly four-hour spec-
tacle, featuring a choir, a horn sec-
tion and a rickety spaceship, the band
tackled a production scale beyond its
experience. “It was held together with
gum and string,” Whang admits.
The night (captured in the 2012 film
Shut Up and Play the Hits) ended in
a snowstorm of balloons, culminat-
ing the band’s dream of throwing “the
best funeral ever.” WILL HERMES
2011-12 THRONEÕ
ÔWATCH THE
TOUR
JAY Z&
KANYE WEST
¥ ÒIÕM SORRY IF this is your first con-
cert,” Kanye West said to a Los An-
geles crowd on the Watch the Throne
tour. “It’s all downhill from here.”
Supporting their
triumphal 2011
LP, Watch the
Throne, Jay Z
and Kanye con-
FROM TOP: KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE; JULIO CORTEZ/AP IMAGES
vened the great-
e s t s up e r s t a r
summit in hip-
hop history. The
pair performed
on giant, rising
cubes that pro-
jected video, and,
when the tour hit Paris, encored
with their hit “Niggas in Paris” 12
times in a row. “People just want-
ed more,” says the tour’s lighting de-
signer Nick Whitehouse. “It made
people crazy.” CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN
M a y 4 , 2 017
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2014-15 FLEETWOOD MAC
¥ THE RETURN OF CHRISTINE McVIE after 16 years brought the Mac’s live
show to a whole new dimension. Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar solo on
“Go Your Own Way” soared to new heights; Stevie Nicks seemed pos-
sessed during the nightly exorcism of “Rhiannon”; and all three voices
locked seamlessly on “Little Lies.” It was all the magic of 1977 with-
out the distractions of hard drugs and sexual soap operas. ANDY GREENE
TAYLOR SWIFT
2015
Ô1989Õ TOUR
¥ ÒYOUÕRE NOT going to see me play-
ing the banjo,” Taylor Swift warned
Rolling Stone at the outset of her
1989 world tour. On her Speak Now
and Red tours, she claimed her turf
at the crossroads of country, pop
and classic arena rock. But for 1989,
Swift made her bold move into full-
on dance pop. She turned up the glitz
with new material like “New Roman-
tics” and “Blank Space” (“blatant pop
music,” as she put it), but she didn’t
compromise on her trademark emo-
Swift in
Nashville,
2015
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST
ÔONWITH THE
SHOWÕ TOUR
tional overshares, whether open-
ing up in confessional interludes or
torching up ballads (“Clean”). Swift
aimed for a glammier look onstage,
reflecting the grown-up flair of the
music, and she invited high-pro-
file guests: In Nashville, she duet-
ted with Mick Jagger; in L.A., she
brought out Beck, St. Vincent, Jus-
tin Timberlake, Chris Rock and Al-
anis Morissette. It all summed up
her staggeringly ambitious vision of
modern pop. ROB SHEFFIELD
2016 FORMATION TOUR
BEYONCE
¥ STRUTTING IN stacked heels across
the turf of Levi’s Stadium in Santa
Clara, California, wrapped in gold-
en bandoleers and flanked by a Black
Panther-styled phalanx of dancers,
Beyoncé performed “Formation”
at the 2016 Super Bowl in a cameo
appearance even fiercer than her
2013 Super Bowl triumph. It was
the overture to a tour that redefined
TAYLORÕS stadium-scale concert staging. “She
TOP had an overall vision of what she
DUETS wanted,” says Steve Pamon, chief
operating officer of Beyoncé’s label,
Swift brought
up dozens of Parkwood Entertainment. “Not only
guests on in terms of a business, but in the
the ‘1989’ type of experience we want to give
tour. Here the fans.”
are the best Four days before the tour began,
moments:
Beyoncé surprise-dropped her in-
The stant classic Lemonade. British set
Weeknd designer Es Devlin, who had previ-
EAST ously worked with Kanye West and
RUTHERFORD, NJ
“Can’t Feel
U2, created a kind of spectacular
My Face” intimacy that fit the album’s per-
sonal themes. At midstage was the
Lorde “Monolith,” a video-screen center-
WASHINGTON, DC piece standing seven stories high
“Royals” that projected the show in 70-foot
THIS PAGE: JOHN SHEARER/GETTY IMAGES. OPPOSITE PAGE: DANIELA VESCO/INVISION FOR PARKWOOD ENTERTAINMENT/AP IMAGES
magnification, making every seat
Beck and
St. Vincent feel front-row. On opening night
LOS ANGELES in Miami, Bey burned through
“Dreams” “Crazy in Love” and “Bootylicious”
in a fire-engine-red latex bodysuit
Justin and matching boots, looking like an
Timberlake
LOS ANGELES
anime empress. The shows also di-
“Mirrors” aled it down for slow jams like the
breakup meditation “Mine,” during
which the Monolith split in two to
reveal dancers suspended on cables
while Bey and a squadron in lace
bodysuits rose up from beneath the
stage. At the end of the show, a mov-
ing catwalk connected the main
stage to a huge wading pool, where
Beyoncé and her dancers splashed
around in a baptismal moment that
reflected Lemonade’s journey from
betrayal to rebirth.
The Formation World Tour began
around the time of Prince’s death.
In Minneapolis, she performed his
classic “The Beautiful Ones” before
a rapt crowd, honoring a hero and
placing herself in his epic lineage. “I
would put that tour up against any
performance,” Pamon says. “By any
artist at any age.” BRITTANY SPANOS
M a y 4 , 2 017
Beyoncé
in New
Orleans,
2016
10
50 CONCERTS
GREATEST

GREATEST
FESTIVALS
OF THE LAST 50 YEARS
A brief history of passionate fans gathering together in the name of music, love and not
showering Ð from a generation-defining party in upstate New York to a chill polo field outside
Palm Springs, California, to an eclectic jam on a campground in rural Tennessee

MONTEREY Sly Stone at

POP 1967 Woodstock
“Monterey Pop was the
prototype,” concert
promoter Bill Graham
told ROLLING STONE. It
christened the Summer
of Love, with around
200,000 flower
children happily de-
scending on the quiet
Northern California
beach community. The
Who and the Jimi Hen-
drix Experience sealed
their legends with
equipment-destroying
U.S. performances, and
soul icon Otis Red-
ding, playing months
before his tragic death,
crossed over to the
rock audience with an
impassioned set.
“I thought the stage
was going to fall in
when he stomped his
foot,” recalled Grace
Slick.

Redding
WOODSTOCK 1969 CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH 1971
FROM TOP: “NEW YORK POST”/© GLOBE PHOTOS/

“What kind of culture is it that can produce so colos- After a genocidal war in South Asia led to hundreds
sal a mess?” thundered the New York Times editorial of thousands of deaths and created a massive refugee
page after approximately 500,000 rock fans turned a crisis, Indian sitar great Ravi Shankar approached
ZUMA PRESS; CEA/CACHE AGENCY

600-acre chunk of Max Yasgur’s upstate New York farm
into the greatest camping trip in rock history – featur-
ing sets by a lineup that included the Who, Sly Stone,
CSNY, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Santana and
dozens of others. As Jimi Hendrix closed the weekend
on the morning of its fourth day with a lysergic “Star-
Spangled Banner,” history had been made, brown acid
notwithstanding. “I think ‘the Big Bang’ is a great way
to describe Woodstock,” David Crosby once said.
George Harrison about a benefit. Two concerts at
New York’s Madison Square Garden in August 1971
essentially invented the megastar-humanitarian charity
blowout. Harrison led a supergroup featuring his old
bandmate Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Billy Preston and
Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan’s set with Harrison was the
first time he had ever played live with a Beatle. “What
we did show was that musicians and people are more
humane than politicians,” Harrison later recalled.

76 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com M a y 4 , 2 017
 WATTSTAX 1972 LOLLAPALOOZA 1994
Memphis soul label Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell
Stax Records came organized Lollapalooza in 1991 to create
up with the idea of a “a social gathering where people can
“black Woodstock” feel like they were at the right place at
in Los Angeles the right time.” And that time was never
seven years after the more right than 1994, the height of the
cataclysmic Watts alternative era. Lolla ’94 was a perfect
riots of 1965. More snapshot of alt-rock’s unlikely boom.
than 100,000 people The Beastie Boys provided an article
paid the $1 ticket in the concert program outlining the
charge and packed do’s-and-don’ts of moshing (“Save the
the Los Angeles macho bullshit for American Gladia-
Coliseum to see the tors tryouts, tough guy”); the Breeders
Bar-Kays, Albert King, played their surprise MTV hit “Can-
Rufus Thomas, the nonball”; funk legend George Clinton
Staple Singers, and performed for an audience who’d spent
headliner Isaac Hayes, the past two years listening to his
who did a spellbinding samples in songs by Dr. Dre and Snoop
“Theme From Shaft,” Dogg; and A Tribe Called Quest got the
bare chested under a Smashing Pumpkins fans bouncing. The
vest of gold chains. A year’s breakout act was Green Day, who
30-year-old dashiki- joined midway through the tour. “People
clad Jesse Jackson led would rush the stage, causing security
the crowd to raise fists to come out,” said bassist Mike Dirnt.
and join in the chant Freddie “Of course, we’d get in trouble for it.”
“I! Am! Somebody!” at Mercury at
a historic event that Live Aid Billy
generated thousands
Corgan
to benefit community
groups, and produced
an excellent 1973
LIVE AID 1985
concert movie. “There More than 1.5 billion people worldwide watched the trans-Atlantic
was hope in that film “Eighties Woodstock,” thanks to a star-packed lineup including Bob
and everything that Dylan, Madonna, Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, Queen, U2 and Led
we aspired to be,” said Zeppelin, who reunited, with Phil Collins on drums. Live Aid eventually
Hayes. raised around $250 million for Ethiopian famine relief. “Everybody had
such a fantastic time,” said David Bowie. “I’d do it next year in a shot.”

GLASTONBURY 1994
The mud-caked U.K. blowout was broadcast nationally for the first
time, making it a coming-out party for Brit pop, with appearances by
Oasis, Blur, Björk, Pulp and Radiohead, and an epochal moment for
Björk dance music, thanks to techno duo Orbital’s hugely influential set.

COACHELLA ULTRA BONNAROO 2009

2004 MUSIC Bonnaroo debuted in 2002, offering a

FESTIVAL
jam-friendly lineup and an immersive
In its fifth year, Coach- camping experience that mirrored
ella drew 110,000 fans 2008 European fests like Glastonbury. “It
to the Empire Polo was like, ‘Why not try this in the United
Field in Indio, California Dutch DJ-producer States?’” said co-founder Ashley Capps.
(despite 100-plus heat Tiësto has called the By 2009, the Manchester, Tennessee,
on Day One). It was the beachside Miami event get-together was America’s biggest fest,
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ALAMY; STEVE EICHNER/WIREIMAGE;

first time the fest had “one of the most impor- and its most eclectic. The Beastie Boys
sold out, and it was a tant festivals in the world.” played their final set, before the death
RUKES.COM; MICK HUTSON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

watershed, highlighted Its 10th-anniversary in- of Adam “MCA” Yauch, and African
by Beck, Radiohead, stallment was ground zero bands, including King Sunny Adé, heated
the Black Keys, the for the EDM explosion in up “the Other Tent.” On the final night,
Cure, Kraftwerk and the aughts. Future cross- fest patron saints Phish covered Bruce
Muse. The main event over stars Calvin Harris Deadmau5 Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean” and “Glory
featured a reunion of and David Guetta did Days,” with Springsteen himself joining
indie-rock titans the breakout sets, and then- in on vocals and guitar. “We were in the
Pixies. “This is the little-known Canadian practice room,” said Phish bassist Mike
first festival I know artist Deadmau5 injected Gordon, “[and] he instantly brought this
of with this kind of a new visual spectacle sense of melody and bold statements
dynamic lineup,” said into dance music, turning out of his singing and guitar playing. It
Danger Mouse, who a small spot on the was undeniably great.”
performed that year. main stage into a career-
“It’s amazing.” making moment. KORY GROW, CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN

M a y 4 , 2 017 R ol l i n g S t o n e | 77

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BACKSTAGE PASS HARRY STYLES

[Cont. from 27] sometimes you just want

S P EC I A L O F F E R S A N D P R O M OT I O N S
to give them the whole cap . . . and hope they
know it’s just for them.”
n l a t e f e brua r y 2016, s t y l e s
wants to hear about it? I don’t want to
hear my favorite artists talk about all the
amazing shit they get to do. I want to hear,
‘How did you feel when you were alone in
that hotel room, because you chose to be
alone?’ ”
To wind down in Jamaica, Styles and

I landed a plum part in Christopher

Nolan’s upcoming World War II epic,
Dunkirk. In Nolan, Styles found a director
equally interested in mystery. “The movie
is so ambitious,” he says. “Some of the stuff
they’re doing in this movie is insane. And
it was hard, man, physically really tough,
but I love acting. I love playing someone
else. I’d sleep really well at night, then get
up and continue drowning.”
When Styles returned to L.A., an idea
landed. The idea was: Get out of Dodge.
Styles called his manager, Jeffrey Azoff,
and explained he wanted to finish the
album outside London or L.A., a place
where the band could focus and coalesce.
Four days after returning from the movie,
they were on their way to Port Antonio on
Jamaica’s remote north coast. At Geejam,
Styles and his entire band were able to live
C was parked outside his childhood
together, turning the studio compound
into something like a Caribbean version
of Big Pink. They occupied a two-story
villa filled with instruments, hung out at
the tree-house-like Bush Bar, and had ac-
cess to the gorgeous studio on-site. Many
mornings began with a swim in the desert-
ed cove just down the hill.
Life in Jamaica was 10 percent beach
party and 90 percent musical expedition.
It was the perfect rite of passage for a
musician looking to explode the past and
launch a future. The anxiety of what’s next
slipped away. Layers of feeling emerged
that had never made it past One Direc-
tion’s group songwriting sessions, often
with pop craftsmen who polished the songs
after Styles had left. He didn’t feel stifled
in One D, he says, as much as interrupted.
“We were touring all the time,” he recalls.
Let the magic “I wrote more as we went, especially on
the last two albums.” There are songs from
find you. that period he loves, he says, like “Olivia”
and “Stockholm Syndrome,” along with the
earlier song “Happily.” “But I think it was
tough to really delve in and find out who
Escape to stunning vistas, you are as a writer when you’re just kind of
unexpected rhythms and dipping your toe each time. We didn’t get
the six months to see what kind of shit you
surprising flavors.
can work with. To have time to live with a
song, see what you love as a fan, chip at it,
Book a trip today to see hone it and go for that . . . it’s heaven.”
what Asheville, North Carolina The more v ulnerable the song, he
is all about. learned, the better. “The one subject that
hits the hardest is love,” he says, “whether
it’s platonic, romantic, loving it, gaining
it, losing it . . . it always hits you hardest. I
don’t think people want to hear me talk
about going to bars, and how great every-
HEAD TO thing is. The champagne popping . . . who
ExploreAshevilleMusic. com
TO CHECK IT OUT.
80
Rowland, the guitarist, began a daily Net-
flix obsession with sugary romantic come-
dies. Houseworkers would sometimes leave
at night and return the next morning to see
Styles blearily removing himself from a
long string of rom-coms. He declares him-
self an expert on Nicholas Sparks, whom
he now calls “Nicky Spee.” After almost
two months, the band left the island with
a bounty of songs and stories. Like the time
Styles ended up drunk and wet from the
ocean, toasting everybody, wearing a dress
he’d traded with someone’s girlfriend. “I
don’t remember the toast,” he says, “but I
remember the feeling.”
hristm as 2016. harry st yles
home, sitting next to his father. They
were listening to his album. After lunch
at a pub, they had driven down their old
street and landed in front of the family
home. Staring out at the house where
Styles grew up listening to his father’s
copy of The Dark Side of the Moon, there
was much to consider. It was a long way
he’d traveled in those fast few years since
“Isn’t She Lovely.” He’d previously played
the new album for his mother, on a stool, in
the living room, on cheap speakers. She’d
cried hearing “Sign of the Times.” Now
he sat with his father – who liked the new
song “Carolina” best – both having come
full circle.
Styles is moved as he describes how he
felt. We’re sitting in Corden’s empty office,
talking over a few last subjects before he
returns to England. “I think, as a parent,
especially with the band stuff, it was such a
roller coaster,” he says. “I feel like they were
always thinking, ‘OK, this ride could stop
at any point and we’re going to have to be
there when it does.’ There was something
about playing the album and how happy I
was that told them, ‘If all I get is to make
this music, I’m content. If I’m never on that
big ride again, I’m happy and proud of it.’
“I always said, at the very beginning, all
I wanted was to be the granddad with the
best stories . . . and the best shelf of artifacts
and bits and trinkets.”
Tomorrow night he’ll hop a flight back to
England. Rehearsals await. Album-cover
choices need to be made. He grabs his
black notebook and turns back for a mo-
ment before disappearing down the hall-
way, into the future.
“How am I going to be mysterious,” he
asks, only half-joking, “when I’ve been this
honest with you?”
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 THE
LAST
WORD
Sheryl Crow
The singer-songwriter on apocalyptic fears, choosing
happiness, and what Gandhi and Keef have in common
You’ve had health crises over the years, including breast cancer
and a benign brain tumor. How have those affected the way you
see day-to-day life?
I don’t think about it anymore. I don’t think about whether my
cancer’s coming back or if my brain tumor’s growing or anything
like that. I’m busy with my kids – my objective is to be here as long
as I can for them and to enjoy every second of it. But I would say
that my life was really changed when I got diagnosed. It gave me
the freedom to just say, “Hey, let’s get on with life. If you wanna
have kids, either adopt or go have one, get some sperm, whatever.”
I also learned how to let myself off the hook, and it really
made my life a lot better. I like to blame my lack
of memories on having a brain tumor, but un-
fortunately I can’t, ’cause it doesn’t have any
side effects [laughs].
How has having kids changed you?
Everything revolves around what’s
good for them. I quit touring [tempo-
rarily] a couple of years ago. My nine-
year-old cried. He was like, “We’re not
going on the tour bus?” But the main
thing really is that my work, my so-
called inspiration, has been relegated
to school hours. I made a record I love
between school drop-off and dinner-
time. Not many rock stars can say that.
In “Heartbeat Away,” on your new
album, a president launches nukes. Do
you have apocalyptic fears?
My sleep has been disturbed. My
insides are ridden with unease. I
wrote that song before Trump got the
nomination – it already felt apocalyptic
that people were entertaining the idea
of making a man like that the most
powerful person in the world. I had to
go into deep meditation and find a way
to have compassion for the people of
this country that are hurting and believe he
cares about them. I’m worried, but my meditation
teacher said something fascinating. Her phrase
was, “This is the way forward.”
You have a pretty serious meditation practice –
what does that do for you?
I meditate 20 to 25 minutes in the morning,
then 20 minutes in between tucking the boys
in and going to bed. It’s compassion-based –
the idea is to live life from an extremely
compassionate place and be mindful.
Who are your heroes?
Gandhi, and then after that I
would say Keith Richards. George
Harrison, for a number of reasons.
Stevie Nicks. Bob Dylan.
Crow’s new album, “Be Myself,”
is out April 21st.
82 | R ol l i n g S t o n e | RollingStone.com
You don’t often hear Gandhi and Keith in the same breath.
For a curious human being who is always looking to navigate
life with passion, you know, Gandhi’s it. For someone who’s also
curious and who is so playful about music and loves the people
that he has loved, that’s Keith. I mean, I’m pretty sure that Keith
had a nice, long cry the other day when Chuck Berry died. And
that’s what I love about my work – it’s work – but it’s a life force,
and that’s what I look at with him.
You recorded and never released a debut before Tuesday Night
Music Club. How do you see that album now?
It just wound up being a really soft-rock-sounding record.
And I am never soft rock. And I just felt like, if I turn this
in and this is my introduction, I did not stand a chance.
You always have one introduction. You get one first im-
pression.
Did learning cover songs in bar bands as you were
coming up inform your songwriting?
I tell every kid, get in a cover band. It teach-
es you chops, it literally teaches you why some
songs are classics, and it teaches you how to
navigate a working band. With songwriting,
there’s something to that idea of stealing
from the best. You’re only as good as your
references. And I pride myself on my refer-
ences. I have tried to emulate the greatest
rock stars and songwriters in the world. I
try not to steal verbatim, but if they’ve in-
fluenced my work at all, I take a sense of
pride in that.
The classic-rockers embraced you
right away. Was there any down-
side to that?
There’s absolutely no down-
side to that. My idea for music
was that I didn’t want to be
great. I wanted to be impor-
tant. I wanted to write important
music, and so, when you start hav-
ing a music career and you’re certain-
ly not one of the cool kids, but you’re em-
braced by the older class – I was just like,
“Wow, I can’t believe these people know me.”
As hokey as it might sound, I still feel really
humbled by that.
Finally, if it makes you happy, can it be that bad?
As great a hook as that might be, that is a co-
nundrum. My struggle in life is accepting the
idea of choosing to be happy. Happiness is not
something where you wake up that way. You de-
cide you’re gonna be happy. And it took me a
long time to figure that out. I definitely con-
sciously do it with my children, because they
define themselves by your mood and how it re-
lates to them. As a parent and as a person, life
can be so happy, but you have to decide
that that’s the life you’re gonna lead.
INTERVIEW BY BRIAN HIATT
Illustration by Mark Summers
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