Rolling Stone - May 21, 2015

Issue 1235 >> May 21, 2015 $4.99

PLAYLIST SPECIAL

THE

SONGS THAT

MADE ME

TAYLOR SWIFT BRIAN WILSON ED SHEERAN MARILYN MANSON BOB SEGER MARK RONSON CARRIE BROWNSTEIN AND OTHERS

JEFFREY DEAN

MORGAN

MARTINEZ

OLIVIER

ADDAI-ROBINSON

CYNTHIA

FRASER

WITH AND

BRENDAN RAY

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

#TexasRising

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LIOTTA

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SERIES EVENT MEMORIAL DAY 9/8c

RS1235

“All the NEWS THAT FITS”

FEATURES

ROCK & ROLL

DEPARTMENTS

33 Playlist Special: The Songs That Made Me

11 Muse’s Stripped-Down, High-Concept New LP

30 Angrier and Funnier

Thirteen stars – from Seger to Swift – on their musical DNA.

46 David Letterman: Happy at Last When he stopped being miserable, he knew it was time to go. By Josh Eells

54 The Mayor’s Crusade Bill de Blasio is trying to remake New York – and he doesn’t plan to stop there.

By Mark Binelli

Theatrical rock heroes call in Mutt Lange, make a snarling album about drone warfare.

14 Ringo & Friends Storm Hall of Fame Green Day, Joan Jett, Bill Withers – and two Beatles – celebrate rock’s big night.

18 The Unkillable Arnold How does an action-hero ex-governor spend his golden years? Very loudly.

TELEVISION

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Louis C.K. hit new heights by embracing midlife rage.

RECORD REVIEWS

61 Mumford Go Electric U.K. band plugs in – and sets its sights on rock’s biggest peaks.

MOVIES

67 Summer Monster Mash From Fury Road to Jurassic World, the season’s epic sizzlers are big, mean and mad as hell.

ON THE COVER David Letterman photographed in New York on April 13th, 2015, by Mark Seliger.

Styling by Louise Sturcken. Grooming by Vaughn for Mizu New York.

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

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ROLLINGSTONE.COM EDITOR AND PUBLISHER: Jann S. Wenner MANAGING EDITOR: Will Dana EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Nathan Brackett DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: Sean Woods SENIOR WRITERS: David Fricke, Brian Hiatt, Peter Travers SENIOR EDITORS: Christian Hoard, Coco McPherson, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Thomas Walsh ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Patrick Doyle, Andy Greene, Jessica Machado, Phoebe St. John EDITORIAL MANAGER: Alison Weinflash ASSISTANT EDITORS: Corinne Cummings, Elisabeth Garber-Paul, Chris M. Junior, Jason Maxey ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER: Ally Lewis ROLLINGSTONE.COM: Caryn Ganz (Editorial Dir.), Scott Petts (Design Dir.), Leslie dela Vega (Photo Dir.), Alexandra Eaton (Video Dir.), Brandon Geist (Deputy Ed.), David Fear, James Montgomery (Senior Eds.), Beville Dunkerley, Joseph Hudak (Senior Eds., RS Country), Sarah Allison, Ben Verlinde (Art Dirs.), Jason Newman (News Ed.), LaurieAnn Wojnowski (Interactive Prod.), Shara Sprecher (Social Media Ed.), Kory Grow (Staff Writer), Nick Murray (Asst. Ed.), Brittany Spanos (Producer), Anthony Lee (Asst. Photo Ed.), James McGill (Visual Designer), Sam Lipman-Stern, Ashley Maas (Video Prods.)

SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER: Nina Pearlman EDITOR AT LARGE: Jason Fine CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Mark Binelli, David Browne, Rich Cohen, Jonathan Cott, Cameron Crowe, Anthony DeCurtis, Tim Dickinson, Jon Dolan, Raoul Duke (Sports), Gavin Edwards, Josh Eells, Jenny Eliscu, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Mikal Gilmore, Jeff Goodell, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Erik Hedegaard, Will Hermes, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Steve Knopper, David Kushner, Guy Lawson, Greil Marcus, Charles Perry, Janet Reitman, Stephen Rodrick, Austin Scaggs, Jeff Sharlet, Rob Sheffield, Paul Solotaroff, Ralph Steadman (Gardening), Neil Strauss, Matt Taibbi, Touré, Ben Wallace-Wells, Jonah Weiner, Christopher R. Weingarten, David Wild

VIDEO

ON THE ROAD WITH HOZIER

The 25-year-old Irish songwriter behind the smash “Take Me to Church” is in the middle of a major North American tour. Watch him check out the sights of Tulsa, Oklahoma – including the Woody Guthrie museum and local roadside attractions – as part of our Dawn to Dusk video series, presented by Transitions adaptive lenses.

McCartney

TV

Letterman in 1983

LIVE

Bono

2015 FESTIVAL SEASON IS HERE

LETTERMAN’S BEST MOMENTS

U2’S BIG TOUR: OPENING NIGHT

Check out our in-depth guide to Lollapalooza and Firefly (both of which feature Paul McCartney on the bill), Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo and many, many more.

After you’ve read our cover story on David Letterman, head to RS.com for more on the retiring host’s finest musical moments, his top guests and all of his craziest feuds.

U2 kick off their Innocence and Experience world tour – their first run of American shows since 2011 – on May 14th at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.

We’ll have a complete report.

MUSIC NEWS, AROUND THE CLOCK

Get breaking music news from ROLLING STONE’s Taylor award-winning staff of writers and reporters 24 Swift hours a day, 365 days a year at RollingStone.com – and on the ROLLING STONE MUSIC NEWS iPHONE APP, available for FREE at the iTunes Store.

POLITICS

MATT TAIBBI

RollingStone.com/taibbi

MOVIES

PETER TRAVERS RollingStone.com/travers

ROCK & ROLL

DAVID FRICKE RollingStone.com/fricke

TO EXPLORE OUR ARCHIVES, VISIT ROLLINGSTONE.COM/COVERWALL.

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PREVIEW

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LETTERS & ADVICE CORRESPONDENCE LOVE

Townshend Rocks In RS 1233, associate editor Andy Greene sat down with rock legend Pete Townshend to talk about turning 70 and the Who’s alleged final tour [“Who’s Done”]. R OLLING S TONE readers and Who fans wrote in to comment.

man y thanks to green for his interview with Pete Townshend. Outside of a few odd tangents about ISIS, it was great to read Townshend’s views. He’s still one of the more interesting figures in rock.

Grunge God

Shaan Ahluwalia, Chicago

david fricke’s interview with Frances Bean Cobain was informative, and the piece treated the entire Cobain family with the respect they deserve [“Searching for Kurt,” RS 1233]. I look forward to seeing Montage of Heck even more so now.

h av i ng fol l ow ed on e of my rock idols for many years, I know Townshend can be a bit bristly. The RS interview confirmed my suspicions: He remains an ornery, unhappy legend who does everything grudgingly. I, for one, wouldn’t fork over $1 to see this Who tour. I’m not sure he even wants to do it.

Christine Perdichizzi Via the Internet

i t ’s n e v er bee n mor e clear to me that Frances Cobain is just like everybody else, wondering who Kurt was and why everything happened the way it did. Fricke did an amazing job opening up Kurt’s world. Here’s to Frances’ success.

Anthony Grasso Via the Internet

i saw the who in high school, in 1982. I saw them five days before my wedding in 1989. Now I’m beyond pumped to see them in Detroit in October. If Pete Townshend isn’t ready to quit, neither am I.

Sarah Betts Clark’s Corner, New Brunswick

k u rt c ob a i n onc e s a i d that even though he could afford to buy whatever he wanted, nothing would ever compare to finding a little treasure in a secondhand store and praying he had enough change to buy it.

It perfectly depicted who Kurt was – a gentle, honest soul. May he rest in peace.

Rob Ooms, via the Internet

a longtime rs subscriber and a die-hard fan of all things rock & roll, I’ve seldom been as incensed as I was after reading the Town-

shend interview. What an ungrateful, pretentious rock star. His repeated references to making his inner circle “a lot of money,” his talk of uninspired live performances and his petulant response to the decades-long-studiorecord drought make me question his integrity and his appreciation of the Who’s loyal fans.

Jay Crouch, Nashville

pete, sorry to hear you don’t enjoy performing anymore. I completely understand. During your U.S. tour, go see Dick Dale in concert – he’s touring at the same time.

I’ll bet it will put a big smile on your face, and happy memories will come roaring back.

Glenn J. Miner Cave Creek, AZ

a h , p e t e . no won de r Roger Daltrey always kept a healthy distance.

Maggie Little Via the Internet

Jayne Sergent, via the Internet

Smugglers’ Blues t h e se f l or i da k i ds r eminded me of my friends and me at that age [“The Dukes of Oxy,” RS 1233]. We were idiots. We all thought that sex, drugs and fame were the an-

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swer. These fellows aren’t monsters. People make mistakes, and hopefully people learn.

Rob L., via the Internet

Conan’s Revenge conan o’brien says there is nothing funnier than a

RollingStone.com

middle-aged man in a suit acting like a complete ass [Encounter, RS 1233]. Conan’s always been willing to go the extra, excruciating mile to get the laugh. To wit, his adventures on Tinder – so sad, so funny, so true.

Cathy Mack, via the Internet

UVA Response using me as the personification of a heartless administration, the Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus,”

by Sabrina Rubin Erdely [RS 1223], attacked my life’s work. I saw my name dragged through the mud in the national press and have received numerous abusive, vitriolic and threatening e-mails, letters and phone calls. Inflamed by the false portrayal in the article, protesters showed up at my office, demanding I be fired. Equally distressing – not only to me, but to the students and victims with whom I work – is the fact that while the false allegations in the magazine were being investigated, the University of Virginia had no choice but to remove me from working with the students with whom I had spent so much time building relationships, forcing them to “start over” with someone else. Although Rolling Stone has finally issued an apology of sorts (something we asked for months ago), that halfhearted generalized apology (which did not apologize to anyone by name, including me) seems insincere. These steps are not good enough. The University of Virginia – and those of us who work for the university supporting victims of sexual assault – deserve better.

Nicole P. Eramo Associate Dean of Students University of Virginia

Editors’ reply: We would like to apologize to Dean Eramo and express our sincere regrets. We’d also like to reiterate our previous apology to the members of Phi Kappa Psi and anyone else who was hurt by our story.

Contact Us LETTERS to ROLLING STONE, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104-0298.

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M a y 21 , 2 01 5

THE PLAYLIST

EXPERT

OPINION

OUR FAVORITE SONGS, ALBUMS AND VIDEOS RIGHT NOW

4. Jamie xx “Gosh”

Blake Shelton With the Voice star’s summer festival tour about to kick off, we asked him to tell us what he thinks of five songs.

OLD

Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” The older I get, the more I can relate to this song.

Everybody has their own place it takes them back to. For me, it’s high school.

1. The Rolling Stones 5. The Relationship

“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (Alternate Version)”

“Oh Allen”

It’s one of the Stones’ sweetest riffs ever – and on this early take from the upcoming Sticky Fingers reissue, you can hear how it came together, as Mick improvises alongside Keith’s guitar.

Weezer guitarist Brian Bell steps out with his other band for an extra-hummable bite of power-pop crunch. Like a candy bar in audio form.

“And I Love Her” One of the most moving things unearthed by Montage of Heck director Brett Morgen is this lost tape of Cobain finding the raw hurt in the Beatles classic.

“Ginger”

“Your Low” Straight out of Sydney, this rising trio (who have an EP due soon) have enough catchy, jangly sunshine in their sound to last you all summer.

8

Dixie Chicks

NEW

2. Speedy Ortiz

3. DMA’s

“Jack & Diane” There probably isn’t a bar band in this country that hasn’t covered this song at some point along the way, including myself. So much energy and fun.

“Not Ready to Make Nice” Natalie Maines’ voice grabs your attention and won’t let it go. It was a statement about how they were blacklisted – but probably not the best choice of a single to be reinstated.

6. Kurt Cobain

The choicest jam from their excellent new Foil Deer is this gnarly anthem about feeling awkward at a party.

John Mellencamp

7. Ryan Adams “I Do Not Feel Like Being Good” A haunting tumbleweed whisper from Adams’ seven-inch single series, on his own Pax-Am label.

Wiz Khalifa, feat.

Charlie Puth “See You Again” I love this song. I’m always fascinated when two artists that seem completely different on paper come together.

Maroon 5 “Sugar” This makes me want to get married all over again in hopes that Adam Levine will surprise everyone at my wedding.

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

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“Gosh” isn’t what we’d call a cool exclamation in 2015, but Jamie proved us wrong with this irresistible body-mover from his upcoming In Colour.

SAME IS NOT SEXY. Introducing the all-new LG G Flex2. The smartphone for those who have their own way of looking at the world and vary the definition of sexy. With its uniquely curved design, 13 MP OIS+ camera, and Full HD P-OLED display, it’s as beautiful to hold as it is to behold. Experience it for yourself and see how LG is redefining beauty and innovation.

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HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2015 PG. 14 | PROFILE ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER PG. 18

Inside Muse’s ‘Drones’ Strike Arena heroes make a snarling concept LP about death from above

By Andy Greene

SPLASH NEWS

M

use beca me one of the most popular bands in the world by going bigger than everyone else. Their concerts are laser-show spectacles, and their recent albums have incorporated everything from Queen-like guitar pyrotechnics to Skrillex-inspired dubstep. Even the band admits things got a little out of hand on the last few records. “We probably spent more time in the control room fiddling with knobs and synths [Cont. on 12]

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11

ROCK&ROLL [Cont. from 11] and computers and drum machines than actually playing together,” says frontman Matt Bellamy.

So when Muse began plotting Drones, their seventh album (due June 9th), the U.K. band decided it was time to strip things down. “We wanted to go back to how we made music early in our career,” says Bellamy, “when we were more like a three-piece rock band.”

Muse self-produced their last two LPs, but for Drones they found they needed someone else in the chair. Their management suggested Robert John “Mutt” Lange, best known for producing AC/DC’s Back in Black and Def Leppard’s Hysteria. “Before I met him, I wasn’t sure,” says Bellamy. “I didn’t want to be turned into a Top 40 act.”

The group f lew to Switzerland to meet Lange, a mysterious figure who seldom grants interviews and is rarely photographed. “He’s very eccentric but also very laid-back,” says Bellamy. “He has the air of a person that has not lived within the constraints of normal society or life for a long time. I figured he would be more focused on ‘What’s the single? What’s going to be the big hit?’

But he was really into the concept.” To minimize distractions, the group recorded far from home, in Vancouver, and mostly stuck to its pledge of using just guitar, bass and drums (a couple of tracks feature piano and synths).

But if the album’s sound is straightahead, the lyrics are as ambitious as ever: Drones is a concept album about an unnamed protagonist who suffers a horrific loss, becomes a dronelike killing machine and then breaks free, recognizing the importance of love and independent thought. Bellamy got the idea after reading Predators: The CIA’s Drone War on al Qaeda, by the professor Brian Glyn Williams. “I didn’t know how prolific drone usage has been,” Bellamy says. “I always perceived Obama as an all-around likable guy. But most mornings he wakes up, has breakfast and then goes down to the war room and makes what they call ‘kill decisions.’ ” Fans of the epic Muse live experience can rest assured that their new, simplified approach will not extend to the stage. The bandmates are booking a world tour in which they’ll perform in the round. “It’s going to be even more theatrical than probably any show we’ve done in North America,” says Bellamy. “We want to incorporate drones into the show. I don’t know what health and safety will allow us to do, though.”

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RollingStone.com

EARTHKEEPERS Young with Lukas Nelson at Farm Aid

ALBUM PREVIEW

Neil Young: New Band, Fiery New Album we’re having with the corporate government,” Young said recently.

Once the band had worked out arrangements for the new songs, Young joined in.

Together, they hammered out the album ast september, just before in a matter of weeks, playing each take live he took the stage at the 29th onstage without a vocal booth. “You want annual Farm Aid, in Raleigh, to be able to make all the right fuck-ups,” North Carolina, Neil Young was says Micah. “Neil is all about that perfect hanging out on his tour bus with Wil- imperfection.” lie Nelson’s sons Micah and Lukas. Out The album – Young’s fifth in just three of nowhere, he asked them if they want- years – will be in stores on June 16th. In ed to come up and join him on “Rockin’ in July, he’ll hit the road with his new colthe Free World” at the end of laborators for an amphithehis set. “We were like, ‘Fuck, “It felt like we’d ater tour, where he plans to mix yeah, dude,’ ” says Micah, 25, Monsanto tracks with Young been jamming a guitarist. classics. “We ran through about forever,” says The impromptu collabora40 of his old songs at Teatro,” Micah Nelson. tion was a success. “It felt like says Micah. “We did ‘Vampire we’d been jamming togethBlues,’ ‘Country Home,’ ‘Cortez er forever,” says Micah. Young evident- the Killer,’ and electric versions of ‘Tell Me ly agreed. A few months later, he asked Why’ and ‘Goin’ Back.’ ” Micah and Lukas, who fronts the band On April 16th, Young and his new Promise of the Real, if they would back bandmates played a triumphant surhim on a new album. “I was blown away – prise show at a bar in San Luis Obispo, so stoked,” says Lukas, 26.

California. “My favorite thing is when Young had Micah, Lukas and the rest of he hits what I call the ‘cosmic hurriPromise of the Real gather in early Febru- cane black hole tornado button’ on his ary at the Teatro theater in Oxnard, Cali- Whizzer pedal,” says Micah. “Suddenly, fornia. He gave them a tape of demos he’d just a bajillion tons of cosmic sludge are, written for a new album called The Mon- like, hurled into a wormhole, and they’re santo Years, inspired by the agrochemical blasting out of his amp into my back. It’s company he has long criticized. “They’re pretty much the most dreamy, surreal ANDY GREENE the perfect poster child for the problems shit ever.”

Singer hooks up with Willie Nelson’s sons and takes on Monsanto on surprise LP

L

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

© ANDY MARTIN JR./RETNA LTD.

MUSE

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ROCK&ROLL ROCK HALL 2015

Ringo & Friends Storm Hall of Fame Green Day, Joan Jett, Bill Withers – and two Beatles – celebrate rock’s big night

1

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RollingStone.com

3

Hello, Cleveland (1) Starr, who received the Award for Musical Excellence, and McCartney last played Cleveland’s Public Hall in 1964, with the Beatles.

(2) Cyrus inducted Jett.

(3) Green Day ripped into “American Idiot” and “Basket Case.”

get that.” Jett was inducted by Cyrus, who wore nipple pasties backstage emblazoned with the letter “J.” Cyrus recounted the time they partied in a hotel bathroom while in Chicago to appear on Oprah together in 2011. “She’s been the first to do many things – not just as a woman but just as a badass babe on the planet,” said Cyrus.

The evening took a blues-rock turn with the inductions of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Tom Morello and Zac Brown played a fiery version of Butterfield’s “Born in Chicago.” John Mayer inducted Double Trouble and jammed with surviving members, as well as Stevie Ray’s brother Jimmie Vaughan, [Cont. on 16]

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

FROM TOP: AARON JOSEFCZYK/REUTERS/LANDOV; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME, 2. PAGE 16, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME, 2; KEVIN KANE/WIREIMAGE FOR ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME; MIKE COPPOLA/GETTY IMAGES, 2

‘I

t’s like my record collection is actually sitting in this room,” said an awestruck Billie Joe Armstrong. It was partway through the Green Day singer’s acceptance speech at the 30th annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, in front of a Cleveland crowd that included Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Dave Grohl, Joan Jett, Beck, Tom Morello and Miley Cyrus. Days later, Armstrong was still trying to digest the event: “I kept waiting to turn over to my wife and say, ‘I had the craziest dream last night,’ ” he told Rolling Stone.

Armstrong’s dream included a torrid three-song set (“American Idiot,” “Basket Case,” “When I Come Around”); backing Starr on “Boys”; then joining McCar tney, Starr and other performers on 2 “With a Little Help From My Friends” – the climax of an evening that encompassed blues, punk, soul and, of course, the surviving members of the greatest rock band of all time.

“That’s where it got surreal,” said Armstrong.

“It was kind of like being at your own wedding and your own funeral.”

Starr gave a personal speech that covered his pre-Beatle days – his time working in a factory, and hearing Little Richard for the first time on a Luxembourg radio station. At one point, McCartney jokingly tapped on his watch, and Starr shot back, “After the things I’ve sat through tonight! I got some stories!” He wrapped it up with some hilarious advice for young bands: “When you’re in a van, and you fart, own up,” he said. “We did, and that’s how we got on so well.”

The show – which will be broadcast on HBO on May 30th – began with inductees Joan Jett and the Blackhearts blasting through “Bad Reputation,” the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” (with guest Grohl) and the Blackhearts’ hit cover of Tommy James’ “Crimson and Clover,” on which they were joined by Cyrus and James himself. “Getting a standing ovation felt good,” said Jett afterward. “For so many years, we didn’t

Style: RB3025

ROCK&ROLL 1

2 3

[Cont. from 14] Gary Clark Jr. and Doyle Bramhall II. Soul-guitar great Steve Cropper inducted 1950s R&B group the “5” Royales, before Patti Smith welcomed the late Lou Reed into the Hall. Smith ended the speech by reciting lyrics to “Perfect Day,” unable to hold back tears. Reed’s widow, Laurie Anderson, accepted on his behalf, before Karen O and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs delivered a snarling rendition of Reed’s 1972 classic “Vicious” and Beck performed “Satellite of Love.”

After being inducted by Wonder, Withers delivered the night’s funniest speech. “I watch a lot of Judge Judy,” he said. “I’m not out and about.” He closed on a triumphant note: “Stevie Wonder knows my name, and the brother just put me in the Hall of Fame!” Wonder sang a tender “Ain’t No Sunshine” before joining forces with John Legend on “Lean on Me,” with Withers singing in the background.

After receiving the Award for Musical Excellence from McCartney, Starr played “Boys” and his 1971 solo hit “It Don’t Come Easy” before the euphoric all-star jam, which included a finale of “I Wanna Be Your Man.” “We’ve been here!” said McCartney later backstage, referring to the last time he and Starr played Cleveland’s Public Hall together, with the Beatles in 1964.

But this time was more emotional: “It was beautiful,” McCartney said. “It’s the completion.”

ANDY GREENE

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RollingStone.com

OTO H P R E T T U G TIDERC

HALL OF FAME

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All-Starr Jam (1) Cyrus, Mike Dirnt, Armstrong, Jett, McCartney and Starr sing “With a Little Help From My Friends.” (2) Withers enjoys Wonder’s “Ain’t No Sunshine.” (3) Brown and Morello.

(4) Smith and Anderson. (5) Green Day and Starr played “Boys” together.

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M a y 21 , 2 01 5

ROCK&ROLL PROFILE

The Unkillable Arnold How does an action-hero ex-governor spend his golden years? Loudly By Jonah Weiner

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rnold schwarzenegger boards an elevator beside a mural of Arnold Schwarzenegger, ascends to a third-floor hallway lined with pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger, walks through double doors guarded by a life-size statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and enters his Santa Monica office. He sits in a high-backed armchair upholstered in crocodile skin, opposite a coffee table laden with fresh berries, fine china and stacks of napkins printed with the seal of the governor of the state of California. His arms are huge; his calves bulge below blue athletic shorts: He is fresh from a workout.

Schwarzenegger – back in the private sector for more than four years now, after two terms leading the state from Sacramento – takes movie and business meetings here. Against a far wall are cases displaying “my trophies from old bodybuilding competitions,” he says. Behind his desk is a towering Andy Warhol silkscreen of Russell Means, the Native American actor and activist; below this sits a small photograph of Meinhard Schwarzenegger, Arnold’s strikingly beautiful older brother, who died in a car crash at 24. Schwarzenegger has forgotten what Meinhard’s voice sounded like. But he thinks of him often. “I have always been extremely pissed off about the idea of death,” he says. “It’s such a

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waste. I know it’s inevitable, but what the hell is that? Your whole life you work, you try to improve yourself, save money, invest wisely, and then all of a sudden – poof. It’s over.” Arnold Schwarzenegger is 67. “Death pisses me off more than ever,” he says.

Immortality – the way legacies can outlive us – has long obsessed him. One of Schwarzenegger’s favorite TV series these days is Legends & Lies, on Fox News, which examines the myths around historic figures. “I watched an episode on Jesse James last night,” he says. Schwarzenegger will tell you that some men are born to lead and that others are born merely to follow, but even in the former category, there is a pecking order: He gestures toward the west side of the room, where bronze busts of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan nestle closely. Set a few feet to the east is a bust of Vladimir Lenin.

“The idea is to show losers” – he points at Lenin, then turns his finger westward – “and winners.” Schwarzenegger grew up in Cold War-era Austria, in Thal, a rural village that lived in fear, as he remembers it, of Soviet forces. For a time, here in L.A., he surrounded his swimming pool with statues of “Stalin, Khrushchev, Andropov, Chernenko – every Russian leader but Brezhnev and Kosygin.” He placed them atop ornamental columns, like the skulls of vanquished foes smushed onto pikes. [Cont. on 19]

Photograph by Peter Ya ng

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; KRISTA KENNELL/SIPA/AP IMAGES; © SANDOVAL/BROADIMAGE

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

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[Cont. from 18] Whereas the movies that paid for that swimming pool were about killing, Schwarzenegger has a new fi lm to promote, called Maggie, and it is a movie about dying. Maggie is a genre film – apocalyptic food shortage, attacking zombie hordes – but unrelentingly gloomy. Schwarzenegger plays a stoic farmer named Wade, and we learn right away that his daughter, played by Abigail Breslin, has been bitten by a zombie and is going to die. For 90 minutes, we watch Wade watch her 3 die. Wade offs some zombies along the way and roughs up an insensitive local cop, but this violence amounts, in the end, to pointless flailing. “The script really had an effect on me,” Schwarzenegger says. “It’s a parent’s worst nightmare to see one of your kids die.” His salary for Terminator 3, the last thing he released before entering government, was $30 million, but on Maggie, he says, “I didn’t take anything.” For most of his career, he never cared about doing a drama. Now, he says, Large and in Charge “I’m at that age where those kinds of things have much more of an emotional effect.”

(1) The Austrian Adonis on Muscle This summer, it’s back to basics: July will Beach in the mid-Sixties. (2) With then-wife Maria Shriver, getting bring Terminator Genisys, Schwarzenegger’s sworn in for his second term as fourth movie in that franchise. A Conan the Bargovernor of California in 2007. (3) barian reboot has been announced too. These Biking with new girlfriend Heather are the opposite of late-career swerves into the Milligan in April. unexpected. In the Genisys trailer, Schwarzenegger says “I’ll be back” and dives from a helicopter.

That dive, considered in a harsh light, mirrors Schwarzenegger’s makes a fart noise with his mouth. In Venice, across from Gold’s rapid hurtle from politics back into action movies: When he was Gym, a paparazzi is waiting. “Arnie! Arnie!” he shouts, feebly ata white-hot candidate in California’s 2003 recall election, he intempting to provoke a response. “Are you the leader of a pushspired giddy talk of amending the Constitution so a foreigner bike gang?” could take the presidency. He won 48.6 percent of the vote and Schwarzenegger is impassive. “I ignore their stupid quesenjoyed a 65 percent approval rating early on; there were politions,” he tells me. cy victories and a wide re-election margin. But SchwarzenegInside Gold’s, the young Schwarzenegger – bulbous, oiled-up ger also suffered brutal legislative defeats and found his agenda flesh arranged into impossible geometries – beams down from hampered by the recession. By the end, his approval was at 23 framed pictures. When he was a kid in postwar Thal, he marpercent, and California’s debt had nearly tripled. In this context, veled at the Venice bodybuilders in American muscle magazines.

Schwarzenegger doing a Terminator movie might seem less like Schwarzenegger’s father was a cop and former card-carrying a graceful victory lap and more like an undignified regression.

Nazi with a dour, defeated attitude. Schwarzenegger fashioned But if you think Arnold Schwarzenegger sees it that way – if himself a moneymaking hustler – scamming for change in the you think he has drifted one inch, in his own estimation, away nearby city of Graz, peddling ice cream at a 200 percent markup. from history’s winner’s circle – then you know nothing about ArImages of Muscle Beach combined in his mind with Hollywood nold Schwarzenegger. The guy has spent his life turning naysaymovies to form a portrait of America as the land of winners. ers into spectators, skeptics into constituents. “I’ve always been He was good at math, and bodybuilding provided a quanunderestimated, and that’s always worked in my advantage,” tifiable form of excellence: If he did this many reps, his biceps he says. “It’s the most wonderful thing, to be underestimated.” would get this many centimeters bigger. “The gym where I worked out had wooden walls, and I used to write with chalk all my sets, all my reps, every single progress,” Schwarzenegger ch wa r zenegger goes for a bik e ride in says. He won big competitions and headed to California. His Santa Monica. “I do it once, twice, three times a laser focus on greatness at times seemed jarringly cold. In the week even, if I’m not traveling,” he says. Schwar1977 documentary Pumping Iron, he recalls his unsentimental zenegger pedals to Gold’s Gym. He wears a navy reaction to his father’s death: He was two months away from a jacket that says team usa on the back and, on his competition when his mother called with the news, and he releft wrist, an enormous watch. “This is just a cheap fused to interrupt his training for the funeral. “He’s dead,” he Invicta” he wears when working out, he says. told her. “There’s nothing to be done.”

He ignores red lights and cuts off oncoming traffic to make Even as he recounts this, Schwarzenegger is disconcertingly left turns. Some pedestrians notice the former governor. One charismatic. One of his greatest gifts as a body- [Cont. on 20] guy waiting for the bus presents a downturned thumb and

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ROCK&ROLL His life can resemble retirement: He smokes cigars, travels, paints. “I do it usually around Christmastime, painting cards for [Cont. from 19] builder had nothing to do with muscles but friends and family, so I do mostly Santa Claus and snowmen,” with his ability to charm crowds. He’d get into other bodyhe says. He established a policy center, through which he helps builders’ heads, playing pranks on them, needling at their into advocate for after-school programs, immigration reform and securities. That performative savvy carried into Hollywood, of environmental protections. He remains full of ideas for his state, course, and into politics. “If I give a speech,” he says, “I need to including how to deal with its water crisis. “This is the numberbe able to play with the audience like putty.” one thing: We have water, but we don’t capture it. We always In 1986, Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, marhave our drought periods, and we always have our periods of ried Maria Shriver, the author and Kennedy heiress. In 2003, rain coming down, and it’s ludicrous for us not to have a plan.”

California’s governor, Gray Davis, was weak in the polls, and Political short-term thinking galls him particularly. In Schwarzenegger, who’d been considering a move into polia recent Washington Post op-ed about Indiana’s religioustics, handily won his job. At the Sacramento Capitol, one of freedom laws, widely seen as sanctioning anti-gay discrimihis splashiest moves was to erect a nation, Schwarzenegger upbraided vast smoking tent, where he puffed those in his party who remain foWith Abigail Cuban cigars, holding court below a cused on what he dismissed as tired Breslin in Maggie moody black-and-white portrait of culture-war distractions. He argues himself. “It was my turf,” Schwarthat his party has moved further zenegger says. right on such issues than is moral Gold’s Gym is his turf too. He zigor sustainable. When I ask how he zags from the pectoral fly to the overregards the 2016 Republican preshead press to the bicep curl – reps idential field, he speaks gingerly: here, reps there. He spots an octoge“The action is always in the midnarian in track pants going hard on a dle – never to the extreme right.” stationary bike. “Mahoney!” SchwarHe is certainly left of the Republizenegger calls out. Mahoney, first can mainstream on climate change, name Chuck, is a former bodybuildalthough he is less interested in criter. “This guy is guilty of once caricizing conservatives or the autorying two 250-pound weights, one makers and energy lobbies, which in each hand, all the way to Muscle he battled as governor, than enBeach and back,” Schwarzenegger “A movie like this would not have vironmentalists, for their shoddy says. “It’s 250 now?” Mahoney re- meant as much to me 20 years ago. messaging: “You can’t talk about plies, smiling. “You need to get this [Now] I’m at that age where those kinds beetle-infested trees in Colorado,” story straight, Arnold. I did it twice he says. “When you live in Texas or of things have more emotional effect.”

– 65 the first time, 110 the second.”

Iowa, you say, ‘OK, the ocean rises Schwarzenegger returns to his one inch, why do I give a shit?’ But routine, and people keep approaching with their phones out. He people respond if you tell them you’re killing 7 million people will stand for pictures, he tells each one, when he’s done exercisa year in the world, and 200,000 in America, with pollutioning. The line grows. “After,” he tells new supplicants. He grunts related illness. Environmentalists need to talk about that!” it between reps: “After!”

When I ask about his approval ratings by the end of Term Two, he says he was a casualty, in large part, of global economic e and shriver have four kids togethcatastrophe. But, he adds defiantly, “I got an enormous amount er: two boys, two girls. He struggled as a dad to of things done.” locate the line between giving them things he’d After his workout, Schwarzenegger pedals to the ocean for never had and spoiling them. “It’s very tough, a look at Muscle Beach. It’s chilly, and only a couple of tankbecause you didn’t have anything, and they topped behemoths are out lifting. Vendors sell garish paintings, have everything,” he says. “So, of course, you crappy flip-flops, carved wood tchotchkes. Weirdos laze about. always think about it: ‘Why would I buy him a car at the age of “This place hasn’t changed,” says Schwarzenegger. “Lunatics.

16?’ But then you realize if he doesn’t have a car, he’ll be the only Drug addicts. It’s exactly like the Sixties.” one of his friends without one. So you get them an Audi. The People notice him and cluster, abuzz. Schwarzenegger waves, smallest Audi. Or a small Jeep. But the good thing is, they were says, “Hey! Hey!” He does not owe these people joy, but he seems always responsible.” When his daughter Katherine was promothappy to provide it to them so effortlessly. It’s why he’s doing ing a 2010 self-help book she wrote, she shared advice Arnold Terminator again, he says: “It is one of those iconic characters had given her: “You can’t get anything done in a day if you get people are fascinated by. I’ve always been in the business of enup past 5:30 a.m.” tertaining people or serving people.”

In 2011, it came to light that Schwarzenegger had fathered a Before long he points his bike away from Muscle Beach, tofifth child, Joseph, now a teenager, with the family’s housekeepward his office. A burnout-looking dude with a huge backpack er. According to his memoir, when Shriver confronted him, he and a mountain bike pulls up beside him. “Conan the Barbarassured her, “I’m turned on by you today as much as I was on ian was your best work, man,” he calls over. the first date.” She filed for divorce. Except to note that he and “Thank you,” replies Schwarzenegger, neither turning his Joseph are close, Schwarzenegger refuses to discuss this now. “I head nor decelerating. don’t think about it,” he says. “I move forward.” He began dat“I thought that was you riding past. I could tell from ing a physical therapist, Heather Milligan, who helped him rethe back.” cover from a shoulder injury. Paps stalk them. “The advantages “From my lats!” Schwarzenegger jokes. hopefully outweigh the disadvantages,” he says. “She’s driving The guy veers toward the sand. Schwarzenegger turns inland, a Bugatti 180 miles an hour in France, all that stuff. So I think where a traffic light is turning red. He pays it no mind. “I should she’s not complaining!” run for mayor of the Venice boardwalk!” he cries.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

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M a y 21 , 2 01 5

TRACY BENNETT/ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS

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ROCK&ROLL CHECKING IN

David Duchovny’s Rock Files He has a new show, a novel and an ‘X-Files’ revival. But he really just wants to sing

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s of a few years ago, david Duchovny had never played guitar, and he had barely sung a note in public since flunking a choir audition as a kid. So he was as surprised as anyone to find himself recording what turned out to be a likable, lyrically tart, vaguely Wilco-ish debut album, Hell or Highwater, due out May 12th. It started when his split from wife Tea Leoni left the 54-year-old actor with unaccustomed free time, thanks to joint custody of his two kids: “I thought, ‘Maybe I can learn to play guitar to amuse myself,’ ” says Duchovny, who’s starring in a new NBC series, Aquarius (premiering May 28th), and will also film six new episodes of The X-Files this summer. “That was the motivation.”

One of your songs disses Bob Dylan for doing ads – that’s ballsy for a debut LP. If I were him, I wouldn’t give a shit what I think. It came from watching the Super Bowl with my children, and the jingoism and bullshit America über alles stuff was making me ill. To me, Dylan was a way in.

I’m happy he can make money. I think he can do whatever the fuck he pleases, and he’s aces with me forever.

Your voice sounds a bit like the guy from the National.

If my voice sounds like anybody, I take it as a compliment [laughs]. With singing, I just wanted to have some sense of when I open my mouth, what the fuck is gonna come out? It’s not natural to me.

What was the first day in the studio like?

FIRST-TIMER Duchovny in a Brooklyn studio in 2014. “At one point, I was just lying on the ground underneath the mic, yelling that this was all a mistake,” he says.

Horrible. At one point, I was just lying on the ground underneath the mic, yelling that this was all a mistake.

You also published a novel this year, and your Twitter bio simply says “dilettante.”

It’s all just an offering. I’m saying here’s something I did. If you like it, take it with you, and if you don’t, maybe I’ll do it again, and hopefully you’ll like that one.

What’s behind your line about “mediocrities for hourly fees”?

A remake of the classic Prince movie, starring a desert guitar hero Christopher Kirkley, a native of Portland, Oregon, was running a one-man West African record label when he thought of a novel idea: a remake of Purple Rain with Nigerian music (often called “desert

RollingStone.com

blues”) in place of Prince’s hits. The film stars charismatic singer-guitarist Mdou Moctar, who had never heard of Purple Rain but quickly embraced the concept, helping Kirkley adapt scenes to a Saharan setting. Because the Tamashek language doesn’t have a word for “purple,” the title became Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai – “Rain the

Color of Blue With a Little Red in It.” As with Purple Rain, the film (available via Sahelsounds.com) climaxes at an epic battle of the bands.

“People thought it was a real competition, and the crowd got really rowdy cheering for Mdou,” says Kirkley. “We had to try to tone it down so people knew that it was actually a film.”

NICK MURRAY

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

FROM TOP: ADAM BRADLEY; JEROME FINO

‘PURPLE RAIN’ FALLS ON THE SAHARA

Mdou Moctar

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We’ve all paid for a little therapy, haven’t we? I had a professor who said they called them shrinks because they make things small.

They shrink everything. That’s probably the most specifically angry I get in any of these songs.

“A man of words is a man of lies” is a nice lyric.

That’s the English-literature guy in me: Words are just an approximation. That’s one of the great things about music: It kind of fills up the distance between the words and what you’re feeling.

What songs did you start with on guitar?

The Beatles, Lou Reed, the Band, Petty – classic white-guy rock. I love Seventies funk, but I’m not good enough to play it yet.

So hopefully, within the next year or so, I’ll get my jazzy chords and come out with a little Sly and the Family Stone tribute album.

How much of the “X-Files” mythology do you have straight in your head?

Very little. I think Gillian [Anderson] and I should probably do a remedial course

by Chris Carter or somebody who runs a website that knows exactly what the hell they’re talking about.

What’s it like to have Fox Mulder follow you around for all these years?

At one point it was frustrating, and I feared being typecast. Now, it’s just kind of funny. I was going to sing last week, and New York is where I get the best recognitions, and this guy goes, “Oh, shit! It’s homeboy from The X-Files!” That’s the way I like to think of myself: homeboy from The X-Files.

BRIAN HIATT

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ROCK&ROLL

Hozier Hits the Heartland When Hozier was growing up in Ireland, he saw the United States through the eyes of his heroes: bluesmen like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker. “The more I listened to the music, the more I became fascinated with America,” Hozier says. “I was drawn to the mythology of one man, one voice, one guitar.” Recently, Hozier has gotten to see the country himself, as one of this year’s biggest breakout stars. The singer-songwriter, 25, has been zigzagging across the U.S. since his song “Take Me to Church” exploded worldwide last fall.

We caught up with him in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he explored the city’s musical history and presentday quirks before playing a sold-out gig. NICK MURRAY

DAWN TO DUSK

LOCAL FLAVOR Grabbing lunch at Harden’s, a 76-year-old burger joint in Tulsa (above).

Left: Visiting the Golden Driller, a roadside monument to oil workers. Below right: Posing with a fan at Harden’s.

ROAD WARRIOR Hozier takes morning tea on his tour bus, which arrived in Tulsa from Texas the night before.

THIS MACHINE FASCINATES IRISHMEN At the Woody Guthrie Center, checking out a guitar owned by the folk singer (and Oklahoma native).

SHOWTIME Hozier onstage at Tulsa’s Brady Theater before a sellout crowd of nearly 3,000

To see an exclusive video of Hozier’s day in Tulsa, including behind-the-scenes footage and live clips, visit RollingStone.com/dawntodusk.

Photographs by Jerem y Charles

ROCK&ROLL EXHIBITION

Bill Graham’s Rock & Roll Life Goes on Display in L.A. cisco (where his Fillmore West served as home court for bands like the Grateful Dead) and moved on to organize tours with the Rolling Stones, as well as Live Aid in 1985, before dying in a ill gr aham was the most in- helicopter crash in 1991. The exhibifluential concert promoter in rock tion, which travels to San Francisco next year and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame history, a music-biz visionary in 2017, includes artifacts like Jerry with a legendary take-noGarcia’s custom “Wolf” guitar, prisoners style. “When Bill said the belt worn by Mick Jagger he’d take care of it, it was taken at Altamont and a handbill care of,” said Keith Richards. from the first event Graham “Whether you liked it or not.” brought to the Fillmore: a Now his three decades of work benefit for the satirical theare on display in “Bill Graham Graham ater group the San Francisco and the Rock & Roll Revolution,” Mime Troupe. It also touches on a collection of personal artifacts and memorabilia at the Skirball Cultural Center Graham’s childhood as a German Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis. Says in Los Angeles.

“Bill’s art was the performances and the Clancey, “He was an immigrant who acts that he booked,” says exhibit curator took risks and did great things in Erin Clancey. Graham started in San Fran- American society.” STEVE APPLEFORD

A new exhibition celebrates the work of the pioneering promoter and impresario

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SPECIAL CO LLEC TORS EDITI ON

The WHO

T HE ULT IM AT E GUIDE

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD The Father Time costume (left) Graham wore at a Grateful Dead gig on New Year’s Eve. Above: Garcia’s custom “Wolf” guitar.

FROM LEFT: © BARON WOLMAN, COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST; ROBERT WEDEMEYER; JON CORNICK

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CHECKING IN

Dan Auerbach Gets ‘Extra-Weird’ Black Keys frontman cuts a wild solo LP and works with a brand-new artist: His dad

ALYSSE GAFKJEN

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he bl ack keys were forced to cancel several weeks of shows this past winter after drummer Patrick Carney dislocated his shoulder while bodysurfing in the Caribbean. But his bandmate, Dan Auerbach, put the downtime to good use, finishing a solo album that he will release this summer. Auerbach, whose last solo LP was 2009’s Keep It Hid, recorded the stilluntitled album in just two weeks in Brooklyn, Nashville and other cities. It features a new band, the Arcs, which includes guitarist Kenny Vaughan (from Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives) and former Keys touring keyboardist Leon Michels (who co-produced the LP). Auerbach explores several new sounds, adding vocal harmonies and collaborating with Mariachi Flor de Toloache, an all-female New

MAJOR KEY “It’s basically everything I love about music,” says Auerbach of his solo LP.

York mariachi band. “They play a huge part in the record,” says Auerbach. “I just wanted to get extra-weird. I wanted everything to flow [and] be cohesive. A lot of the songs bleed one into the other, a lot like the Grateful Dead. It’s basically everything I love about music all wrapped up into one record – that’s all!”

One song is about trips he took as a teen to Mississippi with his dad to learn about the blues. They’re still bonding over music – Auerbach just produced his father’s first album. “He wrote all of the songs,” Dan says of Charles Auerbach, an antiques dealer. “He’s not really a singer, but I’m forcing him. I booked some studio time with some really good musicians, though he said it was too nerve-racking to enjoy it.”

This month, Auerbach will return to the road with the Keys for several festivals. He’s also planning to take the Arcs on the road soon: “I can’t wait to tour this.

But I know I’m not going to be working PATRICK DOYLE with a Black Keys budget.”

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Exclusive Rolling Stone interviews with Who members Townshend, Moon, Daltrey & Entwistle The 50 Best Who Songs Tributes to the band from musicians Eddie Vedder, Wayne Coyne & more

ON NEWSSTANDS NOW Also available at bn.com/rsthewho.

Kelly Clarkson The singer on being a free agent for the first time, supporting Hillary, and backgammon with Reba McEntire

By Simon Vozick-Levinson

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n m arch, kelly cl arkson’s “piece

by Piece” became the singer’s third LP to top the Billboard 200. It’s also the final installment in the six-album deal she signed with RCA Records immediately after winning American Idol’s first season, in 2002. Clarkson says she’s loving her new freedom. “Man, I have no frigging clue what’s coming next, but it’s going to be fun,” she says, calling from her Nashville home. “I haven’t ever been able to pick who to work with as an artist, so it’s nice now that it’s a choice. It’ll be cool to ‘Breakaway,’ for lack of a better term, and see what’s out there. If I want to make a country rec ord, I’ll make a country record. If I want to make an R&B record, I’ll make that. I’ve made enough money in my career. This is just the cherry on top.”

So does this mean that you can finally burn all the existing copies of From Justin to Kelly?

[Laughs] No, I think I would have to own it first. But that is something I will look into. I have a little joke with our nanny, because she told me she loves that movie. She was like, “My roommate and I used to watch it all the time! I’m totally going to show your daughter From Justin to Kelly.” I’m like, “I will fire you.”

You went back to Idol recently as a guest mentor.

Would you ever consider rejoining the show on a more permanent basis as a judge?

I actually love the mentoring process. It was nostalgic to be there – it was the same hallway that I was warming up in 13 years ago, when I was 19. It did make me feel a little old. But it was really cool. When I went on that show, I thought maybe I would end up being a backup singer for someone. So I couldn’t have wished for more.

Would you really consider making an R&B album, or was that just an example?

People always tell me I should do a covers album because of all the fan requests I do at shows – from Foo Fighters to Coldplay to Patsy Cline. And on the radio right now, you have everything from Sam Smith to Zedd to Tove Lo. There’s a little bit of everything, and that’s cool.

People have noticed that your new “Heartbreak Song” sounds a lot like Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle.” Were you surprised by that comparison?

I didn’t write the song, I just sang it. But I didn’t catch that. Nobody behind the scenes did. What’s funny is that I

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was a huge fan of that Jimmy Eat World album! We actually thought our song sounded like the Postal Service – that was our big concern. I thought it was really cool of Jimmy Eat World to say, “Hey, no harm, no foul.” There are only so many chords. I felt so bad for Pharrell when he got sued – he’s a huge fan of Marvin Gaye, and you know he didn’t mean to rip him off. And he’s the sweetest guy ever. It sucks.

You’re married to Reba McEntire’s stepson.

Are your Thanksgivings basically like the CMAs every time?

Yes, we give out awards every time [laughs]. No, our family gatherings are just a bunch of grandchildren and nieces and nephews. Our job is very egocentric, so it’s nice to be able to reflect on something else.

What do you do for fun when you have a night off?

We have a movie theater in our house, and we just watched Interstellar. Oh, my gosh, it’s so trippy! I want to be an astronaut at this point. We also play board games. My sister, my mom, me and Reba are the gamers in the family. Everyone else we just drag into it.

Who wins?

Reba and I are both competitive – she’ll tell you she’s not, but she’s a liar.

I can win Sequence, but if we play backgammon or Mexican Train dominoes, she kills me. She’s like a backgammon magician.

There’s a campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill instead of Andrew Jackson. Who would you put there?

Oh, Lord. I love that idea. We should probably put Oprah. I feel a little bad about taking someone else off, though. That’s kind of the worst slap in the face. Andrew Jackson is somewhere really pissed off.

Speaking of presidents, the election is starting to get in gear. Do you like any of the candidates?

I’m a fan of Hillary. She’s badass. I don’t just want a woman to win, I want the right person. And I think she’s also that.

Would you ever consider running for office?

You’ve proved you can win a national vote.

Oh, my God, that’s the worst job in the world. It’s like being a football coach. When things are going well, the coach is just lucky, and then when everything goes to shit, it’s all the coach’s fault.

You recently introduced a line of greeting cards. Help me out here. What’s an appropriate situation to give someone a Kelly Clarkson greeting card?

Well, they’re all based on humor. I like a good laugh. Even if you’re sad or it’s a birthday card or a sweet one for your mom, it can still be funny. My sense of humor is a little crass. I’m a little white-trash and a little class.

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Q&A

TELEVISION

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Louis C.K. hit new heights by embracing midlife rage By Rob Sheffield

W

h a t a y e a r f or hostile old people.

Louie and Veep are both in the middle of historic seasons where the bile never stops gushing, both starring comic antiheroes who’ve aged into warriors of generational

Veep Sundays, 10:30 p.m., HBO

Louie Thursdays, 10:30 p.m., FX

conflict. Louis C.K.’s onscreen alter ego might be a struggling comedian, while Julia LouisDreyfus’ Selina Meyer is the president. But they both keep reaching new heights, and they both do it by cranking up the nasty. They’re a new paradigm of midlife aggro. They hate young people only slightly more intensely than they hate everyone else. And they make it look like fun. Hey, why settle for having a midlife crisis – why not be a midlife crisis?

The key moment in the new Louie season comes when he argues with a candy-ass millennial who taunts him in a kitchenware shop. “We’re the future, and you don’t belong in it,” she sneers. “Because we’re beyond you. And naturally, that makes you feel kinda bad.” Louie realizes this twentysomething twerp has a point. He feels lost and obsolete in the modern world. He really does feel stupid around young people – especially the ones he’s raising. It’s the stuff that fortysomething rage explosions are made of.

Telev ision a lways goes for hostile old folks whenever there’s a youth explosion.

After the social upheavals of the 1960s, the TV response was to give the nation Archie Bunker and Lou Grant and George Jefferson. They were bigots, they were bullies, they were the Man – and they took no guff from the chicos. And

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PRESIDENTIAL – PARDON? Louis-Dreyfus at the helm

YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? Robert Kelly and Louis C.K.

these days, with youth culture replicating itself and mutating at warp speed, TV is once again booming with comedic cranks, fuming about selfies and hashtags the way Fred Sanford used to spit out sushi.

Louis C.K. and Julia LouisDreyfus do this tradition proud.

They were certified veterans, at the point where they could afford to relax, come on a little warmer and fuzzier, the way legends are supposed to do. But Veep and Louie keep pushing and experimenting, refusing to go on autopilot. Instead, Louis and Louis-Dreyfus plow into the cranky-but-lovable years

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of a comic’s career by hoisting their fuck-off-and-die flag.

Veep has gotten so dark, it no longer makes sense to call it a political satire. Instead, politics is just another affliction that happens to horrible people. In its refusal to coast, Veep keeps throwing new jerks into the mix who make everyone around them jerkier. This season’s triumph is adding the never-fail genius of Patton Oswalt, who can make anything twice as funny just by showing up. He finds creative new ways to abuse Jonah, the most noxious young White House staffer. Could anyone ask for a bet-

ter metaphor for generational warfare than Oswalt squeezing Jonah’s nads?

When Selina preps to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, she says, “I’m used to dealing with angry, aggressive, dysfunctional men – i.e., men.” Exhibit A: Louie, who manages to keep growing as a character without ever surrendering his core identity as an angry, aggressive, dysfunctional jerk.

He sums up his whole philosophy this season in the moment when he shows up at a snooty young-parents pot-luck dinner with KFC. Every time you think he’s reached the zero-fucks-given zone, he finds a way to give even zero-er.

Steve Coogan works the same turf in Showtime’s Happyish, as a New York ad man raging against the kids today with their Twitters. Of course he’s not the least sympathetic – why would anyone send Coogan to play a likable guy? Instead, Coogan is the bona fide fortysomething asshole he’s relished playing since his twenties. But the writers don’t have the misanthropy formula down – Louie and Veep operate on another level.

Larry David perfected the rule in Seinfeld: “No hugging.

No learning.” But there’s a big difference on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld, because none of those damaged grown-ups was a parent. Miserable as they made one another, at least they didn’t afflict innocent bystanders. It’s more complicated for Selina and Louie, since they’re parents – all three of their kids will have extremely colorful tales to tell their shrinks someday. Selina’s daughter has grown into one of Veep’s most poignant figures. It’s so sad to see the First Daughter suffer as the president tries to cop teen lingo (“epic succeed” – yeah, right). The president might run the world, but she’s just another mom with issues, looking into a tomorrow where she doesn’t belong and saying the hell with it. No hugging. No learning. No future.

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

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The Songs That Made Me 13 stars – from Seger to Swift – reveal their musical DNA

Taylor Swift 1. “You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon, 1972 It was the shot heard ’round the world that left everyone debating and wondering, “Which famous ex-lover did she write it about?” I’ve felt the ripples of that blaring public curiosity affect my own lyrics. I was a poetry-obsessed preteen the first time I heard that incredibly genius kiss-off, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” After hearing that, it was like a key had just unlocked this forbidden area of storytelling for me. You can say exactly what you feel, even if it’s bitter and brazen! Almost 10 years later, I sat in my dressing room in Boston.

Carly Simon had just performed “You’re So Vain” with me in front of 65,000 fans. She leaned over and whispered to me who the song was written about – me, the one person who hadn’t asked her.

2. “This Kiss,” Faith Hill, 1998 I sang this song for my fourthgrade chorus audition. I think it changed the way I saw country music and music in general. Ev-

Illustrations by Gluekit

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eryone loved “This Kiss,” not just country fans. Pop and rock fans loved it too. I guess you could say that theme rubbed off on me.

4. “Blood Bank,” Bon Iver, 2009 I think this is one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard, because of the conversational lyrics. It’s so detailed, but in a sporadic way – just like a memory. My favorite lines: “That secret that we know, that we don’t know how to tell/I’m in love with your honor/I’m in love with your cheeks.” It’s dark, but feels romantic. I think I like this song because it reminds me of how love actually feels.

5. “The Middle,” Jimmy Eat World, 2001 I remember listening to this on the bus to school. I felt comforted by it, because I never felt like I really fit perfectly into any clique at school. I wish every kid who goes through those same feelings of loneliness could hear how Jim Adkins sings, “Don’t you worry what they tell themselves when you’re away.”

6. “Hands Down,” Dashboard Confessional, 2003 My high school experience was marked by memories of houseparty singalongs of “Hands Down” and driving around with my best friend screaming the words to it. It’s the best recounting of an unforgettable first date I’ve ever heard.

7. “Backseat Freestyle,” Kendrick Lamar, 2012 This past year I moved to New York, and for the first time, I was dealing with dozens of paparazzi outside my place every day.

At first, I got really anxious every time I’d be about to open the car door. They’d crowd around me and yell. Then one day I put my iPhone on shuffle, and “Backseat Freestyle” came on. Something about Kendrick’s voice and the beat made me feel safe. It was pretty much all I listened to that summer.

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Marilyn Manson 1. “We Are the Dead,” David Bowie, 1974 I remember hearing this song in the Nineties, when I first moved to L.A. It wouldn’t have had the same impact on me if I’d heard it when I was a kid in Ohio – it felt like it was about the culture of Hollywood, the disgusting cannibalism. It was a great inspiration to me on Antichrist Superstar.

2. “Cat People (Putting Out Fire),” David Bowie, 1982 A great song lyrically – very biting, very strong, very powerful. I never really liked this song on Let’s Dance, but I love the version on the soundtrack to the film Cat People.

3. “Straight Outta Compton,” N.W.A, 1988 I was in a completely different phase of music when I first heard this. I was living in Florida at the time, and I was trying to go against my environment, which was lots of 2 Live Crew and N.W.A – so I was probably listening to Jane’s Addiction, the Cure and Joy Division. But eventually I listened and I thought, “You know what?

N.W.A is as punk-rock as anyone.”

4. “Cry Me a River,” Justin Timberlake, 2002 People underestimate how badass Justin Timberlake can be. Coming from a boy band, he probably wanted to break that mold and show people his darker side, and that’s “Cry Me a River.” In addition, I was told by my great friend Johnny Depp that he’d “buy me a liver” if I ever needed him to, so there’s that.

5. “Cocaine Blues,” Johnny Cash, 1968 It’s hard to pick just one favorite Johnny Cash song, but this is the one I listen to before I go onstage. I listen to the version that he played at Folsom Prison – the one where you can actually

hear his voice crack. You can hear that grit in his throat. It makes it real.

6. “Hey Joe,” Jimi Hendrix, 1967 This song is similar to “Cocaine Blues” in that they’re both about killing a woman. It’s sort of like how we call tank-top shirts wife-beaters. It’s strange that that’s part of American culture.

7. “The End,” the Doors, 1967 I played some shows with the surviving members of the Doors a couple of years ago. I did “Five to One,” I did “People Are Strange” – but I would never do “The End.” No one touches that song.

That’s sacred. Even though it came out earlier, “The End” really feels like it defines 1969, the year I was born: Altamont, Woodstock, the end of the Summer of Love and all that shit.

8. “I’m Eighteen,” Alice Cooper, 1971 One of the first songs that I heard by Alice Cooper when I was growing up. I listened to it because my mother, who loved Neil Diamond and the Bee Gees, also loved Alice Cooper. At the time, it didn’t make me think, “I’m going to be a singer.” But I could identify with it. It felt true, and it will always be true. Much later, I toured with Alice and I got to sing it with him, which was a childhood dream come true.

9. “Today,” Smashing Pumpkins, 1993 Billy Corgan and I became friends about 15 years ago, when I was working on Mechanical Animals and he was working on what would become Adore. Even before that, I always loved this song.

People might think of it as a happy pop song, but it’s actually very dark. When he says, “Today is the greatest day,” it’s an ironic statement, and people don’t catch that.

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3. “Lego House,” Ed Sheeran, 2011 I was so intrigued by this song that I reached out to Ed to write for my album Red. I loved the cadence of the pre-chorus, “And it’s dark in a cold December, but I got you to keep me waa-arm.”

We wrote in a Phoenix hotel room, ate In-N-Out burgers and essentially became a permanent fi xture in each other’s lives.

Mark Ronson

Bob Seger 1. “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover,” Art Mooney, 1948 The first song I ever sang for my parents. I was four years old, sitting in the back seat of our ’49 Buick Roadmaster. They were in stunned silence, then they said, “He can sing!” That was the moment I knew.

2. “Hound Dog,” Elvis Presley, 1956 “Hound Dog” is the reason we all did it. It’s Elvis at his youngest and most explosive. When I was 10, I picked up my father’s bass ukulele, and this was the first thing I learned to play – this and “Don’t Be Cruel.”

PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATIONS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RANDY HOLMES/ABC/GETTY IMAGES; STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE; JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGES

3. “Running Scared,” Roy Orbison, 1962 Absolutely stunning to this day. Roy’s voice is one in a million. This is really his version of Ravel’s “Boléro.”

4. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” Bob Dylan, 1965 Dylan opened up limitless possibilities for lyrics in one fell swoop. Everything you want to know about him is right here – he’s absolutely lucid and direct, which was unusual for him back then. He taught me how to sell a song.

5. “Me and Bobby McGee,” Kris Kristofferson, 1970 This is the definitive narrative song that really got my songwriting going. I don’t think I would have written “Night Moves” without hearing it.

Kacey Musgraves 1. “For the Good Times,” Ray Price, 1970 This might be the saddest song of all time. It really breaks my heart.

2. “Broken Things,” Julie Miller, 1999 I had a guitar teacher who introduced me to Miller. This song is one of the firsts that made me fall in love with songwriting.

3. “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man,” Loretta Lynn, 1966

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6. “Gimme Some Lovin’,” the Spencer Davis Group, 1967 When I heard this, I said, “This is the kind of music I want to write.” If you listen to my first single, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” there’s a B-3 organ – just like on “Gimme Some Lovin’.” And for 49 years now, I’ve never played a show without a Hammond B-3 organ.

1. “Who Got Da Props?”

Black Moon, 1993 In high school, I started getting into underground New York hip-hop – I would tape these radio shows late at night.

I heard this song, and I had to go buy the 12-inch. That’s what led me to DJ’ing.

7. “Didn’t You Know (You’d Have to Cry Sometime),” Gladys Knight and the Pips, 1969 Gladys was the best female singer on Motown, and this song has an unbelievable vocal. I love her.

2. “Cult of Personality,” Living Colour, 1988 At the same time, I was playing in bands. We were five city kids – two white kids, three black kids, all of us 14 or 15.

Living Colour was all we wanted to be.

8. “What’d I Say,” Ray Charles, 1959 After I heard this song, I had to have a Wurlitzer. A few years later, I wrote “Turn the Page” on that Wurlitzer!

So it’s very important to me.

9. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” the Rolling Stones, 1968 This is my favorite Stones song of all time. It’s pretty damn strong. It brought my guitar playing up, too – I simply had to be able to play that Keith Richards lick and sing it at the same time. I wouldn’t stop until I was able to do it.

3. “Cut the Cake,” the Average White Band, 1975 Their approach to rhythm guitar was so tight.

4. “Dream Come True,” the Brand New Heavies, 1990 I loved this instantly. It was sweet but funky.

5. “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” Pete Rock and CL Smooth, 1992 This is definitely the first hiphop song that ever made me cry from emotion.

10. “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” the Miracles, 1963 I was singing this live even before the Beatles did it.

The girls in the audience loved it.

6. “Work,” Gang Starr, 1998 When I was starting to make beats, nothing influenced me more than wanting to be DJ Premier. He almost had the feel of a great rock drummer.

What a total sass-bucket she is! And smart, too! Loretta is a massive influence. This song has always made me laugh.

7. “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You),” Stevie Wonder, 1972 I was dating this girl in L.A., and it wasn’t going well. I went out there, and she dumped me.

So I bought a cheap electric piano and figured out how to play this song.

4. “Heart of Gold,” Neil Young, 1972 My dad played Neil around the house a lot. This inspired me to pick up the harmonica.

5. “Mr. Blue Sky,” ELO, 1977 This song was so ahead of its time.

I used to listen to it on repeat. It’s just otherworldly.

6. “Gentle on My Mind,” Glen Campbell, 1967 Glen has played a huge part in inspiring my music. I think he was ahead of his time, too. The melodies, the instrumentation and the wonderfully classic writing – country at its best.

8. “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand),” the Shangri-Las, 1964 Amy Winehouse played this for me the first day that we met.

I listened to it that night and came up with the main piano chords for “Back to Black.”

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1. “Put Your Finger in the Air,” Woody Guthrie, 1950 This was the first record that I owned. It always takes me back to a child’s simple delight, in following along with Woody’s commands.

2. “Heartbreak Hotel,” Elvis Presley, 1956 I remember the exact moment I heard it coming from a first-floor window while I was sitting on a stoop in the Bronx.

I was totally transfi xed by the lonely feeling of the recording and the effect that Elvis’ voice had on me. It was a bornagain experience.

3. “That Lucky Old Sun,” Louis Armstrong, 1949 His early recorded version of this song is pretty hard to top.

I remember when my father took me to see Armstrong at New York’s Roxy Theater. That helped make me a hardcore jazz fan.

4. “Maybe Tomorrow,” the Everly Brothers, 1958 This was the flip side of “Wake Up Little Susie,” but for me it was a Number One. It still gives me goose bumps when I hear it.

Brian Wilson 1. “Rhapsody in Blue,” George Gershwin, 1924 “Rhapsody in Blue” is the first song I ever heard. When I was a little boy, very young, I heard it and said, “Mom, Mom, play it again!”

I loved the part where the violins came in. I just got this overwhelmingly beautiful vibe from the music.

2. “Be My Baby,” the Ronettes, 1963 This is the song that inspired me to produce records. When I first heard it, it blew my mind. The drum sound that Phil Spector got, the harmonies, the piano and guitar sounds – I thought it was the greatest record I ever heard.

and then he turned away. He wouldn’t talk to me. Too bad. But he taught me how to write rock & roll songs.

6. “You Stepped Out of a Dream,” the Four Freshmen, 1955 This is where I learned to arrange harmonies, and also where I learned to sing falsetto. Their four-part harmony was totally original – not five or three parts, but four parts. Wow.

3. “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the Beatles, 1967 What a fantastic song. The lyrics are so expressive and different. “Could it be anybody?/I just need someone to love” – oh, I really love that part.

4. “My Obsession,” the Rolling Stones, 1967 “Satisfaction” is my second-favorite song by the Stones. This one is my favorite. They invited me down to their studio in Hollywood when they were mixing it. I remember sitting there and feeling that energy and that excitement.

5. “Johnny B. Goode,” Chuck Berry, 1959 I met Chuck Berry one time on an airplane. I said, “Hi, I’m Brian Wilson!” He goes, “Hey,”

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7. “Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley and His Comets, 1954 I remember the first time a friend of mine played this for me on the phone. I just wanted to hear it over and over.

8. “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Bob Dylan, 1965 “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me/I’m not sleepy, and there ain’t no place I’m going to. . . .” I love those lyrics, really love them. “Poetic” is the word.

PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATIONS, FROM LEFT: YOON S. BYUN/“THE BOSTON GLOBE”/GETTY IMAGES; ALLEN BEREZOVSKY/GETTY IMAGES

Peter Wolf

7. “Ride Me Down Easy,” Waylon Jennings, 1973 Billy Joe Shaver wrote this.

He’s on my Mount Rushmore of songwriters. He showed up and threatened to whip Waylon’s ass if he didn’t cut his songs. I have the record on vinyl, and one of my favorite things is when I get off the road late at night, I have a whiskey and put on this song. If I kick the bucket, this is one of the songs I want played at my funeral.

2.“Roll Me Away,” Bob Seger, 1982 Bob asked me to open some dates for him in 2006. I’d been waiting my entire life to play music that way. There’s a sense of freedom that this song has, and it matched that moment.

3. “Russian Lullaby,” Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, 1991 I went to Appalachian State University, which was very bluegrass- and folk-oriented. It was the first time I got exposed to this kind of stuff. “Russian Lullaby” has this real haunting sound. It was so different than anything I’d ever heard.

4. “A Train Robbery,” Levon Helm, 2007 Helm’s solo records are some of his best. This one’s got a great storyline. He was the rhythm of my childhood. I could pick out his drumming anywhere.

Eric Church 5. “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen, 1975 If there’s any song that sums up quintessential Bruce, it’s this one. He’s a poet, and this has my favorite lyrics by him – I love the honesty. I got to hear him do “Thunder Road” acoustic by himself in Nashville recently. He came back out, and all the lights were up. It was pretty damn special.

6. “Ten Degrees (Getting Colder),” Tony Rice, 1996 The record this song is from, Tony Rice Sings Gordon Lightfoot, is hard to find. When I hear this song, I remember playing it at gigs in college. I remember those mountains. I remember driving those curvyass roads every night at 3 a.m., stopping at a Waffle House to sober up.

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8. “C.C. Waterback,” Merle Haggard and George Jones, 1982 This song is from A Taste of Yesterday’s Wine. It’s about getting up in the morning after drinking all night, tequila sunrises and all this shit. There’s a line where Merle says, “I guess I must have drank a case,” and you can hear Jones on the mic – he goes, “I did.” You can tell he really did just drink a case. His head was probably pounding.

9. “Troubadour,” George Strait, 2008 George Strait meant a ton to me – in my life, musically, and now, personally, getting to know him. I stood there every night on his final tour and watched him sing this. It was an emotional thing for me, seeing him wrap up his career the way he wanted to. I think about this song a lot when I’m on stages. Will I be on this stage again? There’ll be a time when I won’t be. My day will come too.

PHOTOGRAPH USED IN ILLUSTRATION: FREDERICK BREEDON IV/WIREIMAGE

1. “To Beat the Devil,” Kris Kristofferson, 1970 This song saved my life, pretty much. Kept me in Nashville when I wanted to quit. I was broke. I’d been in town more than a year, working at the Home Shopping Network. I remember putting in the Kristofferson CD I had, and that’s what “To Beat the Devil” talks about: being in town and having a rough patch and being a songwriter. The next day, I got a call that ended up leading to a record deal. That one more day meant this world.

Carrie Brownstein

PHOTOGRAPH USED IN ILLUSTRATION: JASON LAVERIS/FILMMAGIC

1. “Carey,” Joni Mitchell, 1971 There’s something strange, when you’re a kid, about a song that says your name. Of course, Joni Mitchell is talking about a man named Carey, but I didn’t know that. I was so drawn to it – the song seemed to recognize me in some way, which set me on an emotional course for looking for validation in songs.

4. “So Tough,” the Slits, 1979 Discovering the Slits and their album Cut was such a formative moment. The image of these women caked in mud on the cover was so shocking and exciting. “So Tough” was the song that I put on every mixtape. It feels like they put

the commodity was musical knowledge. That was how people judged and valued each other. I had a friend whose sister worked in Seattle, and he gave me a tape of In Utero well before it came out. It felt like I was carrying around a magic stone all summer.

2. “Song for a Future Generation,” the B-52’s, 1983 A friend of mine made me a mixtape in high school with 90 minutes of the B-52’s. I had already started immersing myself in punk – the Ramones, the Clash, the Buzzcocks – but there was something about the singing of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson that excited me.

It felt subversive but slightly saccharine, and it was very fun and strange.

3. “Margin Walker,” Fugazi, 1989 Fugazi were my boy band for my teen years. I missed the first wave of hardcore, but the aggression of their music really matched my own angst and frustration. I just wanted to thrash around to “Margin Walker” the way that earlier I would have jumped around to New Kids on the Block or Duran Duran or something.

7. “Can’t Hardly Wait,” the Replacements, 1987 When I started touring with Sleater-Kinney, I would listen to this song. It had this soothing lullaby quality. I loved the line “I’ll be home when I’m sleeping” – that really spoke to me as a young traveling musician. I would put on my headphones and feel understood.

8. “Anti Love Song,” Betty Davis, 1973 This whole song, she’s fighting herself. It’s a groan, it’s a growl, it’s full of desire. The lyrics are all about denying herself what she wants, and you can feel that struggle. It’s like she needed that groove to propel herself through her pain and her longing. I love it.

9. “John the Revelator,” Son House, 1965 I would go to record shops all the time on tour, and there was a period when I was collecting a lot of blues records. “John the Revelator” really drew me into blues music. It just seemed so big coming from one guy.

6. “Natural’s Not in It,” Gang of Four, 1979 The sound of Gang of Four was revelatory for me – even before you hear the lyrics, the acidity of the guitar playing tells you what this band is. “Natural’s Not in It” is about how our own bodies and desires are commodified, and as a female I always felt that. It’s such a catchy rallying cry of revolt.

the contents of a junk drawer into a bag, and they’re shaking it, and then they were able to string together something melodic on top of that chaos.

I wanted that song around all the time.

5. “Dumb,” Nirvana, 1993 When I moved to Olympia to go to college, there was this sort of marketplace where

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10. “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song,” Mahalia Jackson, 1958 There’s a power of conviction in this song. She’s speaking in terms of good and evil and sin, and she sings with the kind of authority that a lot of people try to sing with. Even as someone who’s not religious, that’s really appealing to me.

Mavis Staples

PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATIONS, FROM LEFT: KEVIN WOLF/INVISION/AP IMAGES; DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES

1. “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Bob Dylan, 1963 Bobby was a cute little guy in the Sixties. He had the curly hair and, oh, man, we had big fun at all the folk festivals. He’s the world’s greatest poet as far as I’m concerned. He just laid it on the line here: The answers are passing us by, blowing in the wind.

2. “Since I Fell for You,” Buddy and Ella Johnson, 1945 I fell in love with this song walking past a juke joint on my way to school every morning. When I sang it at a grammarschool variety show, my uncle snatched me off the stage, pushed me to my grandmother’s house and told her, “This young’un is up at the schoolhouse singing the blues.” Lord, I got the worst whipping in my life!

3. “Why (Am I Treated So Bad),” the Staple Singers, 1965 Back in the 1950s, there were nine black children trying to integrate a white school down in Little Rock, Arkansas. They would walk to school with books in their arms, and they would be spat on and called horrible names.

My father, Pops Staples, watched that, and he said, “Why you treating them so bad?” And then he wrote this song. It turned out to be Dr. Martin Luther King’s favorite.

4. “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke, 1964 Sam Cooke was in my older sister’s grade – we all went to school together. Sam’s group and my brother Purvis’ group would sing in church, and they’d have battles, with us children in the audience eating potato chips and drinking pop. Later, when Sam recorded “A Change Is Gonna Come,” it would bring tears to my eyes every time I heard it.

5. “The Weight,” the Band, 1968 Being in The Last Waltz was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to the Staple Singers. I still can’t get offstage without doing “The Weight.” We were already close friends with the Band by then – with Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko.

Danko would keep you laughing!

He was really cool.

6. “You Are Not Alone,” Jeff Tweedy, 2010 When Tweedy wrote this song for me, I was just getting started again after my father had passed away. It’s one of the most beautiful songs I ever sang. If you think about it, I’m all alone now. I’m the last standing Staple Singer, and I’m divorced. So when I sing this song, I mean it. I’m with you – I’m lonely, too.

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Jack Antonoff 1. “At My Most Beautiful,” R.E.M., 1998 If you don’t cry listening to this song, I can’t help you. The line “I found a way to make you smile” is at the heart of what it means to love someone.

2. “Call It Off,” Tegan & Sara, 2007 The first time I heard this song, I was in one of those regional death-trap airplanes, and it started to uncontrollably shake. I was like, “I’m dying.” This song started to play, and it took me away.

3. “Forever,” Dropkick Murphys, 2001 This doesn’t fit into their general style – it’s kind of an Irish ballad – but it’s the ultimate friendship song.

4. “Only You,” Yaz, 1982 So short and crisp. A huge touchstone for Bleachers.

5. “Beautiful,” Christina Aguilera, 2002 It’s not necessarily cool, but it’s got this superclassic feeling.

I can imagine Queen doing this song.

1. “Cannonball,” Damien Rice, 2002 Seeing Damien Rice perform when I was 11 changed my life forever. After seeing him play this small club in Ireland, I was able to meet him, and he was unbelievably cool. I went straight home and started writing songs. I would not be doing what I’m doing now if he’d been a jerk.

6. “Guiding Light,” Foy Vance, 2013 I’ve been a huge fan of Foy since I was 14 or 15, and this is one of my favorite songs of his. When he set out to make his first album in years, Joy of Nothing, he asked me to join him on the recording of “Guiding Light.” It’s one of my proudest moments.

7. “Do You Remember,” Jarryd James, 2015 I heard this while I was in an Australian radio station last week, and I had to find out who the singer was. Ends up he’s a young lad from Brisbane, and this is his debut single. I just love the sound.

3. “Stan,” Eminem, 2000 Believe it or not, my dad was the one who bought me The Marshall Mathers LP. I think he read an article that compared Eminem to Bob Dylan, and he loved Bob Dylan, so he figured it had to be good. He wasn’t wrong. Eminem is still my favorite rapper of all time.

4. “Ricky,” the Game, 2011 The Game is one rapper that I constantly look up to. He has so much passion and feeling in this song. You know everything he does is the truth.

1. “Let’s Fall in Love Tonight,” Lewis, 1983 The first time I went over to my wife’s place, she had this playing in the background. The album didn’t exist outside of a private pressing of a thousand copies or something – this was a couple of years before it was reissued. We would listen to it all the time, and it ended up being the song that Emma walked down the aisle to.

2. “On the Beach,” Neil Young, 1974 This song is about isolation, but ironically it’s one of the great love songs of my life. “The world is turning/I hope it don’t turn away” – I really identify with that. The whole B side of this album, you can just put it on and get lost. You can get stoned and go inside this little universe. And when the song ends, go back to the beginning.

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Ed Sheeran 5. “Irish Heartbeat,” Van Morrison and the Chieftains, 1988 I’m a big Van Morrison fan. My parents used to play this album on our road trips when I was a

kid, so it really takes me back.

The album is a collaboration with the Chieftains, and the entire thing is incredible. This is the title track.

Father John Misty 3. “When You Awake,” the Band, 1969 Emma and I both love this album – we listen to it a lot at home. It’s got all these minutiae of an imaginary agrarian life. This one is for those days where I’m in my bathrobe doing a crossword puzzle sporadically for six or seven hours.

4. “The Tea Song,” Michael Hurley, 1964 Michael Hurley is the songwriter laureate of some quantumwobble alternate version of planet Earth. When I listen to this song, I feel like I get to be part of that world. It just fills my head with images.

RollingStone.com

5. “God Is in the House,” Nick Cave, 2001 Prior to meeting Emma, I had a blind spot for Nick Cave. I didn’t realize how funny he was. This song knocked me on my ass the first time I heard it.

6. “My World Is Empty Without You,” Diamanda Galas, 1988 Diamanda Galas is one of the more powerful individuals walking among us. She may be the only satanic gospel singer out there. The title of this song sounds like an admission of weakness, but there’s this unbelievable power and agency in it.

8. “White Foxes,” Susanne Sundfør, 2015 I love when friends introduce me to something I’ve never heard of. My friend Christina Perri bought me Sundfør’s album The Silicon Veil, and it’s simply ambient brilliance. I could sit for hours listening to it.

9. “A Million Miles Away,” Rory Gallagher, 1973 This was the first song I learned on guitar. The story goes that when Jimi Hendrix was asked how it felt to be the greatest guitarist in the world, he answered, “I don’t know. Go ask Rory Gallagher.”

7. “Life’s a Bath,” John Frusciante, 1997 Frusciante is a guy who, parallel to his hugely successful day job in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was making unprecedently naked music on his own.

That’s fascinating to me.

8. “Chimes for Dreams,” Jeff Bridges, 2015 This album is what I see myself doing in 30 years. There’s a moment on the album where he’s brought his recording rig to the breakfast table, and the interaction between him and his wife is so sweet, but also weary.

9. “Eternamente,” Nilla Pizzi, circa 1953 She’s an Italian chanteuse from the Fifties. There’s this unnameable quality that throws everything around you behind some kind of haze – this song just does that for me.

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATION, FROM TOP: JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGES; EMMA TILLMAN

2. “Layla,” Derek and the Dominos, 1970 It sounds a bit clichéd, but Eric Clapton made me want to play guitar. I saw him perform “Layla” at the Queen’s Jubilee on TV when I was about the same age – 11 – and said, “I want to do that.” Of course, no one plays like Clapton, least of all me.

“Sid was very, very lazy. And

by all accounts he had no aptitude for music at all.” —Johnny Rotten on Sid Vicious

BITCH BETTER HAVE MY MANGOES Rihanna is working on an album rumored to be due any day now, but she found time to enjoy some fresh fruit in Hawaii.

Katy Perry came up with a canny disguise on the Tokyo stop of her Asian arena tour, dressing as a Japanese schoolgirl and wearing a designer cat mask as she did some sightseeing in the city’s Harajuku neighborhood. She also spent an hour in line waiting to get into Tokyo’s first-ever Taco Bell. “You can take the girl out of America, but you can’t take the Taco Bell out of the girl,” Perry said.

WHEN HARRY MET CHELSEA With Zayn Malik gone from One Direction, Harry Styles has found a new friend in Chelsea Handler, who posed with him on Instagram.

THIS IS A MALL For Record Store Day, the Foo Fighters rocked a shop in Niles, Ohio – not far from where Dave Grohl was born.

“I know we’re in a strip mall,” said Grohl. “[But] let’s pretend this is a stadium!”

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A heavy rainstorm cleared up for the Who’s set, which included deep cuts like “Pictures of Lily.”

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Meet Harajuku Katy!

ALL THAT JAZZ Tony Bennett and a very Liza Minnellilooking Lady Gaga hit New Orleans’ Jazz Fest. “I love being onstage with her,” says Bennett.

PITCH, DON’T KILL MY VIBE Kendrick Lamar threw out a solid first pitch for the L.A. Dodgers. “To play ball at the local parks in Compton and to come all the way to Dodger Stadium – it’s a beautiful thing,” he said.

ROCKING IT Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart held a mini Dead reunion at a Disco Biscuits show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado.

IT’S NOT EASY BEING WEEZY Just hours after Lil Wayne debuted his new bathrobe look at an Atlanta nightclub, shots were fired at his tour bus. No arrests had been made at press time.

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TOUGH BRUDDER Sam Smith did some hiking in New Zealand, but the next day, he was forced to cancel some shows Down Under due to a vocal-cord hemorrhage. “I am deeply saddened,” he said.

TRAILER STAR Kacey Musgraves played songs from her upcoming album (due out this summer) and covered TLC’s “No Scrubs” at Indio, California’s Stagecoach music festival.

MIDNIGHT RIDER Gregg Allman brought some Southern rock to Stagecoach and enjoyed the countryheavy lineup, which included Tim McGraw, Miranda Lambert and more: “They know what they’re doing out there. That music sounds perfect in the desert.”

Buffalo Springfield Again?

Neil Young showed up at Stephen Stills’ L.A. autism benefit to close out the night with nine songs, including “Long May You Run,” “Human Highway” and Buffalo Springfield classics “Mr. Soul” and “For What It’s Worth.” “Is this song 50 years old?” asked Stills before “Worth.”

“Fifty is the new 20!” Young joked.

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David Letterman Happy at Last When he stopped being miserable, he knew it was time to go

BY JOSH EELLS Photographs by MARK SELIGER

If I haven’t gotten it out of my system by now, who am I kidding?

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Letterman at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, before the taping of one of his final broadcasts RollingStone.com

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DAVID LETTERMAN

feel like i’m talking too much. you tell me some stories.” ¶ It’s 10 till seven in a conference room high above West 53rd Street, and David Letterman has just exhausted his capacity for selfreflection. We were scheduled to talk for 45 minutes; we’ve been at it for 44. After nearly 50 years of live broadcasting, he knows instinctively when a segment is about to run long. ¶ Normally, Letterman doesn’t love talking about himself; what he wants to say, he says on his show. But today, he’s sitting for an exit interview of sorts. A few weeks from now, at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20th, Letterman will wave good night, the lights at the Ed Sullivan Theater will go dark, and the Late Show With David Letterman will have taped its last episode.

There’s a long goodbye scheduled before then, featuring a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of A-list guests – Hanks, Clooney, Seinfeld, Winfrey, Murray, Roberts, at least one Obama – as well as plenteous highlights from his 22 years on CBS. It’s shaping up to be the kind of star-studded sendoff television may never see again. And Letterman, of course, is not looking forward to it.

“I’m dreading it,” he says, grimacing.

“As Regis used to say, ‘I don’t like going down memory lane’ – and I’m afraid that’s what this is all about. After we get through with it, then I’ll sit back and see what we’ve done. But for now, I just want it to be over with.”

Today is the first day of April, and Letterman has just f inished taping his 5,994th show. He’s changed from his suit into his evening wear: long-sleeved brown Carhartt T-shirt, green canvas pants and beat-up hiking boots that aren’t so much unfashionable as they are unacquainted with the concept of fashion in the first place. His nose is slightly sunburned – a souvenir of his spring-break trips to Wyoming (for skiing) and St. Bart’s (where he keeps a home) – and behind his amber-framed glasses, his 67-year-old eyes look tired. “When Johnny Carson left, I remember asking him why, and he said, ‘I just don’t have the energy,’ ” Letterman recalls. “That rings true to me.”

He’s leaving as the champ, of course: Maybe not Sandy Koufax, quitting after a 27-win season, but at the very least Ted Williams, hitting dingers in four different decades. He changed not just late-night TV but the very nature of comedy itself.

Self-awareness, Stupid Pet Tricks, sneakers, irony: He taught multiple generations what it means to be funny. “Everything about his show informed not only our writing but our actual human interactions,” says Tina Fey, a Letterman fan since his short-lived morning show in the summer

Sandy; his immortal encounter with Joaquin Phoenix. But you also get the feeling he’s sometimes mailing it in, occasionally reinforced by him saying, “I’ve been mailing it in.” “If I haven’t gotten it out of my system after 6,000 shows,” he says, “who am I kidding?” And yet, there’s a part of him that clearly doesn’t want to go – like he’s leaving because he thinks he should, not because he’s actually ready. “I do like it,” he told Howard Stern last year. “And if it were up to me, I would not quit. On the other hand, it’s not always up to me. And you can’t go on forever.”

Jerry Foley has been the Late Show’s director for the past 20 years. “Lately, he’s just been wandering the theater, soaking things in,” Foley says. “A couple of weeks ago, we caught him standing behind the drum kit during a commercial break – somewhere the house cat never goes. Or he’ll wander out to 53rd Street, just letting it wash over him. You can tell he’s savoring it and trying to upload as much as he can.”

“Embracing the ending?” asks his longtime sidekick Paul Shaffer. He laughs.

“No, I don’t think so. I think he’s more of the mind of ‘My God – what have I done?’ ”

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hr ee days a w eek , l etterman wakes up in his downtown Manhattan loft at 6 a.m., drives to his offices at 53rd and Broadway and immediately goes back to bed. He used to commute at a more normal hour, but at some point he decided he hated traffic so much that he’d rather sleep in segments than spend an extra 15 minutes in rush hour. Now he gets to his 12th-f loor suite around 6:30, sleeps for three more hours, then gets up to start his day, “refreshed and ready to go.”

Letterman spends a few hours doing preproduction: talking to producers, making phone calls, reviewing monologue jokes. But he rarely goes to meetings, and he doesn’t do rehearsals. “My input now is less than it’s ever been,” he says. “They’re sick of me saying this, but I tell the producers, ‘I’m not a producer, you’re the producers. You come get me when the show is ready, and it will either go smoothly or it won’t.’ ” A knowing pause. “Which is maybe an indicator that you shouldn’t be hosting your 11:30 comedy show much longer.”

At 2:45, he heads down to his secondfloor dressing room for makeup and “to put on my little outfit,” then hits the stage at 4:25 for a brief audience Q&A (origi-

“Once Dave retires, there’s nobody left to be scared of,” says Tina Fey. “It’s all friendliness now.”

Contributing editor Josh Eells profiled Kendrick Lamar in March.

of 1980, when she was 10. Sixteen Emmys and a few thousand Top Ten lists later, even Jay Leno has acknowledged that Letterman’s the better broadcaster. At this point, it’s Copernican: settled science.

Preparations for his farewell have been underway for months, but for now, Letterman is largely steering clear. “It’s funny,” he says. “In the old days, if there were any kind of special show, I’d want to be right in there. And now I just feel like, ‘Let’s do something polite and happy, and get out of here.’ ” Letterman has had his share of all-time moments over the past few years: the audience-free shows he did during Hurricane Rolling Stone

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DAVID LETTERMAN nally two and a half minutes, tops; lately seven or eight or even more if he’s feeling chatty), followed by the Late Show With Daaaaaaavid Lettermaaaaaaaan! Then it’s back upstairs for a quick postmortem (which involves less shouting and more laughing than it did in the old days). If a guest has a movie he or she is promoting, he’ll watch it in the office screening room.

He’s usually home by 8:30 or 9 to put his son, Harry, 11, to bed. Thursday mornings he takes Harry to school, and that afternoon he tapes two shows – one for the following night. “And then Thursday nights I go home and pick up the dogs” – his two yellow labs, Sully and Dutch – and he drives to his home in Westchester County, an hour or so north of New York. “And then,” he says, “the real fun begins.”

After his quintuple-bypass surgery 15 years ago, the biggest turning point in Letterman’s life came on November 3rd, 2003, when, at 11:53 p.m. – just about the time he’d normally be opening the Top Ten list – Harry Joseph Letterman was born.

Letterman named the boy after his own father, an Indianapolis florist who died when Dave was 25. Even casual fans know how much fatherhood has changed him. Says his good friend and frequent guest Tom Brokaw, “You cannot overstate how important Harry is in his life.”

Letterman had talked about having kids for years, but by his mid-fifties it seemed like it might not happen. But then, all of a sudden, there he was, a first-time dad at 56. He jokes that he doesn’t worry about screwing up Harry too much, since “by the time the kid’s out stealing cars, Dad will be dead.” Still, he tries to impart lessons where he can – like how he takes him out every April to pick up beer cans from the road around their house. “I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing that will be meaningful to him, or the kind of thing where he’ll be like, ‘Yeah, when I was a kid, my old man used to make me clean up the goddamn road,’ ” Letterman says. “It could go either way.”

These days, the happiest he is in conversation is when he’s telling stories about taking Harry fishing. At their house upstate, they have a fishing pond stocked with bluegill, carp, largemouth bass and a “nasty, evil snapping turtle that’s the size of this table.” Says Letterman, “We’ve caught everything but the carp. I won’t have any business with it, but Harry is determined. It’s hard to hook them – so far, to our observation, they only eat Brussels sprouts. We decided the best thing to do is net them. So on Sunday, Harry spotted one, and he says, ‘Dad, let’s go get him!’

We leave a trail of Brussels sprouts, and I’m standing in the pond with the net, just hoping to God it doesn’t come around. Because I want no part of it. I mean, they’re three feet long! They’ll kill you. You see them in, like, an armada, just waiting. So that was our weekend.”

About six years ago, at the bold age of 62, Letterman decided to take up skiing. He was looking for something he and Harry could do together as he got older.

He found a little hill near their house – “a miniature-golf/paintball/laser-tag kind of place” – and signed up for lessons. The first time, he wiped out hard.

“They had one of those ski-pole fences up, and I just went right over it,” he says.

“People stopped and gasped: ‘Jesus, what was that? Avalanche?’ But then we progressed, and it just took. And then Regina, bless her heart” – his wife of six years and companion for almost 30 – “she’s not very athletic, but she saw that Harry and I were

terman worries that he has. “If you look around at the other people doing it and look at me, it’s almost like a pair of shoes you haven’t worn in a hundred years,” he says. “ ‘Gee, I think we can probably get rid of these.’ I still enjoy what I’m doing.

But I think what I’m doing is not what you want at 11:30 anymore.”

Early on, the rap on Letterman was that he was bad at interviews and mean to guests. “It wasn’t his strong suit,” Shaffer admits. “But every night he studied those interviews, and he got better.” Now he’s one of the best conversationalists on TV, whether talking to a guest or spinning a yarn about a bear invading his home in Montana. He can still be mean, but these days he’s more liable to sit back and let a guest embarrass himself. (As Fey once put it, he’s “a professor emeritus at the Here’sSome-More-Rope Institute.”) Carson famously observed that late-night shows are “all about the guy behind the desk.”

No offense to Letterman’s replacement, Stephen Colbert, or the Jimmys, but when he leaves, the desk will be a little bit smaller.

Letterman speaks warmly of his younger colleagues, calling Jimmy Fallon’s show “bright and colorful” and “a commercial for itself ” and Jimmy Kimmel “friendly” and “very sweet.” He says the lack of YouTube-ability is “a weakness of our show. I hear about things going viral, and I think, ‘How do you do that?’ I think I’m the blockage in the plumbing.” At the same time, he must look around at the celebrity Pictionary and the twerking pranks and figure maybe it’s not worth it. He’s like the last T. Rex after the asteroid hit, watching a bunch of chipper mammals scurry around the plains he used to roam. “Once he retires, there’s nobody left to be scared of,” says Fey. “It’s all friendliness now.”

“He’ll probably hate this,” says his old friend Michael Keaton, who’s known Letterman since their days at the Comedy Store in the 1970s. “But I always thought it was kind of cool that he was never, except for a few times, number one. To me, it was perfect. It made his cachet and his legacy that much greater. Maybe he wasn’t quite as popular. But everybody knew, qualitatively, that he was the best.”

getting serious, so she started skiing too.

And that was huge. Because then it wasn’t just Harry and me out there. Now it’s the three of us. And this is great,” he says. “Because now Harry will ski for the rest of his life. And Regina and her second husband will ski for the rest of their lives.”

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he n “l at e n igh t with David Letterman” premiered on NBC, on February 1st, 1982, the most popular shows in prime time were 60 Minutes, Dallas and Trapper John, M.D. Lawrence Welk still had his own show, and Archie Bunker and the Fonz were still on the air. MTV was six months old. If Jimmy Fallon lasts as many years as Letterman, he will retire in 2042.

“What I’d like,” said Letterman when he started, “is for this show to stay on long enough to become just a pattern of American television. If we’re still on the air in five years, I’ll think of it as a success.” He undershot it by a factor of seven.

In the beginning, Letterman was “hip,” “ironic,” “groundbreaking,” “cool.” Thirty-odd years later, he’s getting labeled a “grandpa” by Justin Bieber. Johnny Carson always promised himself he wouldn’t “stay too long at the fair”; sometimes LetRolling Stone

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etterman announced his retirement on the air in April 2014, and he did it with a fishing story. He and Harry had been out at a reservoir one afternoon the previous fall when they spotted an eagle. They weren’t sure if it was a bald or a golden eagle, so Letterman

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“For 30, 40 years, I was anxious, hypochondriacal, an alcoholic and many other things.”

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King of Late Night

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came to work the next Monday and spent the whole day trying to figure it out. Photos were Googled; staffers were enlisted; the Audubon Society was called. Finally they had the answer: It was an immature bald eagle. Back home that night, Regina asked him about his day, and he eagerly recounted the whole investigation. “That’s great,” she said. “Who was on the show?”

Letterman couldn’t remember. That, he told the audience, is when he knew it was time to go.

In reality, he admits, the story was “a convenience.” The specifics were true, but he and Regina had been having serious conversations about his retirement for

From his first year on late night, in 1982 (1), Letterman redefined what a chat-show host could be, constantly using his adopted city of New York as a prop. By the Nineties, stars like Drew Barrymore (2) would flirt shamelessly with him. Since the beginning, musical director Paul Shaffer (3) has been by his side. His consistent use of irony and absurdist antics like the Velcro Suit (4), in 1984, set him apart from his peers.

at least a year and a half. “I just thought, ‘I don’t want this to be mawkish, I don’t want it to be maudlin,’ ” Letterman says. “ ‘Let me see if I can’t just put it all off on the kid.’ ” Publicly, Letterman had been talking about leaving for decades. “Ten years seems just about right,” he told Carson in 1991. “I’m too old for this,” he told Rolli ng Ston e five years later. He laughs now, remembering how he once said he couldn’t see himself going past 40. “I think I was probably being disingenuous,” he says. “I was trying to get ahead of ‘When is he ever gonna stop?’ But I never really wanted to.”

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But then came his heart surgery in January 2000, and then Harry. His contract extensions kept getting shorter and shorter: four years in 2006; two each in 2010 and 2012. Then, in 2013, he passed Carson for longest-running late-night host, and there weren’t that many milestones left. The last extension he signed was for a year. “The next day, I woke up in a bloody panic,” he says. “ ‘Holy crap! What if I can’t do this for another year?’ ” Carson was 66 when he retired from The Tonight Show. When Letterman’s contract ended, he would be 68 – a prospect that horrified him. “I’ve made my peace with 68, I feel OK with 68,” he says.

“But a couple of years ago, you just think, ‘Oh, Jesus, God.’ I remember Tom Brokaw coming on the show when he was 68, and thinking, ‘This poor bastard.’ ” The most decisive mo3 ment, though – what Letterman calls “the anchor in the water” – was, in retrospect, the obvious one: when his old sparring partner Jay Leno hung up his gloves. “It caught me off guard,” Letterman says. “I thought Jay would have that job as long as he wanted. His ratings were strong; he showed no sign of slowing down. I know he loved it. I know it must have been hard for him.” When Leno announced he was leaving, Letterman called him up. “I was sort of touched by it,” he says. “I said, ‘Jay, are you actually retiring?’ And he said yeah, you know, so and so. And I said, ‘Well, I hope this is good for you, and I’m sorry you’re leaving.’ He was very nice and earnest about it.”

When it was time to make his own announcement the following year, the first person Letterman told at the Late Show was Paul Shaffer. “I think it was a Monday, and the two of us were in the wings about to go out for warm-up,” Shaffer says. “And he says, ‘Come here, I gotta tell you something. I’ve realized it’s time.’ ” Shaffer says he wasn’t surprised: “You look around at these other shows that are younger and changing the format, and you can kind of see it’s time to step aside.” A few days later – exactly one year after Leno’s announcement – Letterman summoned the senior staff to his dressing room. At first, executive producer Jude Brennan – who’s worked with Letterman since the 1980 morning show – was worried he might have a disease.

Letterman tried to downplay the occasion. “I wanted to make it as casual and organic as possible,” he says. “I felt selfconscious about it. I didn’t enjoy it.” But

DAVID LETTERMAN to the rest of the staff, it was a surreal, almost slapstick scene. Letterman had just cut himself shaving, so he had a giant blood-soaked Band-Aid on his face. He also had a radio on in the background, which was playing, of all songs, Pharrell Williams’ “Happy.” Recalls head writer Matt Roberts, “Here he is going, ‘This 30year career, we’re finally bringing it to a close . . . ’ and all I can hear is ‘Clap along, if you feel. . . .’ ” “Afterward,” says Letterman, “I kind of expected everybody to go, ‘OK, sure, that makes sense. But I remember Jude Brennan asked, ‘Why now?’ That’s when I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus – maybe I’ve made a huge mistake.’ ” Three hours later, he went onstage and told the eagle story.

In addition to being talk shows, the Late Show and Late Night were dysfunctional workplace comedies, as much as Taxi or The Office. There was a whole cast of characters: Dave and Paul and the band, of course, but also Biff Henderson, and Alan Kalter, and Rupert down in the deli. Much of his staff has been there 25 years or more, and the overwhelming feeling of denial. “Maybe we’re just rats that have been running in a wheel for so long we can only focus on the wheel. But I don’t feel it,” says Rob Burnett, former Late Show head writer and current CEO of Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants.

Adds Brennan, “In a weird way, I’m not really thinking about it at all.”

Executive producer Barbara Gaines has also been with Letterman since the morning show, where she started as a receptionist on May 21st, 1980. When she reports to work for the last Late Show on May 20th, it will be exactly 35 years since she started in Letterman’s employ. Hanging on the wall in her office is a giant corkboard full of color-coded index cards, mapping out the last six weeks of the show – pink for bits like Top Ten lists and prepackaged remotes, green for musical acts and yellow for guests. She’s putting together a greatest-hits tribute, choosing from classics like the Taco Bell drive-thru and “Dave and Steve’s Gay Vacation.” Short of Andy Kaufman showing up, the biggest surprise would probably be an appearance by Leno; Letterman’s camp has invited him, but he has yet to accept. The staff remains hopeful: “It’d be great to just let them chew on whatever they have to chew on,” Burnett says. “To see Dave turn to Jay and say, ‘What’s your beef?’ ” If Carson’s Tonight Show is any model – as it has been for most of Letterman’s career – the finale might not include any

guests at all. Carson simply sat on a stool in front of an audience of friends and family, and showed highlight reels and talked tearfully about how much the show meant to him. It’s not hard to imagine Letterman doing something similar. “I kind of know what I’m going to do, which to me is, selfishly, all I care about,” Letterman says.

“But if I cry,” he adds, maybe not quite convincingly, “then something is going terribly wrong.”

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n e a f t er noon, w i t h a month to go, Letterman breezes into the greenroom after a taping, in excellent spirits. A few minutes earlier, he’d made a minor mistake with a musical guest, accidentally calling him by the wrong name – the kind of insignificant slip-up that might once have sent him into a spasm of self-directed rage. Today,

of the Rockies. “Where Dave’s ranch is has some of the most incredible wildlife in America,” Hanna says. “Grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions, elk, moose, wolverines. It’s like going back in time. Those plains have not changed in 500 years.”

“It’s phenomenal,” says Letterman, “just phenomenal. And the more you see of it, the more you want to see.”

The closest municipality to him is Choteau, an old cowboy town, population 1,700, about a hundred miles south of the Canadian border. Letterman has been known to ride a horse-drawn wagon in the Fourth of July parade; during his emotional monologue after 9/11, he paid tribute to the NYPD and the FDNY, but the closest he came to losing it was talking about how the people of Choteau, in the midst of a crippling drought, held a rally in the school gym to raise money for people in New York. “If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of the United States,” said Letterman, holding back tears, “then I can’t help you.”

Letterman visits Montana year-round, but mainly in the summer, when Harry is out of school, and he can invite friends like Shaffer and Bill Murray along with their families.

“It’s more fun to have people there,” he says, somewhat uncharacteristically. “It gets to be just like camp: hiking and fishing and kayaking and horseback riding.” And he loves camping out, but has one rule: “No tents.”

“In the summer, it doesn’t really get dark until 11, maybe midnight,” Letterman says.

“So you stay up as late as you can, and then finally, about 11:45, when it’s just crepuscular, you wait for that last line of light to duck down behind the mountains. It’s beautiful – the Milky Way is so bright that it actually washes out stars. I always sleep with my glasses on, so that when I wake up in the middle of the night – which, at my age, is every 18 minutes – I’ll be able to see satellites and planets and constellations and shooting stars. It’s just remarkable.”

When he first started going out there, Letterman didn’t know anything about snowpack or livestock or Montana ecology. But now, with the help of his ranch manager, Andrew Bardwell, he’s started raising a bona fide bison herd. He’s got more than a hundred; he sends them to market and everything. “David’s a pretty active rancher,” says Brokaw. “This is not boutique stuff.” Hanna says, “In the last four or five years, Dave has become one of the greatest conservationists I’ve ever met. His land, his grasses, his water, how he plants his fields – he knows everything.

“I came very close to having the whole thing explode on me. The only thing that’s important, I had ruined.” he’s smiling. “Yeah, I hashed it all up,” he says, shrugging. “But then I thought, ‘I’ve got eight more shows – what do I care?’ ” (Says Shaffer, “He’s developed a real ‘what the fuck’ attitude in these last couple of shows. He’s having more fun.”)

Letterman just got back from a week in Montana – just him and the dogs. It was snowing when he landed there, and he took his new horse, Woody, out for his first ride. “We saw a dozen bighorn sheep, a bunch of mule deer, that big high mountain sky . . . ,” he says, full of wonder. “Here in New York, your view is dictated by the length or width of a city block, but on the Rocky Mountain Front, you just have this never-ending view. It’s like if your belt’s too tight, and you finally release it and can breathe naturally. I don’t mean to sound ridiculous, but it’s pretty close to that.”

When he first bought Montana property in 1999, Letterman avoided the southwestern part of the state, where celebrities like Brokaw and Ted Turner live, and instead went north, near Glacier National Park. Letterman’s Deep Creek Ranch abuts the Bob Marshall Wilderness, which Brokaw calls “the last great, unfettered wilderness area in America.” Jack Hanna, the director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and another longtime guest of Letterman’s, owns property on the other side Rolling Stone

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It’s absolutely amazing. He studies like you wouldn’t believe.”

Hanna says that before Letterman bought the ranch, he asked Hanna what it was like up there. “Dave, where you’re looking at is one of the wildest places on the North American continent,” he recalls telling him. “You’ve got to be a real mountaineer. It’s desolate. There’s high winds. It gets very cold in the winter. It’s one of the most solitary places in America. You don’t see many people.”

Said Letterman, Hanna recalls, “That’s it. That’s where I’m going.”

very close to having the whole thing explode on me.”

In the fall of 2009, after finding himself the target of a $2 million blackmail plot by the boyfriend of one of his former assistants, Letterman confessed on the air to having had sex with multiple female staffers. “It was easily the lowest point in my life,” he says. “I don’t know how else to describe it. I felt like I’d dug a bottomless pit, and I was falling into it.” For a while,

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etterman’s introversion is, by now, legendary. Regis Philbin says that after all these years, he’s still never been invited to his house. “He’s very shy,” agrees Brokaw. “We’ve tried to get David to see us in Montana, and it’s always, ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ ” He’s a paradox: a host who dislikes company. But Letterman says he gets the socializing he needs from the show. “You never feel as good as you feel after the show,” he says.

“All these things are coursing through your system, and you just feel great. You might have a nice time at somebody’s bridal shower, but you don’t get that. So why go to the bridal shower?”

One person who does spend lots of time with him is his (by all accounts) incredibly sweet wife, the former Regina Lasko. They were together for 23 years and had Harry before getting married at the Teton County Courthouse in Choteau in March 2009. (Letterman’s truck got stuck in the mud on the way.) She has tolerated his public fl irtations with superstars like Julia Roberts and Drew Barrymore, and has been his island of sanity when he’s feeling anxious – which, to hear him tell it, is a near-constant occurrence.

“For me, to hysteria is a pretty short drive,” Letterman says. “But she is determined to be a pleasant presence in any circumstance. She’s very smart. She worked in broadcasting, so she knows everything I do here. And in addition to being a practical combination, we just have a lot of fun.

Harry and I have a lot of fun making fun of her, and she has a lot of fun pretending to be outraged. And I know she’s sick of all my jokes. But she has been excellent company and has readily played along with the nonsense and bizarre stuff that the family has done.

“And the best part of it all is that we’re still together – when I came very, very,

Fathers and Sons Raised in Indianapolis, Letterman graduated from high school in 1965 (left). He became a dad in his mid-fifties, naming his son after his late father, Harry.

he thought he would lose the show: “Regina knew more about it than I did, because, unbeknownst to me, she was looking up everything on the Internet. So one night in the kitchen, she came in and said, ‘Well, I guess you’re going to lose your job.’ That hadn’t occurred to me – but I thought, ‘Well, of course.’ How could the network be pleased with that kind of publicity?”

In the end, he kept the show. But far more frightening than losing his job was the fear that he had “blown up my family.”

“The biggest panic was on a Friday night, when we heard Regina was on her way to file for divorce,” he says. “It turned out not to be true. But that just turned me inside out. The only thing that’s important to me, I just ruined. I remember when they first Rolling Stone

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handed me my son, thinking, ‘Oh, look – something perfect.’ And now I’ve jeopardized him as a part of my life and me as a part of his life.”

Michael Keaton says he called Letterman in the thick of everything, just to check on him. “I don’t want to sound like we talk all the time, because we don’t,” Keaton says. “But I sensed that he might be feeling down or low, so I got him on the phone and just yakked for a minute.

And he was so extremely grateful. I was shocked – according to him, not many people had called. Actually, he told me nobody did. Which I think is probably not correct. But that’s what he said.” (It’s not correct, Letterman’s camp says.)

Harry, who was five at the time, doesn’t know about what happened. “No. No. No, not . . . no,” says Letterman. “I mean, he will one day. We’ll have to have a conversation about it. But not yet.”

In the meantime, Letterman is just grateful Regina stuck around. “I can’t imagine going through this stuff where I only get to see Harry on weekends. It just breaks my heart when I see guys like that. So irrespective of the daily nonsense, that’s ultimately the best satisfaction I have in life. Because I wouldn’t want to be going through this without her.”

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a c k i n o c t obe r 1 981 , a bushy-haired 34-year-old Letterman appeared on a shortlived CBS interview program called Signature. His morning show had been canceled a year earlier, and he was still a month away from getting Late Night. At the time, he didn’t know if he’d ever work in TV again. You can almost smell the defeat on him. At one point, the interviewer asks why he’s touching his face so much. “I’m very nervous,” he says softly.

Late in the program, the host asks Letterman what he’s going to do next. “I would like to be on television,” he says. “I think my true identity or personality is someone who just hosts a TV show.” Even back then, this was all he wanted.

So what happens when the show goes away? “I do think about retirement,” Letterman said in 2010. “But I don’t know what I’d do. I’d do a show in my house.

Put up a little desk and have people in. Interview the Domino’s guy.” He knows he doesn’t want to act in movies or be in a sitcom. He does admit he was “very irritated” when he saw Jerry Seinfeld’s Web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, “because I thought, ‘Well, that’s the perfect idea, goddamnit.’ For a moment, he even pondered doing his own version in Montana – Comedians on Horses Getting Coffee. “I thought that would be so much better than riding around in a [Cont. on 70]

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Bill de Blasio is trying to remake America’s biggest city – and he doesn’t plan to stop there

By Mark Binelli

O NATIONAL AMBITIONS De Blasio is launching a progressive version of the “Contract With America.”

n e a f ter noon i n early April, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio strode onto the back porch of Gracie Mansion, the Upper East Side mayoral residence, to bask in the city’s first truly warm day of spring. It had been an exacting winter, and as de Blasio folded his long frame into a wicker chair, he announced merrily, “It’s my first outdoor meeting of 2015!”

When the weather suits, the mayor likes to do business out here, taking advantage of the spectacular view of the East River and the Triborough Bridge. A pair of soccer nets have been set up on the lawn, where de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, occasionally kick a ball around with their son, Dante, a high school senior.

At six feet five, de Blasio is the tallest mayor in New York’s history, and most chairs aren’t exactly built to fit his kind. Seated, he often winds up looking crouched and angular, as if he’s mentally readying himself for an especially difficult yoga pose. At political events, where he’s required to stand beside other speakers or greet constituents, he has the courteous giant’s habit of stooping slightly. His rhetorical focus can make him seem intense: His hooded eyes and hawkish features conjure a bird of prey, and his voice, despite its swallowed timbre, has a tough,

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Bill de Blasio prosecutorial edge. But the intensity is undercut by an ever-present air of mild distraction, and by the goofy Brooklyn-dad side of de Blasio that occasionally emerges in public settings.

Earlier that afternoon, de Blasio had convened a closed-door meeting of national progressive thought leaders and elected officials. There was Sherrod Brown, the populist senator from Ohio, and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy. The novelist Toni Morrison showed up, delighting de Blasio and McCray. Other attendees included Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation; Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva, chair of the House Progressive Caucus; and Van Jones, a former Obama adviser. They’d all come together to begin work on a new version of the “Contract With America,” only this one would be a product of the left, focusing on economic policies – a set of line-in-the-sand principles

frustrated by what they saw as the thwarted hopes, tactical errors, compromises and outright betrayals of the Obama administration, the ascension of one of their own to one of the highest-profile elected offices in the country made for a momentous, potentially thrilling development. Just as past mayors had taken advantage of New York’s unique status as a cultural and media capital to globalize their agendas – think of the far-reaching influence of Bloombergera public-health policies like the smoking ban, or the way Giuliani exploited his reputation for “cleaning up” the city by starting a lucrative international consulting firm specializing in security and policing – could de Blasio use the singular platform provided by his new position to showcase, as brightly as a Times Square billboard, the civic benefits of unfettered liberalism?

If judged on his ability to deliver on ambitious campaign promises, even de

“He’s the furthest-left mayor by far,” says one observer.

“I don’t think people realized what an ideologue he was.” that progressives, and their candidates in 2016, could rally around. It was a surprising choice of inspiration for de Blasio, the mission’s unlikely Danny Ocean: Looking to rejuvenate the Democratic Party, he’d turned not to Bill Clinton, whose strategy of triangulation the mayor openly repudiates, but Newt Gingrich.

“Look, the New Democrat approach, from my point of view, didn’t work,” de Blasio told me that afternoon. “That governing approach didn’t stop the progression that led us to a thoroughly Republican House and now Senate, and a national debate that doesn’t even address the real issues. The economic crisis of today – the only parallel is the Great Depression. That’s just a fact.

The difference is, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel now.”

For five terms, supposedly liberal New York had been governed by a Republican (Rudolph Giuliani) and a quasi-Republican independent (Michael Bloomberg).

So when a full-throated progressive like de Blasio bounded into City Hall in 2014 with an astounding 73 percent of votes in the general election, it felt like more than simply a mandate for local change. To leftist Democrats around the country, long Contributing editor Mark Binelli profiled George Clinton last issue.

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Blasio’s sharpest critics acknowledge he’s been successful. State Assemblyman Joe Borelli, a Republican who represents the most conservative district in New York, Staten Island’s South Shore, admits, “The mayor has been very forthright. He campaigned on a platform of ideological values – albeit, they’re not mine – but he was very honest, and he’s delivering.” Only 16 months into his term, de Blasio has expanded paid sick leave and won a hardfought battle to secure free full-day universal pre-K (huge boons for working families), dialed back the NYPD’s stopand-frisk policy and effectively decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana (both of which had a massively disproportionate effect on young men of color), launched the largest municipalID-card program in the country (allowing undocumented New Yorkers to more easily open bank accounts, rent apartments and access hospitals and schools), and announced a $41 billion plan to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years (eclipsing Bloomberg’s 12-year record of 165,000 new or preserved affordable-housing units).

Despite these considerable achievements, however, the story line of de Blasio’s Year One has been consistently undercut by establishment pushback, both

organized and spontaneous, from Wall Street to the state government in Albany. Wealthy backers of charter schools broadsided de Blasio with a brutal television advertising blitz after he attempted to slow down the expansion of a hedge-fundbacked charter operation with a mixed track record but impressively high testing scores. (The mayor blinked.) Meanwhile, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a centrist Democrat, seemed to relish undermining, and at times humiliating, the mayor at every turn, killing de Blasio’s proposed tax on rich New Yorkers and siding with the charter-school backers. “Historically, the relationship between mayor and governor is worse when the two are in the same party,” notes Clyde Haberman, a former New York Times metro columnist who has covered city politics since the 1960s.

“It’s about who is the alpha male in town.

And here, it’s Cuomo.”

And then there was the death last July of Eric Garner, an unarmed 43-year-old black man from Staten Island whose only crime was selling “loosie” cigarettes. To many observers, the video of Garner being choked to the ground by an NYPD officer looked unambiguously like state-sanctioned murder. De Blasio’s refusal to denounce the protests that followed, and the subsequent assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn by a deranged Maryland man, resulted in open warfare with noxious Patrolman’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch (who said de Blasio had “blood on the hands”) and rank insubordination by a number of NYPD officers (who turned their backs on de Blasio at the funerals of the murdered officers and later staged a work slowdown, during which the number of arrests and tickets issued plummeted).

The cumulative effect of this series of battles, large and small, has been to reduce the mayor in some ways, and certainly to distract from his administration’s very real accomplishments – which de Blasio himself acknowledges. “A lot of people outside New York City understand what happened in the first year of New York City better than people in New York City,” he tells me during a second Gracie Mansion interview.

“But I’m convinced something very special happened here.”

It’s funny, in a perverse sort of way: That socialist-boogeyman version of Barack Obama the American right has spent the past eight years whispering darkly about? Fiction, of course. Our president has largely governed as a moderate consensus-builder. The executivebranch officeholder who comes closest to the caricature is actually Bill de Blasio.

But for some reason, despite possessing a CV that could have been written by Sean Hannity’s id – traveling to Nicaragua as a 26-year-old to support the Sandinistas,

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Progressive Hope (1) As a young activist, de Blasio volunteered in Nicaragua, coming home with “a vision . . . of an unfettered leftist government.” (2) In 2000, he ran Clinton’s Senate race. (3) With his family after winning the mayoral election in 2013. (4) As mayor, he clashed with the NYPD, with some turning their backs to him at an officer’s funeral.

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being married to a radical feminist (and once-identified lesbian) by a pair of gay ministers, honeymooning in Cuba, belonging to no particular church, creating an entire department of community organizers while serving as New York’s public advocate – de Blasio has never quite joined the ranks of A-list Fox News supervillainy. On the progressive left, too, it’s been the far more charismatic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren who has captured the imagination of the grass roots and become the object of their “anyone but Hillary” fantasies.

But in recent months, de Blasio’s team has aggressively moved to raise his profile.

Case in point: A few hours before Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 presidential candidacy, de Blasio – her former campaign manager! – appeared on Meet the Press and said that he wasn’t quite ready to endorse anybody yet. De Blasio had been one year shy of 40 when he ran Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign. Before that, his

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highest-profile assignment had been working for her husband’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (under Andrew Cuomo). De Blasio had also just won an election of his own – on his local Brooklyn school board. He stood out as someone “motivated by a very authentic core set of beliefs,” recalls Howard Wolfson, the 2000 Senate race’s campaign spokesman. But it’s safe to say that no one guessed he would one day be trying to make himself the head of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” to borrow a phrase from Howard Dean – let alone be stepping all over his former boss’s carefully scripted campaign launch in a very deliberate effort to push her, and the party she hopes to lead in 2016, as far to the left as possible.

“You’ve got to remember, we see Mayor de Blasio as one of us,” Van Jones tells me.

“We see him as a grassroots campaigner. And when somebody comes out of our movement and becomes the mayor of the capital of the world, and then says, ‘I can’t

get my job done unless the whole country comes along,’ you respond to that.” Shortly before de Blasio’s Meet the Press appearance, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a centrist alumnus of the Clinton and Obama administrations, had endured a surprisingly feisty primary challenge from the left. “Rahm Emanuel is a historic figure, and he got drug into a runoff by somebody who I had never heard of,” Jones says. “That lets you know where that wing of the party is when it comes to the people who cast their ballot. Whatever mistakes or missteps, de Blasio is a beloved figure in this party, and Rahm is on thin ice, and that gives you a little bit of the taste of the future for this party.”

Veteran political watchers like Haberman are more skeptical. “He’s the furthest-left mayor that I can think of, by far,” he says. “I don’t think a lot of people realized what an ideologue he was. But I do wonder what he’s doing running off to Iowa and Wisconsin giving speeches. I would also point out that the last elected mayor of New York to rise to a higher office was John Thompson Hoffman, who was elected governor in 1868. Not a great record of success.”

Another prominent progressive, wishing to remain anonymous, also sounds a note of caution, despite sharing de Blasio’s stated goals. “I say this with great sympathy, but it’s going to be tough for him. The reason people love Elizabeth Warren is not because of her words – even though they are great words – but because they’ve seen her stand up to power. With de Blasio, we haven’t really seen that fight yet. Anyone can talk about inequality. Marco Rubio can talk about inequality! But everyone’s tired of just words at this point.”

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n a bio gr a ph ic a l de t a i l that sounds lifted from a fable, de Blasio was born across the street from Gracie Mansion, in a nowshuttered hospital specializing in births by older mothers. It was 1961, and both of his parents were 44: They’d met at Time magazine, where his father, Warren Wilhelm, worked as a business reporter and his mother, Maria Angela de Blasio, the daughter of immigrants from a village outside of Naples, had a job as a research assistant. The name on Mayor de Blasio’s birth certificate is, in fact, Warren Wilhelm Jr., which makes him sound like he should be foreclosing on a family-run bank in an old Jimmy Stewart movie. But de Blasio’s parents always called him Bill,

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Bill de Blasio and his father, who had become an alcoholic after returning from World War II, where he lost part of a leg during the Battle of Okinawa, left the family when Bill was only seven years old.

By senior year in high school, de Blasio had changed his last name, which he made official in 1983, writing in a court application, “Due to my parents’ divorce when I was eight, I was brought up essentially by my mother and her family. These individuals and their Italian heritage has been the single most important influence on my life.” Four years earlier, de Blasio’s father, dying of lung cancer, had committed suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun. “I had just turned 18,” de Blasio told WNYC, New York’s public-radio station, in the only interview in which he’s spoken about his father’s death. “I remember very vividly not going in to identify the body. I just didn’t feel up to that. My broth-

tics started early: in sixth grade, when he found himself yelling at Nixon’s face on the family television. “My oldest brother, Steven, was a very active anti-war protester during Vietnam,” de Blasio tells me. “It was so much the water I swam in.” He did his best to draw fellow teenagers into becoming active in high school government, though the future mayor admitted to the Globe, “I get discouraged sometimes. . . . I don’t get into yelling at people, so I have a lot of pent-up feelings, but I go jogging or listen to music, soft rock or opera.”

When de Blasio moved to New York that year to attend New York University, he considered himself “sort of a junior progressive activist at that point,” he says, in particular focusing on the anti-nuclear-power movement, the meltdown at Three Mile Island having just occurred. New York had also recently come close to declaring bankruptcy, and the colorful Ed Koch was mayor. “It

“The New Deal was a bold action addressing people’s reality. Today, there’s nothing – it’s the anti-New Deal.” er Steven volunteered to do it. . . . It has to be understood against the backdrop of years and years of things just getting worse and worse. On the one hand, it was a shock.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a shock at all.”

From his mother’s family, though, de Blasio not only inherited a rich Italian heritage but also a political one. They lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his parents had moved before their divorce. (The mayor of New York is a huge Red Sox fan who has bragged to The Boston Globe that he can “name you more [Sox] players than you can possibly imagine.”) Because of his parents’ age, de Blasio, unlike his peers, grew up hearing stories about the Depression and the New Deal. “It’s almost like we skipped a generation,” he says. “We would have these family gatherings, and everyone would be around the table, and it felt like there were two empty chairs for Franklin Roosevelt and [progressive New York mayor] Fiorello La Guardia. There was a reverence for them in our family. I was steeped in the notion that you take heart from a government that is trying with all its might to find a solution for you.”

According to a profile of de Blasio that ran in The Boston Globe in 1979, when he was only 17 (and already working at the Massachusetts Department of Education as a student liaison), his interest in poli-

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wasn’t quite Taxi Driver, but it was really messed up,” de Blasio recalls. “Washington Square Park was pleasantly zoo-ish, and entirely a drug market. Union Square felt absolutely unsafe. I personally never got mugged – maybe in this case height and size was a blessing – but you had to watch yourself all the time. And if you were dumb enough to leave your radio or a bag in your car, it would be stolen, or maybe the car would be stolen. We all felt it, and it was not a good way to live.”

“The de Blasio you see today really is the de Blasio I knew 35 years ago,” says Dan Katz, a labor historian who befriended de Blasio in 1980, when they were elected to represent their respective dorms in NYU’s student government. They eventually cofounded the Coalition for Student Rights, which staged demonstrations to protest issues like the rising cost of tuition. De Blasio has acknowledged being a pot smoker in his bearded, shaggy-haired student days, and Katz recalls him being a huge Bob Marley fan. “In his unguarded moments, he has an unpretentious silliness,” says Katz, who adds, “We differed politically. I was always to the left of the Democratic Party, but he had more faith that reform could happen from within.”

After attending graduate school at Columbia University, where he studied Latin

American politics, de Blasio took a job as a political organizer at the Quixote Center, a social-justice organization rooted in radical Catholic liberation theology, and later engaged in protests designed to raise awareness about U.S. foreign policy. “I’m a big believer in street theater,” he says.

At one action, de Blasio and other members of his group wore George H.W. Bush masks and “had this little skit in the middle of a subway car where we pretended to be having a board meeting. It was, ‘Let’s invade Central America on behalf of the wealthy and powerful! Isn’t that a great idea?’ ” When he was 26, de Blasio took a 10-day humanitarian trip to Sandinistaera Nicaragua, where he delivered food and medicine and, according to The New York Times, “took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters,” eventually coming home with “a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.”

Not long after his Nicaragua trip, de Blasio went to work for David Dinkins, the first African-American mayor of New York – and, as it would turn out, the last liberal mayor of New York until de Blasio’s own election. It was at City Hall where de Blasio met and fell in love with McCray, who was working in the press office. Give him points for persistence: McCray, a poet and activist, had been in several long-term relationships with women at that point, and early in the initially one-sided courtship, she gave him a copy of a seven-page article she’d written for Essence in 1979 titled “I Am a Lesbian” (Cover line: “BEYOND FEAR – Lesbian Speaks!”). De Blasio prevailed in this early underdog campaign, however, and the couple were married in 1994. They now have two children. (Their daughter, Chiara, is a junior at Santa Clara University in California.)

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ccording to a story in The New York Times, staffers working on Clinton’s 2000 Senate race found de Blasio “agonizingly inefficient in a high-pressure, ever-shifting situation,” so prone to ponderous indecision and endless, inclusive-to-a-fault strategy meetings that he wound up sidelined during the final weeks of the campaign in favor of more-seasoned Clinton insiders. And yet, by the time he threw himself into the crowded field of candidates running for mayor of New York in 2013, he had spent more than a decade honing his political skills, serving two terms on the City Council and one as public advocate, and he managed to outmaneuver higher-profile opponents like Christine Quinn, the New York City Council speaker (and Mayor Bloomberg’s all-but-anointed successor).

De Blasio got himself noticed by hitting Bloomberg the hardest and giving voice

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to the millions of struggling New Yorkers who looked at the post-9/11 gilded-age excess all around them – the stratospheric rents and impossibly high cost of living, the bank branches and chain stores squeezing out local mom-and-pops, the very skyline remade by gleaming new high-rises catering to hedge-funders and Chinese and Russian billionaires – and worried it could permanently transform the greatest city in the world into an open-air luxury mall for the global super-rich. “It was clear that the zeitgeist was turning,” says Brooklyn City Councilman Jumaane Williams. “While some people hedged, he just fully and totally embraced it.”

ers were just up there reaming him.” (New York under Bloomberg was described by one pastor as a “plantation” and by incoming Public Advocate Letitia James as “a gilded age of inequality.”) “It was unbelievably graceless,” says Haberman. “Nobody was tougher than me on Bloomberg, but, my God! You would’ve thought we were driving Adolf Hitler out of City Hall.”

Since the inauguration, Bloomberg has maintained a policy of not commenting on his successor, one which extends to his former administration officials. Wolfson, who served as a spokesman for Bloomberg and is a current employee of the Bloomberg Foundation, will only say, “Mike Bloom-

Dyed in the Wool

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“There was a reverence for Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia in our family,” the mayor says.

Longtime political consultant George Arzt, who worked as press secretary under Mayor Koch, had run de Blasio’s previous public-advocate campaign. “What I remember from that race was that Mark Green was way ahead of us – we were in single digits and Green was over 40 – and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, this is gonna be a long ride,’ ” Arzt recalls. “But Bill was so confident that this was not only doable but inevitable. He kept on saying, ‘No one knows us, so we’re going to rise and he’s going to fall.’ And it was true.”

Bloomberg lashed out at de Blasio during the campaign, and there are whispers that Bloomberg’s people are already thinking about possible challengers to de Blasio in the next election: Eva Moskowitz, perhaps, who runs the Success Academy charter schools, or Daniel Doctoroff, a deputy mayor under Bloomberg. “I hear different things from the Bloomberg camp,” one insider tells me. “I think they were taken aback at de Blasio’s inauguration, when Bloomberg was on the podium and speak-

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

berg was the best mayor in the city’s history, so anytime you hear criticism, especially if it’s not accurate, it’s frustrating.”

Why, then, I wonder, was de Blasio’s line of attack on Bloomberg so successful? “I like Bill,” Wolfson says. “I have nothing but good things to say about him personally. My analysis is, it was effective to win 40 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary. That’s how I would characterize it.”

A

series of oil paintings of mayors past adorns New York’s City Hall. The official painting of Bloomberg, which hangs alongside more-traditional portraits of Dinkins and Giuliani, is a telling one: The photorealist image of the mayor standing triumphantly before a sea of cubicles – Bloomberg having famously transformed the working spaces of City Hall into an open-air bullpen reminiscent of a Wall Street trading house – could have been commissioned for a cover of Fortune.

De Blasio kept the bullpen, though he’d mocked it during the campaign as leaving Bloomberg “surrounded by the voices of his inner circle . . . unable to hear the voices of the people.” Unlike Bloomberg, who worked at his own bullpen desk, de Blasio keeps a traditional office on the floor below, where he sits at the desk originally used by his hero Fiorello La Guardia. A Mets jersey is draped over a chair, and a short stack of CDs sits next to a boombox.

(This reporter, seated across the room, cannot say if the stack contains Marley’s Rastaman Vibration.)

On this April morning, de Blasio has gathered the voices of his own inner circle to talk about his new housing plan, perhaps the most difficult piece of his agenda. Under Bloomberg, in particular, developers were handed the keys to the city, resulting in rapid gentrification and a mass displacement of longtime residents.

De Blasio, in blue shirtsleeves and a red tie, ate a yogurt parfait from a takeout container as he listened to Human Resources Administration Commissioner Steve Banks describe various tenants’rights issues. (Before his appointment, Banks was an activist lawyer who had been suing the city over its homeless and welfare policies since the mid-Eighties.) De Blasio has a proactive, community-organizer’s approach to reaching his neediest constituents. His political fixer, Emma Wolfe, New York’s 35-year-old director of Intergovernmental Affairs, sits beside him; prior to City Hall, she worked at ACORN. The mayor steered the meeting and asked sharp questions throughout, pausing once to answer an incoming call on an old flip phone in his shirt pocket.

There’s a larger point, of course, to de Blasio’s economic program, beyond the primary – and laudable – goal of making New York a more equitable place for all. In a sense, the mayor is attempting to unspool a stubborn myth, the one that goes: The failures of Great Society liberalism led to the chaotic, ungovernable New York of the Seventies and Eighties, and it took stern Republican daddy figures like Giuliani and Bloomberg to make things right again. It all takes us back to a hoary, but enduring, question: Can progressives govern?

In de Blasio’s case, the answer thus far is clearly yes. It’s still too early to say much about his affordable-housing plan, but the municipal-ID program has been a huge success; more than 100,000 New Yorkers have applied since its launch in January. Ditto universal pre-K, which got online last fall, after de Blasio [Cont. on 71]

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NEW ALBUMS............................ Pg. 62 BOZ SCAGGS.............................. Pg. 64 MOVIES .......................................... Pg. 67 OUR BACK PAGES ................... Pg. 74

Mumford & Sons’ Electric Feel The leaders of the folk revival plug in – and set their sights on some of rock’s biggest peaks

Mumford & Sons Wilder Mind Gentlemen of the Road/Glassnote

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BY JON DOLAN

Mumford & Sons are the defining act of the past few years’ folk revival, but there’s always been more rock in their blood than that label suggests. Cathartic, heart-swelling anthems like 2010’s “Little Lion Man” and 2012’s “I Will Wait” are arena rock through and through, even if they are mostly acoustic – just ask anyone who has seen one of the band’s soldout shows.

So the news that Mumford & Sons planned to use electric instruments more prominently than ever on their third studio album was no real surprise.

They wrote most of Wilder Mind at producer Aaron Dessner’s Brooklyn studio, and at times, the music resembles the darkly textured indie rock of Dessner’s main gig, the National, by way of classic influences like Jackson Browne and Dire Straits. It’s at once driving and stately, ornate and headlong. “Ditmas,” named after the neighborhood where it was written, shifts from a rhythm track that’s as taut as a krautrock jam into a huge chorus stacked high with hard-charging riffs. “The Wolf” is openair garage rock with shades of Springsteen, while “Snake Eyes” falls between Radiohead at their coziest and the AOR pastorals of the War on Drugs.

Illustration by Jon n y Ruzzo

RollingStone.com

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REVIEWS MUSIC

LISTEN NOW! Hear key tracks from these albums at RollingStone.com/albums.

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Jacket of many colors: James

Leonard Cohen Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour Columbia/Legacy

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The 80-year-old master lifts the curtain on his rehearsals

My Morning Jacket’s Blissful New Morning The Kentucky band’s seventh album is its happiest ever, with shades of prog and soul

My Morning Jacket The Waterfall ATO/Capitol HHH½

Torres Sprinter Partisan HHH½ Intense emotions power a songwriter’s breakthrough LP

My Morning Jacket are contrarians: Southern rockers who have no truck with Nashville, jam-nation heroes who don’t really jam, classic-rock acolytes with indie-rock sensibilities. It’s made them a genre of one, and a band that can tap the past without sounding like throwbacks. The Waterfall is their latest case in point – a fusion of synth-wrapped Eighties pop, prog-rock and Philly soul that still connects like a heady MMJ record.

A breakup LP that lands somewhere near acceptance, The Waterfall might be the band’s sunniest, and trippiest, album. Bent notes stretch the fabric of these songs like flashbacks. “Tropics (Erase Traces)” opens on an arpeggio recalling Yes’ sig- KEY TRACK: “Only Memories nature “Roundabout” – it’s orchestral folk Remain” rock with a surprisingly logical psychmetal denouement. “In Its Infancy (The Waterfall)” recalls the Band’s “Chest Fever” alongside keytar-style squeals and digital ghost images; “Thin Line” conjures the Stylistics via Pink Floyd. Jim James’ high tenor and easy, sublime falsetto remain the band’s soul, in both senses. They’re especially radiant on “Only Memories Remain,” a meditative tune with a burbling guitar solo that feels like a Pacific sunset behind vapor-pen clouds, a perfect balance of the medicinal and the recreational.

WILL HERMES

HHHHH Classic | HHHH Excellent | HHH Good | HH Fair | H Poor

The fourth live album to come out of Leonard Cohen’s 20082013 world tour is a fascinating glimpse into his creative process. More than half of its 10 songs were recorded in soundchecks, where Cohen and his band were able to test new tunes and refurbish standards like 1971’s “Joan of Arc,” heard here in a lustrous duet with Sharon Robinson. The highlight is a cover of George Jones’ classic alcoholic’s lament “Choices” – rather than try to go toe-to-toe with the most powerful voice in the history of country music, Cohen renders the song in a resigned, conversational rumble, amping up its grim power by singing it with uncanny closingtime cool.

JON DOLAN

Singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott (a.k.a. Torres) detangles years of spiritual unrest on her stirring second album. She recorded the set in an old children’s nursery in rural England with co-producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey) and Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley, who help give her steely reflections a ghostly vibe. The scalding grunge fury of “Strange Hellos” is tempered into the smoldering tones of “New Skin,” a gentle meditation on baptism.

“If you do not know the darkness,” Scott crows, “then you’re the one I fear the most.” On the title track, she looks back at her own religious upbringing, illuminating the long-running face-off between the skeptic and the Holy Spirit that both preside in her.

SUZY EXPOSITO

Ratings are supervised by the editors of R OLLING S TONE .

RICHARD CHAPIN DOWNS JR./GETTY IMAGES FOR GLOBAL CITIZEN

As his bandmates pull back on their galloping strum and shout-along harmonies, Marcus Mumford, too, moves in a subtler direction with his vocals. On 2010’s Sigh No More and 2012’s Babel, he often sang in a barrel-chested growl.

Here his singing is more restrained and agile, leaning on the vulnerable, world-weary side of his lower register to explore an intimacy that can get pretty dark: “I look at you all torn up/I left you waiting to bleed,” he sings against languid chords on “Cold Arms.”

Instead of a traditionalist troubadour, he sounds like a complex rock frontman.

Folkie fans shouldn’t be too alarmed, though. Even amid all the new sounds on Wilder Mind, the impassioned earnestness that made Mumford & Sons stars is still their driving force. The same cleareyed, full-hearted intensity that set the table for fellow U.K. roots newcomers like Laura Marling and Jake Bugg animates highlights like “Believe” and “Only Love,” where lyrics about balancing doubt and hope in the face of fading romance take on a universal power. “Open my eyes, tell me I’m alive,” Mumford sings on “Believe,” as rolling drums and heroic guitar flares carry him up to the rafters.

A few of the songs on Wilder Mind directly address the band’s stylistic growth. On “Broad-Shouldered Beasts,” Mumford takes his woman to Manhattan for a big night out dancing “under dizzy silver lights,” only to find she’s scared of the freedom he’s offering.

And then there’s the album’s sharpest moment, the coursing breakup tune “Tompkins Square Park,” where the singer demands that someone meet him in the East Village for one last desperate shot of love. The sentiment is Springsteen, the guitars are straight-up Strokes, and even if it’s not going to work out for the relationship in this song, the music itself bristles with self-assurance. Welcome to the modern age, guys.

Young Thug Barter 6 300

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Promising Atlanta rapper’s latest offering underplays his biggest strengths

At his best over the past two years – on one-off puffs of narcotized minimalism like “Stoner” and “Danny Glover” – this 23-year-old Atlanta trap star reveled in an unhinged musicality, his whoops, barks, yelps and rhymes communicating an aggrieved freedom. But here that’s submerged beneath an endless slurry of syrupy tracks, as tales of murking, licking, smoking and spending spool out in an undifferentiated haze. Young Thug’s cocaine is white like Justin Bieber, his diamonds are yellow like Funyuns, his cars are foreign and his clothes designer. But he doesn’t sound like he’s having much fun. There are a few memorable hooks (notably the T.I. feature “Can’t Tell” and the rooster crows on “Never Had It”), but not nearly enough. Too often, it all sounds boastful and sad in the same moment, like a promising young fighter warning you he can hit so hard it doesn’t matter if he’s too messed up to form a fist. JOE LEVY

San Fermin Jackrabbit Downtown

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Brooklyn crew masters highbrow chamber pop, but could use a little more edge

Note to Lincoln Center: When you need a coming-of-age opera about Brooklyn strivers, Ellis Ludwig-Leone is your man.

His orchestral-pop project San Fermin is the latest entrant to the new music economy where artists simultaneously court rock-club crowds and commissiongranting art institutions, right there with Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors and the National. On San Fermin’s second LP, Ludwig-Leone channels quarter-life existentialism through sophisticated wind and string compositions, with extendedtechnique brass (“The Woods”), old-timey fiddle (“Parasites”), odd-metered beats (“Philosopher”) and flamboyant choral bits (“Two Scenes”). Tag-team singers Charlene Kaye and Allen Tate f launt killer instruments, though their performances can want for drama – Wagnerian, Aaliyah-ian, whatever. On the title track, Kaye sings, “Wanna live like an animal”; you might end up wishing that she’d sing more like one.

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REVIEWS MUSIC

Boz Scaggs’ History of Soul The singer pays loving tribute to Fats Domino, Al Green and many more

Keeper of the flame: Scaggs

Boz Scaggs A Fool to Care 429 HHHH

Cherry Bomb Odd Future HHH½ A shock-rap renegade lightens up, sort of, on Album Four

“Full of Fire” and the Spinners’ “Love Don’t Love Nobody” even recall the slinky, disco-fied grit of Scaggs’ 1976 smash, Silk Degrees. The wild card, though, is the album’s final track, an aching duet with Lucinda Williams on the Band’s “Whispering Pines.” So what if it’s not an R&B song? The emotion conveyed proves that, in the end, soul is where you find it. ALAN LIGHT 64

After a trilogy of sonically bleak, ostentatiously psycho albums, Odd Future’s leader has flipped his nihilistic glower into a sinister smile. Featuring cameos by jazz fusion OG Roy Ayers, Lil Wayne and Kanye West, Tyler’s self-produced new one flows from the Neptunes tribute “Deathcamp” to the summery whimsy of “Find Your Wings” and “Fucking Young.” Tyler still spends at least half his rhymes reminding us how few fucks he gives, and his bright new sound often comes spiked with petulant noise. But a certain humanity peeks through: “I’m raisin’ the stakes/Mom, I made you a promise: It’s no more Section 8.” What a sweetie. JON DOLAN

DANNY CLINCH

A Fool to Care may not have a concept as linear as some of Boz Scaggs’ other recent albums (2013’s Southern-fried Memphis, the jazz standards on 2003’s But Beautiful and 2008’s Speak Low), but it sure does tell a story. These 12 songs map out a concise history of American soul, with a heavy dose of New Orleans strut – including the title track (a hit for Fats Domino) and Huey “Piano” Smith’s “High Blood Pressure” – and a dollop of Chicago sweetness (the Impressions’ gorgeous “I’m So Proud”).

Backed throughout by a stellar group of studio aces – guitarist Ray Parker Jr., bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Steve Jordan, who also produced the album – TRACKS: Scaggs’ well-worn, textured KEY “I’m So Proud,” voice deftly navigates this “Full of Fire” range of styles. His lone composition on A Fool to Care, the sly blues “Hell to Pay” (“Between the bank boys and the lawyers/I don’t know where it ends”), is a sparkling duet with Bonnie Raitt, featuring her signature slide-guitar mastery. Versions of Al Green’s

Tyler, the Creator

A Big Hit of California Sunshine Snoop Dogg teams with Pharrell Williams for a bright nostalgia trip

Hop Along Painted Shut Saddle Creek

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PAUL A. HEBERT/INVISION/AP IMAGES

Rising Philadelphia band finds power in the everyday

What’s up with Philly lately?

The most-mocked city in indie rock is suddenly bustling with fantastic young guitar bands like Hop Along. Their second album is a deep dive into raw emotions and ragged melodies.

Frances Quinlan’s voice veers from a breathy whisper to a full-throated bourbon howl, from the ballad “Horseshoe Crabs” to the pop-punk surge of “Sister Cities.” She builds her songs around quiet moments – waiting on your ex’s new girlfriend at a restaurant, squirming at a funeral. But even when she yelps, “The world’s gotten so small and embarrassing,” Hop Along know how to make these tiny moments feel huge.

ROB SHEFFIELD

Snoop Dogg Bush Columbia HHH½ Snoop Dogg’s 13th album plays like the f lip side to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterf ly: Where Lamar used funk to dramatize the struggles of a Compton native, Bush uses the genre’s rhythmic groove to portray Los Angeles as a smoky, sexy, sunshiny wonderland where every day feels like a block party. The one and only DO-double G is back home after a minor detour to Jamaica as Snoop Lion – and he’s reunited with Pharrell Williams, his most effective producer since 2000, who helps TRACKS: him dig deeper than ever KEY “California Roll,” into the Seventies vibes that “This City” have peppered his career.

From the moment opening track “California Roll” hits its “Drop It Like It’s Hot”-ish bass line, Bush is a pleasant stroll down memory lane. Heroes like Stevie Wonder (who plays harmonica on the album opener) and Charlie Wilson (who sings on “Peaches N Cream”) help transport the album to Snoop and Pharrell’s favorite decade. (The intro to “This City” also carries strong echoes of George Clinton,

The return of G-funk: Dogg

a collaborator and inspiration since Snoop’s Doggystyle days.) Neither of them is a stranger to the rapper – he featured Wilson on 2004’s “Signs” and sampled Wonder on 2006’s “Conversations” – but here they are subtly woven into the mix, rather than just adding some cred to the liner notes.

There’s a timeless quality to Snoop’s goofy charm; when he sings lyrics like “I’m just a squirrel, tryna get a nut,” he sounds looser than most rappers with 20-plus years of experience could ever imaginably be.

BRITTANY SPANOS

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JASIN BOLAND/WARNER BROS. PICTURES; © 2014 DISNEY PIXAR; TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; © MARVEL 2015; UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

1 (1) Hardy revs it up in Mad Max: Fury Road. (2) Anger is a dominant emotion in Pixar’s Inside Out. (3) Pratt wards off pissy dinosaurs in Jurassic World.

(4) The Thing rages in Fantastic Four.

(5) Bettany morphs into the menacing Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

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Summer Monster Mash From ‘Fury Road’ to ‘Jurassic World,’ the season’s epic sizzlers are big, mean and mad as hell By Peter Travers

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ew holly wood rule if you want to make bank at the multiplex: Bury the cute and cuddly. To get in the game this summer, fill your movies with pissed-off predators. Tom Hardy is ready to run you down in Mad Max: Fury Road. Raptors will chomp you in Jurassic World. The Thing will crush you in Fantastic Four. All humanity is on notice in Avengers: Age of Ultron, thanks to a rogue, robotized AI program named Ultron and his synthezoid creation, Vision. Ah-nuld in Terminator Genisys isn’t immune. Hell, even the animated emotions in Pixar’s Inside Out boast a rager called Anger, and the three yellow dudes in Minions serve an evil mastermind. Don’t like it? Expect the shitfaced talking bear in Ted 2 to curse your sorry ass. Go find a place to hide, movie wussies. Summer 2015 ain’t for you.

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

MAY

Avengers: Age of Ultron MAY 1ST

forget the cr itics w ho think Joss Whedon’s follow-up to 2012’s The Avengers is a letdown. Forget the haters who think Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Chris Evans (Captain America) slut-shamed Black Widow for getting it on with their characters and the Hulk. Really? Really! And just watch as Ultron starts and ends the summer on top of the heap. Why? Because no one brings the 5

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MOVIES agent-turned-studio-chief Ari Gold equals toxic hilarity. “Ari leads through intimidation,” says Piven. Yeah. But he’s still a monster you can love.

Marvel universe to life like Whedon. And because fresh characters (Paul Bettany’s villainous Vision) and familiar ones (Renner’s Everyman Avenger) blend into a film that stays in your head and heart.

Spy JUNE 5TH

Mad Max: Fury Road

not bu y i ng t he ide a of Melissa McCarthy as a female James Bond? Screw you. McCarthy nails every laugh as an unlikely CIA agent in Paul Feig’s laugh-a-minute spoof.

She and Jason Statham, as a nasty spy gone rogue, are the summer’s kick-ass comedy team, doing stunts and trading raunchy R-rated insults.

“you ca n fit all my dialogue on one page,” jokes Tom Hardy. Fine by me. What counts is action. George Miller’s reboot of his Mad Max franchise about a road warrior in an apocalyptic world casts Hardy in the role originated by Mel Gibson. Hardy is a dynamite actor, and Charlize Theron gets up in his face as the battling Furiosa (love the name). Miller, 70, straps you in for a ride through a world on fire. Burn, baby, burn.

Tomorrowland MAY 22ND

“i t ’s br a d bi r d – w h at else do you need to know about it?” says George Clooney. Point taken. I was pushing for details about Bird’s top-secret Tomorrowland, in which Clooney plays a hermit inventor who fears and longs for a futuristic world. Since Bird kills it at animation (The Incredibles) and live action (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), I’m in.

JUNE

Entourage JUNE 3RD

so maybe you haven’t been jonesing for a big-screen version of Entourage. But just hearing Jeremy Piven dismantle the pretensions of Hollywood as

Summer’s ‘It’ Girl

Jurassic World

Take a swig of Amy Schumer. She’s already comic dynamite, but in the ‘Trainwreck’ title role, she writes herself a starring part that kills July 17th

chris pr att is guarding a different kind of galaxy in this fourth screen take on a park where genetically modified dinos run amok. “I don’t get many chances to be funny,” says Pratt, “what with raging raptors running around eating people.” No worries. The only thing that can kill the box office on this baby is a monster called sequel fatigue.

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he’s the babe, the diva of riotous r aunch, the hard-drinking, trash-talking party girl you’d never bring home to Mother, or even your crazy Uncle Harry. If you’re a dude, she’ll do you and dump you – no apologies. Like the title of her provocative, pinwheeling, howlingly funny movie, she’s a trainwreck. And she’s irresistible. That’s because she – men’s-magazine reporter Amy Townsend – is played by Amy Schumer, a comic force of nature who’s making her big-screen debut as star and screenwriter. Judd Apatow does the directing, expertly channeling Schumer, as he does with Lena Dunham as exec producer on HBO’s Girls, and letting her talent blossom and bruise. You heard me. Schumer’s comedy leaves marks. That comes with tackling the stuff America’s sweethearts don’t talk about. Schumer’s been a stand-up since 2004, and her sharply satirical sketches are currently on view in Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer. A movie, of course, is a different animal – a beast, actually. Hollywood’s safe rom-com formula demands allegiance to a flag Schumer has no intention of saluting. Even though her character takes a swing at love in the person of a sports-medicine doc, nicely played by Bill Hader, Schumer knows the point is to eyeball Amy riding the storm, not to watch it subside. So batten down the hatches for Hurricane Amy. Can she rip comedy a new one with Trainwreck and make us laugh till it hurts? Hell, yeah.

UNDER THE RADAR

Tangerine

68 | R ol l i n g S t o n e |

RollingStone.com

Tangerine

Mr. Holmes

Shot on Apple iPhone 5s cameras, Tangerine is a visually innovative knockout. And Sean Baker’s raw tale of two transgender L.A. hookers (Mya Taylor, Kiki Kitana Rodriguez) grabs you from the first frame. Gritty and groundbreaking.

July 10th

Ian McKellen plays Sherlock Holmes like a lion in winter, retired to Sussex to care for bees. Or is he? The great McKellen teams again with his Gods and Monsters director, Bill Condon, to create something brilliant, mysterious and lyrical. July 17th

JUNE 12TH

Inside Out JUNE 19TH

it’s pix ar. those geek genies have earned our trust. That means we’ll buy into a movie about 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) trying to wrangle the animated emotions inside her head. Can Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) ward off Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Anger (Lewis Black)?

Probably. But bet on those bastards to put up a good fight in this emoji war of the worlds.

Sleeping With Other People Sex comedy can be a bitch to get right. But writer-director Leslye Headland, in tandem with stars Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, gets it right and then some. They make fucking up in bed and out seem hilarious and brand-new. Aug. 21st

Grandma The title of this Paul Weitz gem doesn’t prep you for the emotional pow Lily Tomlin delivers as a lesbian poet who helps her grandkid (Julia Garner) get an abortion. Start the Oscar buzz. Dynamo Tomlin has never been better. Aug. 21st

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FROM TOP: UNIVERSAL PICTURES; MAGNOLIA PICTURES

MAY 15TH

Ted 2 JUNE 26TH

seth macfarl ane proved he could rack up half a billion in 2012 by having a cute bear talk shit to Mark Wahlberg.

This summer, he does it again by having Ted take on the law to legalize his marriage to his human GF (Jessica Barth), with Wahlberg providing the sperm. Too much? “What?!” says MacFarlane, who likes crossing the line.

by Joaquin Phoenix, joins a student (Emma Stone) in considering what Allen calls “the big questions.” The existential debate, recalling Crimes and Misdemeanors, pivots on rationalizing violent extremes, even murder. Don’t knock a think piece in a stultifying summer.

(Chevy Chase), taking his own family to Walley World had me at “hello, it’s R-rated.” Bring on the bad taste. It’s summer.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation JULY 31ST

“ i l o v e i t,” s a y s t o m Cruise. He’s referring to doing his own stunts. And in the fifth chapter in his M:I series, he

l o ok , t h e l a s t t wo f f Marvel movies sucked ass. Now director Josh Trank (Chronicle) is rebooting with a fresh coat of young hotties. What else? “Upgraded powers,” says Miles Teller (Whiplash), who plays Mr. Fantastic. The same applies to Michael B. Jordan’s Human Torch and Kate Mara’s Invisible Woman. And Jamie Bell truly rocks it as Thing. Seeing is believing.

Terminator Genisys JULY 1ST

h e ’ s b a a -a c k . w h a t more do you need to know?

In this time-travel sequel, A r nold Schwa rzenegger’s T-man is shown entering naked from the 1984 original. “Then they show me naked today,” says Ah-nuld. “Scary.” And tons of fun to watch the damage done by an indestructible hunk of motivated metal.

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Minions

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JULY 10TH

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AUGUST 14TH

JULY 17TH

i n t he l at est provoc ation from Woody Allen, an alcoholic philosophy prof, played M a y 21 , 2 01 5

meryl streep may not be a guitar god, but she had a true deity (Neil Young) to teach her as prep for playing a mom of three who left her family to play in a rock cover band. Director Jonathan Demme trusted that Streep could shred an acoustic and belt Tom Petty and Lady Gaga. Like we ever had a doubt.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Ant-Man

JULY 17TH

Ricki and the Flash AUGUST 7TH

(1) Cruise takes stunt work to the limit in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

(2) Gyllenhaal enters the Oscar ring in Southpaw.

(3) Streep turns rock star in Ricki and the Flash.

in this prequel to “despicable Me,” the tiny yellow creatures (Kevin, Stuart and Bob) serve the dastardly Overkills, Scarlet (Sandra Bullock) and Herb (Jon Hamm). If anyone can seize the summer cash crown from the Avengers, it’s the minions. Place your bets.

Irrational Man

Fantastic Four AUGUST 7TH

JULY

a no t h e r m a rv e l h e ro, with Paul Rudd as the thief who shrinks himself to ant size and wears the ant suit designed

by Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). It’s all done to take on Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll), who is armed with cannons. As Rudd told David Letterman, “I guess we all can’t wait to see how stupid this will be.”

AUGUST

Southpaw JULY 31ST

ja k e gy l l en h a a l l ook s like he can take on the world as Billy Hope, a left-handed boxer fighting his worst tendencies to win custody of his daughter. Gyllenhaal says he stuck to a “strict regimen” to muscle up for the role. It’s a stark contrast to the pounds he dropped to play the spookily intense news cameraman in Nightcrawler.

He wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for that great performance. Maybe Southpaw can rectify that injustice.

has a few doozies, including perilous motorcycle action and hanging off the side of a cargo plane in midflight. The plots don’t matter much – this one concerns Cruise’s Ethan Hunt taking down a shadow syndicate bent on . . . oh, who the hell cares? It’s the stunts that count.

Vacation JULY 31ST

confession: i’m a sucker for National Lampoon comedies that push the limit. So Vacation, with Ed Helms as Rusty Griswold, the son of Clark

h a r dly a n y on e recalls the 1960s TV spy series, which is why the movie version is such a retro blast. The big-screen U.N.C.L.E., directed by Guy Ritchie, doesn’t update anything. It serves up its predigital Cold War espionage as if James Bond were around the corner. Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) plays CIA agent Napoleon Solo as a tailored smoothie whose quips irritate the piss out of KGB spook Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). The two enemies team to save the world and the girl (Alicia Vikander). That’s all. And it’s plenty. In a summer of CGI marvels, the sight of two nonsuperheroes bumping heads and leaving bruises is downright revolutionary.

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69

DAVID LETTERMAN [Cont. from 53] car, because then you see what the guy is made of,” he says. He floated it to Seinfeld, but the latter was noncommittal. “I’ve still got my nose out of joint about that one.”

(For what it’s worth, Tom Brokaw thinks it’s a good idea. “I’d like to see Louis C.K. on a horse, for example.”)

How about a podcast? “Well, sure,” says Letterman. “But, I mean – does anybody listen to a podcast?” He is assured that they’re quite popular. “And it’s like NPR? Well, OK. That would be good.” One thing he’s likely to do is a few live events – specifically the lecture series he founded at his alma mater, Indiana’s Ball State University, where he hosts in-depth interviews with guests like Rachel Maddow and Oprah Winfrey. “Those are fun,” Letterman says. “That would be an easy place to start. And maybe that’s all there will ever be.”

When Carson retired, Letterman was one of his final guests. “I’m getting a lot of ‘Are you gonna miss Johnny?’ ” he said on the show. “Am I gonna miss Johnny, are your folks gonna miss Johnny, is your clergyman gonna miss Johnny. . . . I think there’s another perspective to consider. You’re not passing away. You’re still funny, you’re vibrant, you’re charming, energetic, entertaining. . . . You’re a very healthy man. You’re not going to prison.

You’re still gonna be in show business.”

But this was wishful thinking. Carson left the next week, and except for a handful of appearances, he was never seen in public again. By all accounts, he had a lovely retirement, playing tennis and sailing his 130-foot yacht. But it was an exceedingly private one.

Those who know Letterman well agree that he seems unlikely to pull a Carson.

“His brain is too active,” says Rob Burnett.

He’s constantly peppering people with seemingly random questions – about history, geography, herpetology, string theory, the name of Edith Wharton’s house.

“There’s a long history of him being intrigued by a subject and throwing himself into it for months,” Matt Roberts says.

“He’ll get into astronomy, and suddenly he’s got a telescope and knows the name of every star cluster and constellation that’s out there. Then, six months later, you ask, ‘How’s the telescope?’ and he says, ‘Oh, I’m into snowboarding now.’ ” He’ll need some kind of outlet for this restless curiosity. As a wise man once said: There is no off position on the genius switch.

“Weirdly, without the pressure of a network talk show, I actually think Dave could end up doing something more beautiful,” says Burnett. “Something smaller that doesn’t have to please everybody.”

Who knows what kind of arcane weirdness he might come up when he’s not beholden

70 | R ol l i n g S t o n e |

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to CBS? “The completely unadulterated version of Dave could be breathtaking,” Burnett says.

“Here’s how I would put it,” Letterman says finally. “I would like to do this show maybe three days a week, two weeks out of the month.” He laughs a little. “Do they have shows like that?”

T

he l ast time i meet letterman, he’s in a foul mood. (I can tell, because he says, “I’m in a foul mood.”) An ill-advised joke he made during a pre-show warm-up has become a minor scandal in the gossip press. It’ll evaporate in a day, but for now, it’s agitating him. That said, it’s a little hard to take him seriously, given that he’s dressed in a pair of blue-and-white-pinstriped overalls, fully strapped and buckled like a kindergartner on the first day of school. His press officer, in an attempt to lighten him up, jokes that it looks like Letterman has been working on the railroad. “I wish I was working on the railroad,” he pouts.

Once upon a time, a mood like this might have lingered for days, but today

“When Stephen’s show starts up, that’s when my stomach will go, ‘Oh, shit. I’m not really on vacation.’ ” the clouds part in a few minutes. This is a fairly recent development. “For years and years and years – 30, 40 years – I was anxious, and hypochondriacal, and an alcoholic, and many, many other things that made me different from other people,” Letterman says. “The hypochondriacal behavior . . . it sounds stupid, but it was killing me! Doctors kept telling me not to come back. ‘Really, Dave. There’s nothing.’ Finally, I found out it’s all a manifestation of anxiety. Once you realize that, you can selfmonitor. Which I’ve found very useful.”

A few days earlier, Letterman celebrated his 68th birthday. He’s an ongoing selfimprovement project. Twenty-five years ago, a doctor suggested he try antidepressants, but he worried they might take the edge off his comedy. Then around 2003, he agreed to start a low dose of an SSRI, the class of serotonin-boosting drugs that includes Paxil and Lexapro. “I was suspicious, and skeptical, and nervous about it,” he says. “But it changed my life. I used to have kind of a hair trigger; I used to put my fist through Sheetrock.” Now he does transcendental meditation and no longer talks about “enduring” life beyond the show. He’s also a regular in therapy – he

calls it “an emotional tuneup.” In fact, he’s on his way to his therapist tonight, which in part explains the overalls. “I like them because they’re comfortable and they’re comforting,” he explains.

Letterman once said there were two great motivators in his life: guilt and fear.

Lately, he doesn’t seem driven by either of them. He finds it hard to talk about his legacy: The closest he will come is an admission that he feels “wistful.” Maybe it’s because he’s not ready to process it yet, or maybe it’s too vast to reflect on with any perspective. “Ultimately, it’s the body of work that speaks for itself,” says Burnett.

“It’s 30 years. It’s an ocean.”

Regrets? He has a few. “I wish I could have done a better job more consistently,” Letterman says. “I wish I could have been a little more solid in my performance. I wish I wouldn’t have let the wrong things distract me. I wish I could have been impervious.” A big one is that he didn’t capitalize on his production company, Worldwide Pants, in such a way that “it could have an afterlife, whereby some of these people who’ve worked so hard all these years could continue to be employed.”

And he wishes he’d started having kids early enough to have a second – preferably a little girl.

“I really can’t remember many times, if any, that he has enjoyed his success,” says Burnett. “It’s just not who he is. It is kind of sad – you wish the guy could enjoy what he does. But I think on some level, maybe in a quiet moment, he has to acknowledge what he’s accomplished. It feels impossible not to.”

Letterman isn’t looking forward to this September, when summer vacation is over, Harry goes back to school, and Colbert comes on the air. “I remember talking to Carson after he retired, and he said it took a while to sink in. So I think in the fall, when Stephen’s show starts up, that’s when my stomach will kind of go, ‘Oh, shit. I’m not really on vacation, am I?’ ” In the meantime, he says, “what I’ve decided to do – and what I really want to do – is give myself over to my son and my wife.

My schedule is no longer a factor, so whatever they want, that’s what we’re going to do.” Recently, he got a big book of hiking trails across the U.S., and he’s excited to visit some national parks, like Arches, in Utah. A friend of his has also planned a fishing trip down Montana’s Big Hole River. “It should be a great summer,” Letterman says.

For his birthday, Harry gave him a brand-new tenkara fly-fishing rod. “It’s a Japanese rod that’s self-contained,” Letterman explains. “It has no reel. It extends out, and you just attach a line to it.”

It’s supposed to be good for small streams, he says. He and Harry are excited to get to Montana and try it out.

“I don’t know how to use it,” Letterman says. “But I’m happy to learn.”

M a y 21 , 2 01 5

BILL DE BLASIO [Cont. from 59] had been in office for only eight months, servicing 53,000 preschoolers at nearly 1,700 locations, a massive undertaking that went off seamlessly (especially compared to, say, the Affordable Care Act website launch).

De Blasio, for his part, takes issue with the popular narrative of New York’s resurgence. When we talk about the credit Rudy Giuliani gets for making New York safe and livable again – which de Blasio considers pure myth – I ask how much the former mayor’s outsize, room-filling personality contributed to his success. “I don’t 100 percent buy into that theory,” he says. “I agree that he was good at selling himself, and a lot of media over-accepted his version of the story. So, yeah, do you give him credit for figuring out a way to get more credit than he deserves? Sure, if that’s credit.

We’ve proven not only was my model more electorally popular than his – by a lot – but that you can manage this place much more effectively if you’re not in fact creating division through the process.”

Likewise, de Blasio has problems with the notion that arose during Bloomberg’s tenure that his personal fortune allowed him to sidestep the temptations of influential donors. “Part of that was hype because he still had favorites, and a clear free-market worldview,” de Blasio says. “I mean, for God’s sake, when there was a critical op-ed in The New York Times about Goldman Sachs, he went to Goldman and gave a pep talk to the employees! When a struggling school was having troubles in East New York, he didn’t go there and give a pep talk.

This theory that he traveled in no world in particular – even just the social dynamic of the people he hung around with all the time meant that it didn’t matter if they gave him money or not. They were still hugely influential to him.”

Under de Blasio, the nexus of power has certainly undergone a dramatic shift, from the Upper East Side to brownstone Brooklyn. Richard Buery, the deputy mayor who implemented universal pre-K, had been living in Westchester County when he was hired and so had to move his family into the city. When I asked where, he says, smiling, “Park Slope, of course. It’s a requirement.”

The de Blasio family didn’t move into Gracie Mansion until six months after he took office. His old friend Dan Katz recalls going to a Park Slope coffee shop last summer. “And Bill’s there, in shorts and a T-shirt. And I said, ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because you’re the mayor of New York.’ ” These are superficial points of geography, of course. But also not. Park Slope represents, in its most caricatured form, a certain smug strain of contemporary New York liberalism: the land of food co-ops and yuppie toddlers wearing little Ramones T-shirts. “I’ve always found M a y 21 , 2 01 5

him very affable,” says Haberman. “But as mayor, there’s a sanctimony in his administration that is impossible for many people to get past.” Adds someone who has worked closely with de Blasio, “He’s very headstrong, and on a lot of answers, he’ll say, ‘Yeah, yeah, I know all that.’ ” As de Blasio embarks on his national crusade, one has to wonder: Regardless of the validity of his message, is the mayor an imperfect messenger? As with President Obama, there’s an unattractive, imperious side to his personality that manifests in little flashes: a conversational tendency to drift toward lecture, unconcealed impatience with lines of inquiry he disapproves of. He’s also chronically tardy, a trait covered pretty much exclusively by the tabloids at first but eventually becoming pronounced enough to merit a story in the Times. (When de Blasio showed up a halfhour late for a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Far Rockaway, Queens, an area hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, the right-wing New York Post dressed him up as a leprechaun for the front page under the headline st. putz.)

De Blasio may be a canny tactician, a scholar of progressive history, perhaps even a visionary. But populism also requires firing up a crowd, and it’s not clear if de Blasio has that touch. Or, for that matter, if he’s simply too far to the left for huge swaths of the country. The mayor “is toxic” in upstate New York, insists Rep. Borelli, the Staten Island Republican. “His message has a tough enough time resonating in outer boroughs. He got involved in several 2014 state races north of the Bronx, and they lost them nearly to a man.”

A

ll that said, de bl asio deserves tremendous credit for the way in which he’s willing to use his bully pulpit – really, unlike few other politicians operating at his level. One morning in early March, he gave a breakfast speech to a group of business and real-estate leaders called the Association for a Better New York. The setting was the grand ballroom of the tony Pierre Hotel, overlooking Central Park, and from the back of the room, it grew quiet enough to hear the silverware clinking as the mayor, not a naturally great speaker to begin with, audaciously called on the assembled one-percenters to voluntarily raise the minimum wage in the city to $13 an hour. The applause he received was polite but restrained.

The speech was interesting for a couple of reasons – not least, because of its clear echo of a crucial moment in the campaign of candidate de Blasio. In October 2012, he gave a speech to the same group and announced his plan to raise taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to fund universal pre-K. “I happened to have a finance-committee meeting for my campaign the day before that speech, and I couldn’t tell them what I was going to do because it was just too high-security,” de Blasio recalls. “And I had

people who happened to be wealthy call the next day and resign from the finance committee, and others who just stopped participating, and others who grudgingly participated but told me I had made a fatal error.”

The minimum-wage speech, in asking the local captains of industry to voluntarily join his crusade, was also a tacit acknowledgment of the difficulty of making a major impact on the economic lives of constituents, even for an executive-branch leader with as much power as the mayor of New York. At one of his first press conferences as mayor, de Blasio described his tax on the wealthy as “the number-one proposal I put forward in an election that I won with 73 percent of the vote. I think the jury is in.” But a few months later, it had been killed by Gov. Cuomo, who probably didn’t want to be seen as raising taxes during an election year, though he still provided full funding for de Blasio’s universal-pre-K plan. De Blasio was widely portrayed as the loser of that battle, though when I ask if those optics matter, he snaps, “That’s inside baseball. The people see that they got pre-K. They don’t care how it happened, and I don’t blame them. There was a lot of support for a tax on the wealthy – it was clearly a majority position in this city – and if we’re just talking about the will of the people, it would have happened. But in the end, we got the mission done.”

Still, he learned a valuable lesson about the levers of power, and he’s convinced that putting pressure on state and national political leaders is the only way to comprehensively address income inequality.

He says he was “troubled by the results” of the 2014 midterms – enough to write an op-ed for the Huffington Post calling for Democrats to stop trying to run as Republican Lites. “As a progressive,” he wrote, “I know my party need not search for its soul – but rather, its backbone.” When I ask how much of the op-ed was directed at President Obama, de Blasio says carefully, “I would differentiate his words and actions.

In terms of his words, I very much appreciated the last State of the Union, which was a very powerful road map for addressing these issues. But I certainly believe there should’ve been a focus on economics much earlier. I don’t belittle the crisis he walked into. And one of the few things in the last decades that has tangibly addressed the income-inequality crisis has been the Affordable Care Act. But where I would be critical is that the progressive economic vision that I adhere to was not front and center in President Obama’s vision. Though, by the way, let’s be fair – he didn’t promise it.”

There have been some cynical whispers about de Blasio’s refusal to endorse Hillary Clinton, given his historic closeness to both her and her husband, with some wondering if it’s all political theater, a bit of pro-wrestling-style manufactured heat in which de Blasio will game- [Cont. on 72] RollingStone.com

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71

BILL DE BLASIO [Cont. from 71] ly play the heel for a few months before giving Clinton his blessing, thus inoculating more troublesome pressures from the likes of Elizabeth Warren.

Progressives like former New York gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout appreciate the pressure de Blasio is placing on Clinton, saying his challenge is “necessary. I’d call him, and myself, traditional Democrats. It’s people like Cuomo who wandered off into trickle-down economics. We’re not to the left of the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party is to the right of the Republican Party. We’re the heart and soul of the party. It’s the private financing of campaigns that has led Democrats to these Reaganite policies.”

De Blasio’s progressive alliance will sponsor a bipartisan presidential forum later this year. When I asked if he hoped to exert a leftward pull on establishment Democrats, in the same way that a progressive primary challenger might have such an effect on Clinton, he replied, “Well, I would say it differently. Having been involved in politics, I would not say it is a given to progressives that primaries are necessarily going to result in the outcomes that you want, either a better candidate or your policies being adopted. What we’re doing here is a little more organic than

that. It’s understanding that for all of the candidates, there needs to be a real push, calling on them to address these issues.”

At one point, I asked de Blasio: What had made him believe, after five terms of governance by Giuliani and Bloomberg, that New Yorkers were ready to return to progressive governance? “Well, I think I have a very different view of what happened over those five terms than many do,” he says. “I was on the ’93 David Dinkins reelection campaign, so I watched the beginning of the Giuliani era the hard way. Dinkins should’ve beaten Giuliani, but we lost touch with our own base. Dinkins lost by 50,000 votes, and there were more than 50,000 votes to be had if we had handled things differently. A lot of the people who were Dinkins voters did not feel inspired enough to vote. I’ve seen this pattern repeat over and over again. It is my critique of what happened to Democrats in 2014.

So I never felt that Giuliani’s election was a renunciation of the core vision. I also feel the same about Bloomberg’s election in 2001. Yes, he had a huge amount of resources, but that was a winnable election.

“So one could argue,” de Blasio continues, “we had 20 years of Republican or Republican-independent rule that were entirely avoidable.” He says he never stopped believing New York was, at heart, a progressive city – that, on the contrary, there

was pent-up demand. “It was amazing how many people thought you’ve got to be more accommodationist. And my theory of the case from the beginning was, ‘Clean lines.’

I felt, in my heart, if I had a clear message and a body of achievement to back it up, and we were organized on the ground, it was absolutely winnable. And it was.”

Turning back to his national push, de Blasio says, “In a place like New York City, with a strong local government that has a lot of tools and resources, we can do a substantial set of things for addressing inequality. But we can’t do the things the federal government can do. The federal government can make investments in infrastructure that employ a huge number of people. They could help us provide affordable housing, progressive taxation. I mean, it would be a very long list of things that the federal government could do better to address income inequality, and none of those things are happening. The New Deal was a series of bold, experimental actions to address people’s reality, and they could see and touch and feel the response in their lives. Today, there’s literally nothing. This is the anti-New Deal.

“A serious national debate would start with that. It goes beyond Hillary, it goes beyond the presidential campaign. We’re having to restart the discussion and bring it back to the reality of people’s lives.”

72

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R S 6 51 MARC H 4TH, 1993

When Bono Became the Fly By 1993, U2 had completely shed their sincere Eighties image: Two years earlier, they had released the bold, edgy Achtung Baby; now, onstage and off, Bono had unveiled an over-the-top, sunglasseswearing rock star known as the Fly. “There were reports of egomania,” Bono told ROLLING STONE’s Alan Light, “and I just decided to become everything they said I was.” The frontman was in full Fly mode when he posed for photographer Anton Corbijn in the bathtub of his New York hotel room. “He wanted to create the ultimate rock star’s lifestyle,” says Corbijn in his new book, U2 & I, “ignorant of the world’s problems or the man on the street. The view, the champagne, a videotape of Bush Sr., a cigarillo and bubbles was all we needed to get this result.”

Hot 100 Flashback 1 A Whole New World Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle Columbia

2 I Will Always Love You Whitney Houston Arista

3 Ordinary World Duran Duran Capitol

4 Informer Snow EastWest

5 Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang Dr. Dre Death Row/Interscope

6 I’m Every Woman Whitney Houston Arista

7 Mr. Wendal Arrested Development Chrysalis

8 Hip Hop Hooray Naughty by Nature Tommy Boy

9 Don’t Walk Away Jade Giant

To dive further into five decades of R OLLING S TONE archives, go to RollingStone.com/coverwall.

10 Bed of Roses Bon Jovi Jambco/Mercury

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PHOTOGRAPH ON THE COVER BY ANDREW MACPHERSON/“VOGUE”/© 1992 CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS LTD.

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