#Brian Hiatt
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The Louis feature in Mark Meets magazine was falsely attributed to a senior writer at Rolling Stone called Brian Hiatt, and he is furious about it! No serious music journalist wants their name linked to a Louis Tomlinson interview.
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Rolling Stone, July 16, 2014
The vamp of constant sorrow talks about love and death — then tries to wiggle out of her cover story.
SHE GOES TO a dark place, in the end, and won’t come out of it. “I’m not sure if they should run this story,” Lana Del Rey will say, sprawled out on a soft brown couch in tiny denim cutoffs and a white V-neck tee, blowing pensive little gum bubbles. She has, by this point, spent a good seven hours talking with me. At times, it even seemed like it was going well.
“I feel like maybe we should wait until there’s something good to talk about,” she continues, in an airy tone that turns pleading. “You know? I just wish you could write about something else. There has to be someone else to be the cover story. Like, there has to be. Anybody.”
Maybe it shouldn’t have been a shock, landing here. Del Rey’s brand of pop stardom is self-thwarting, ambivalent, precarious: At her clouded core, beneath the considerable glamour, she is more Cat Power or Kurt Cobain than Rihanna or Katy Perry, complete with a mysterious, Kurt-like stomach ailment that plagues her on tour. And then there’s the tattoo on the side of her right hand, just below the pinkie, inked in neat black cursive: TRUST NO ONE. (On the same spot on the other hand: PARADISE.)
Still, a day earlier, it all feels different. On a cloudless, offensively hot mid-June afternoon in New York, the release day for Del Rey’s second major-label album, Ultraviolence, she answers the green wooden door of the Greenwich Village town house where she’s staying. “I’m Lana, nice to see you,” she says, offering a soft handshake and a big, white, hopeful smile, one that instantly suggests everything you think you know about her is wrong: that you’ve read too much into the consecutive placement of songs called “Sad Girl” and “Pretty When You Cry” on the new album; that you’ve taken certain recent interview quotes (mainly, “I wish I was dead already,” which earned her a Twitter scolding from Frances Bean Cobain) too seriously; that it’s a mistake to assume her aloof stage manner has anything to do with her actual personality.
Her laugh, fizzy and girlish, is coming easily. She’s all but giddy over having her album out, uncompromising, spooky, guitar-laden, hitless thing that it is: “It’s what I wanted.” Today’s V-neck tee is powder blue, nearly matching the self-applied pastel polish on her longish nails, over pale, strategically shredded jeans, cuffed just below the calves, that are familiar from another magazine’s photo shoot. She’s wearing false eyelashes but not much noticeable makeup. Del Rey is four days away from her 29th birthday (for reasons she can’t explain, she’s usually reported to be a year younger), but looks, at the moment, like a college junior home for the summer.
She seems so carefree – bubbly, even – that within 10 minutes, it seems safe to break the ice: “So, on a scale of one to 10, how much do you wish you were dead right now?”
Her big brownish-green eyes widen even further. Then she lets out a delicate snort of amusement. “Ten being dead?” she says. “You’re funny! Today is a good day.” Today she chooses life? “Yeah, today I choose life.” So, like a one? “10. 10!” she says, in a daffy singsong, not unlike Diane Keaton murmuring “la di da” in Annie Hall. “Seven. 12!” She throws back her head and laughs, possibly beginning to enjoy herself.
But when it comes to Lana Del Rey, who can tell anything for sure? She’s a baffling bundle of contradictory signifiers, a mystery that 10,000 tortured think pieces have failed to solve. David Nichtern, who signed her to his small indie label when she was still in college, saw her as “the outer aspect of Marilyn Monroe with the inner aspect of Leonard Cohen”: She may look a bit like Nico, but she’s her own Lou Reed. She’s nervous and self-conscious onstage, but fearless in her lyrics (“My pussy tastes like Pepsi-Cola”; “I was an angel looking to get fucked hard”). Her consistently viral videos are id-infested pageants of creepy-nostalgic Americana, good-girl/bad-girl dichotomies and the occasional make-out sesh with an old dude. Just try to figure out what’s going on in her 2012 clip for “National Anthem,” where she plays both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, dares to riff on the Zapruder footage, and casts rapper A$AP Rocky as JFK.
She’s a pop superstar with hardly any actual radio hits in the U.S., just a remix of her song “Summertime Sadness” that she never even heard before its release. And, perhaps more than any other pop star of this century, she’s been misunderstood, even hated. She was the subject of a savage indie-nerd backlash – a pre-lash, really – before most of America had ever heard of her. (Among other complaints, music bloggers felt somehow duped when her online hit “Video Games” led to a near-instant major-label deal.) Her shaky, slightly dead-eyed Saturday Night Live debut was treated like a national emergency, inspiring weeks of debate, including Brian Williams playing music critic (he was not a fan). She had her change of name from Lizzy Grant presented as evidence of deception rather than showbiz-as-usual. She had to deny surgically enhancing her lips’ poutiness (up close, for what it’s worth, they look pretty much like lips).
Released in the wake of the SNL performance, her 2012 debut on Interscope Records, Born to Die, got skeptical reviews. The songs, and her mannered, multilayered vocals, seemed to be drowning in lush, trip-hop-y production. But with the help of strong, cinematic new tracks on the bonus EP Paradise, it all turned around: The album sold more than 1 million copies in the U.S. (and more than 7 million worldwide); her Great Gatsby soundtrack single, “Young and Beautiful,” went platinum. Kanye West, who takes matters of taste seriously, enlisted her to play his wedding to Kim Kardashian. “It was beautiful, just being there,” Del Rey says. “They seemed very happy.” Earlier, over lunch, West had told her “he really liked where I was coming from, visually and sonically.”
Del Rey isn’t inclined to celebrate any of this stuff, however. “It doesn’t feel like success,” she says. “Because with everything that could have felt like something really sweet, there’s always been something out of the periphery of my world, beyond my control, to kind of disrupt whatever was happening. I’ve never felt like, ‘Oh, this is great.’ ”
The town house Del Rey is staying in belongs to someone she calls “a friend”: 31-year-old Francesco Carrozzini, a dashing Italian photographer who’s shot her for various European magazines. He obviously does well for himself – “better than us,” Del Rey jokes, as she shows me around. His four-story house is a seriously amazing bit of Manhattan real estate, a movie-star-worthy bachelor pad, its dark wood walls covered with art photos and his shots of celebrities like Keith Richards. The house is on the same block where Bob Dylan moved with his family in 1969; Anna Wintour lives nearby, as does Baz Luhrmann.
On the second-floor coffee table, near a Serge Gainsbourg box set, there’s a book called The Boudoir Bible. “No shame,” Del Rey says with a grin. She’s sitting on the brown couch, smoking Carrozzini’s American Spirit cigarettes in her languid way, below a huge black-and-white photo of a bunch of slim, naked people piled on top of one another. The midday sun is blazing through an open window, and her brown hair and fair skin are glowing in its haze – an Instagram filter or cinematographer couldn’t do better. “I quit sometimes,” she says, of the cigarettes. “And then stop quitting.” She smokes onstage, too – it’s pure craving, not an image thing. “I find, sometimes, halfway through the set, I definitely need to have a cigarette.”
Within a few days, she’ll be photographed nuzzling with Carrozzini in Europe. But for now, she says, she’s single. Starting in December or so, Del Rey began a protracted breakup with Barrie-James O’Neill, her boyfriend of three years. He’s a songwriter, which allowed her to live out some Dylan/Joan Baez fantasies (she’s partial to Baez’s paean to that romance, “Diamonds and Rust,” even quoting it on “Ultraviolence”). “It’s all been hard,” Del Rey says. “Yeah, my life is just feeling really heavy on my shoulders, and his own neuroses just getting the best of him, I think, just made it untenable. Which is sad, because it was truly circumstantial, the reasons for us not being together.”
Ultraviolence feels, at times, like a breakup album, though Del Rey says all of the songs were actually about previous relationships. Either way, it answers a lot of questions about her, even as it raises some new ones. If she were the corporate puppet or calculated fraud some of her detractors imagined her to be, this is not an album she would ever make. The main producer was Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, who’s gifted at summoning vintagey atmosphere and Morricone-ish grandeur, but is in little danger of being confused with Dr. Luke or Max Martin. They recorded much of it live, with his Nashville crew of rock musicians playing while Del Rey sang into a $100 handheld microphone, her vocals newly raw, jazzy and powerful. There are a bunch of guitar solos. But not one track seems even vaguely suited for pop radio.
Even before Auerbach got involved, Del Rey knew that she wanted something very different this time around. “This record was, ‘I’m going to do it my way,’ ” says her friend Lee Foster, who runs Electric Lady Studios and co-produced some of the album there. Foster told her that Bruce Springsteen had followed up Born in the U.S.A. with the stark Nebraska (Foster had the order reversed, but close enough). “We talked about taking that stance, like Springsteen shifting gears and saying, ‘I’m gonna do exactly what you don’t expect me to do.’ “
Auerbach ran into Del Rey at Electric Lady, where he was mixing Ray LaMontagne’s new LP. “Honestly, we both benefited from really not knowing anything about each other,” he says. After she played him some of the demos she was working on, he became a fan, lobbying to produce her. But he was taken aback by the major-label hassles he experienced – Del Rey is signed to two of them, Interscope and the U.K.’s Polydor. “There was a lot of bullshit I’m not used to,” Auerbach says. “The label says, ‘We’re not going to give you the budget to extend this session unless we hear something.’ And we send them the rough mix and they fucking hate it and they hate the way it’s mixed. And it’s like, ‘Thanks, asshole.’
“The story I got told,” he continues, “is that they played it for her label person and they said, ‘We’re not putting out this record that you and Dan made unless you meet with the Adele producer.’ And she said, ‘Fine, whatever.’ And she was late to the meeting, so while they were waiting, the label guy played what we recorded for the Adele producer and he said, ‘This is amazing – I wouldn’t do anything to change this.’ And here’s the kicker: Then all of a sudden, the label guy said, ‘Well, yeah, I think it’s great, too.’ ”
“I had heard about some back and forth regarding the music,” says Interscope chief John Janick. “But Lana knows her vision and her audience, and it’s up to us to follow her lead.” Del Rey acknowledges a six-week period this past spring when things were in limbo: “I mean, I think there were people they wanted me to work with,” she says. “I don’t know who they were. When I said I was ready, they were like, ‘Are you sure?’ ” She laughs. ” ‘Because I feel like you could go further.’ “
“On this album, in my opinion, you didn’t want her to try to do something,” says Janick’s predecessor at Interscope, Jimmy Iovine. “I felt she hit a bull’s-eye. Everybody’s saying to me, ‘We need a single,’ calling me from Europe. I said, ‘You don’t need anything.’ It’s a very coherent body of work, and I thought any other conversation was a distraction. Lana, more than most, reminds me of artists that I produced” – he’s thinking of Patti Smith and Stevie Nicks in particular – “which is slightly different than the majority of artists that are on Interscope. Because you can’t find those artists every day. She’s one of the rare things that come along in life, which is a lyricist. You know how rare they are, today, outside rap?”
Del Rey’s co-manager, Ben Mawson, warned her that she’d have to answer for some of the new album’s lyrics, particularly the title track, which quotes the old girl-group line “He hit me and it felt like a kiss,” then adds, “He hurt me but it felt like true love,” just in case she hadn’t made her point. She’s vague on whether this theme might be autobiographical: “I guess I would say, like, I’m definitely drawn to people with a strong physicality,” she says with a shrug, “with more of a dominant personality.”
She’s not worried about any message those lines might send. “It’s not meant to be popular,” she says, sitting in the backyard of the town house, which opens onto a shared garden, where Dylan had angered his neighbors decades ago by trying to put up a fence. She’s sipping hot coffee through a straw, a longstanding habit she acknowledges is both “weird” and “nerdy.” “It’s not pop music,” she says. “The only thing I have to do is whatever I want, and I want to write whatever I want. I just hope people don’t ask me about it. So I don’t feel a responsibility at all. I mean, I just don’t. I feel responsible in other ways, communitywise – to be a good citizen, abide by the law.”
But precisely how does she want the public to hear those lines? “I just don’t want them to hear it at all,” she says, pouting a little. “I’m very selfish. I make everything for me, kind of. I mean, every little thing, down to the guitar and the drums. It’s just for me. I want to hear it, I want to drive to it, I want to swim in the ocean to it. I want to think about it, and then I want to write something new after it. You know? It’s just … I don’t want them to hear it and think about it. It’s none of their business!”
But, um, isn’t she selling people this music? “I’m not selling the record,” she says. “I’m signed to a label who’s selling the record. I don’t need to make any money. I really could care less. But I do care about making music. I would do it either way. So that’s why it has to be on my terms.”
Del Rey has never been in therapy. “There’s nothing anyone could ever tell me that I don’t already know,” she says. “I know everything about myself. I know why I do what I do. All of my compulsions and interests and inspirations. I’m very in sync with that. It’s the other stuff that I don’t have any control over, just what’s going to happen on a daily basis. My interactions.”
So what drives her? “Now? Nothing,” she says. “I don’t have any drive anymore. But I enjoy making records. Before, I felt drive, but now it just feels like an interest. With the first record having received so much analysis, there’s no more room for ambition. It breaks that part down, just because you sort of know what to expect, and that nothing is going to work out the way you think anyway.”
She doesn’t want to conquer the world? “No, what I’d love to do is, Francesco has a bike downstairs,” she says. “I would love to take a motorcycle to Coney Island and have an amazing talk with you and jump in the water.” Somehow, this plan never comes up again.
Even as a small child, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was, by her own recollection, “obstinate, contrary.” She was born in Manhattan to parents who both worked Mad Men-style jobs at the advertising giant Grey, but when she was one year old, they gave up those careers and moved to sleepy, upstate Lake Placid. Her dad would go on to start his own furniture company, get into real estate and then become a successful early investor in Web domain names. But Lizzy just wished they had stayed in the city. “It was really, really quiet,” says Del Rey, who has compared the town to Twin Peaks. “I was always waiting to get back to New York City. School was hard. The traditional educational system was not really working for me.”
At 14 or so, Lizzy started drinking and hanging out with older kids. The scenario, she recognizes with a laugh, was not unlike the harrowing movie Thirteen. “In small towns, you sort of grow up fast because there isn’t that much to do,” she says. “So you’re out with everybody else who’s already graduated, and that’s totally normal. But it just didn’t sit well with everyone in my family.”
“I’m a sad girl/I’m a bad girl,” she sings on her new album – but the sad part didn’t come until later. She “felt passionate” about drinking, sharing bottles of peach and cherry schnapps with her friends. “I felt like I had kind of arrived into my own life,” she says, her voice turning dreamy. “I felt free. Even though I loved leaving town, by the time I was about 15, I knew I was probably going to stay there and have a life there. I mean, I had a vision for myself, definitely, at that point. I didn’t see becoming a singer or anything. I just wanted to grow up and get married and have fun. Have my own life, my own place.” Her parents, meanwhile, wanted her to become a nurse.
Losing patience with her partying, they sent her away to Connecticut’s Kent School. The move failed to curtail her drinking, and she was miserable. Her father’s apparent success aside, she says she was on financial aid. “I was very quiet,” she says, “just figuring things out. I didn’t relate well with what was going on culturally.” She wasn’t into mean girls. “The ways people treated other people, I thought was kind of cruel. The high school mentality I didn’t really understand. I wasn’t really, like, snarky or bitchy.” In an early song called “Boarding School,” she mentions being part of a “pro-ana nation,” referring to anorexia, and sings, “Had to do drugs to stop the food cravings.” But she insists that’s fiction: “The mentality of the pro-ana community was just something that was interesting to me.”
A young English instructor introduced her to Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman and Vladimir Nabokov (she has tattoos of the latter two names on her forearm), plus Tupac, the Notorious B.I.G. and old movies like The Big Sleep. Lines in “Boarding School” and another unreleased track, “Prom Song,” led fans to question the precise nature of this relationship, but Del Rey says it was nothing inappropriate: “He was just my friend.”
She started to think that she might want to be a singer, but could hardly bring herself to say it out loud, especially to her family. “I just thought it was kind of a presumptuous thing to say, coming from a more traditional background. You wouldn’t say it unless you really meant it.”
The summer after her senior year, back in Lake Placid, she woke up sick and hung over one morning, and suddenly realized something important was missing. “I lost my car,” she says. “I couldn’t find it. And … I don’t know, I just lost it. And I was just really sick. It was just one of the many reasons why my life was unmanageable. I didn’t want to keep fucking up. And at that point, if I was going to keep going, I wanted to have something that I really wanted to do.”
She says she hasn’t had a drink or gotten high since that year, but won’t clarify whether she considers herself an alcoholic, or if she ever went to rehab. “It’s just you never really know what’s going to happen,” she says. “Things change every day.”
She had gotten into SUNY Geneseo, a college in New York’s state-university system, but decided not to go. She took the year off, heading to her aunt and uncle’s house on Long Island. She worked as a waitress, just as she’d done over various summers. “I loved it,” she says, though her mom told one of her label execs that she had been a truly awful waitress.
Her uncle taught her some guitar chords, and she started playing open mics in the city. Somewhere around that time, she read Anthony Scaduto’s pioneering Bob Dylan biography, which she saw as a “road map” toward becoming an artist.
The next fall, she enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx, where she majored in philosophy but otherwise hardly participated in student life. She lived with boyfriends, crashed on couches. “I was writing, writing, for years,” she says. “Trying to figure out what I really wanted to say and why I was consumed with this passion for writing, where it came from. It kept me up all night. So I was waiting to see why. That was a really whole separate world.”
She’d ride the subway late at night, composing lyrics in her head. “There were these nights that I enjoyed so much, just staying up and writing songs.” She cites a sparse, Cat Power-ish tune called “Disco” (“I am my only god now,” she sings, cheerily) and “Trash Magic” (sample lyric: “Boy, you want to come to the motel, honey/ Boy, ya wanna hold me down, tell me that you love me?”): “I felt I was really capturing my life in song form, and it was such a pleasure. And that being my whole life, you know? And really being happy, because I was doing exactly what I loved.”
A Williamsburg, Brooklyn, songwriting competition in 2006 led her to 5 Points Records, a tiny label run by Nichtern, who had, years earlier, written the Maria Muldaur hit “Midnight at the Oasis.” “I knew immediately that she was gonna be a big star,” says Nichtern. “And she herself knew, and not just by chutzpah or bravado. On some level she knew this was what her karma was.”
Nichtern hooked her up with producer David Kahne, the guy behind Sublime and Sugar Ray hits, who recalls leading her to looped beats for the first time. Kahne was a well-connected industry veteran and she was an unknown kid, but he found her somewhat daunting. “She was mysterious,” Kahne says. “I was confused a lot of the time whether what I was doing was right or wrong, whether she liked it or didn’t. It felt, a lot of times, like everything could change all of a sudden.” Like, for instance, Lizzy’s name.
Lana Del Rey is, she says, the same person – the same artist, even – as Lizzy Grant. “There’s not, like, a schism between people,” she says. “It’s actually just a different name, and that’s sort of where it begins and ends. I just thought it was strange, being born into this geographic lock-down location, and a name that you didn’t choose, and going to school for fucking 23 years. It was just unfathomable to me. So I think in choosing that name, it was just more becoming who I was, you know? It wasn’t music-related. It was just part of my life.” The other possible name was Cherry Galore, she says, probably joking: “You’d be sitting here calling me ‘Cherry.’ ”
By the time Lizzy became Lana for good, 5 Points had already released an EP from the Kahne sessions under the name Lizz Grant – and iTunes had selected Lizzy as one of the best new artists of 2008. “As we’re putting the album together, she says something like, ‘I really want to change my name,’ ” recalls Nichtern, who had been taking Lizzy and her album around the industry. “If we’re making the movie, you’d see a spit take. We’d just gotten that far with Lizzy Grant.” But Del Rey had found new management, dyed her hair from blond to brown and was ready to move on. They ended up all but scrubbing the LP’s existence from the Internet, which made it look like they were trying to hide Del Rey’s past, contributing to conspiracy-mongering later on. “We didn’t want the old album to be available just as we were trying to launch a new thing,” says Mawson, her co-manager. “And if that created suspicion in the eyes of weirdos on the Internet, then fine.”
Del Rey went off to London for months of writing sessions, one of which yielded an elegiac ode to a boyfriend who liked to play World of Warcraft, though she knew simply calling it “Video Games” was a lot more poetic (“Sometimes a girl’s just gotta generalize”). She had started making videos using iMovie, mixing self-shot webcam segments and YouTube clips: “Just putting things together, building a little world.” She perfected the approach with “Video Games,” creating a career-launching viral video. Even as she faced legal action for appropriating footage, people accused her of not actually making the “Video Games” clip herself – The New Yorker, of all places, called it “allegedly homemade.” “I definitely wouldn’t say I did if I didn’t,” she says with a sigh, showing me the software on her MacBook, which has a badly cracked screen. “That would be weird.”
It’s a clairvoyant, appropriately enough, who gives the first hint that something will go wrong on the second day. “I was trying to think of shit we could do,” Del Rey says, greeting me again at the town house door. “The only thing I could think of is we could see a psychic together.” In any case, she needs cigarettes, so we head out into the June heat. She’s wearing cheap, gold-framed sunglasses with peach-colored lenses. “They’re so ugly,” she says, striding along Bleecker Street. “Rose-colored glasses. Just what the doctor ordered.”
Del Rey was raised Catholic, but she has a mystical bent. “I’m definitely a seeker,” she says. While she was waiting for the Kahne album to come out, she got involved with an “East Village guru” who “had an ability to see into the past and read into the future.” But she left his orbit after detecting something “sinister” about him.
We end up paying a visit to a storefront psychic next to a bodega, in a creepy, red-walled room. The mystic turns out to be an unexpectedly fresh-faced woman in a matching red sundress, who enforces strict rules about “energy.” Del Rey asks her to do our readings together, but the psychic demurs: “Can I talk to the young lady alone?” The outing is becoming comically pointless.
Del Rey is laughing as we return to the house, though maybe slightly irritated. “Fuck,” she says. “I should’ve thought that one out. I don’t think she had the gift. It’s always sort of a menacing vibe unless you go to somebody who’s, like, world-renowned.” The psychic told her that this is her year for love and happiness – Del Rey jokes that there’s still six months left. She’s amused to hear that the psychic told me that I’m spiritually sensitive: “She could probably tell that you thought she was being a fucking bitch.”
We go back to talking, with Del Rey blowing cigarette smoke out the window, into the light. We finally touch on Saturday Night Live, still a dangerous subject. The performance, she maintains, “wasn’t dynamic, but it was true to form.” But the reaction was agonizing. She felt music-business friends pulling away from her. “Everyone I knew suddenly wasn’t so sure about me,” she says. “They were like, ‘Maybe I don’t want to be associated with her – not a great reputation.’ ” Iovine says they simply “got caught speeding” with the early performance, and that he spent time in the studio afterward coaching Del Rey on using in-ear monitors.
I ask her about “Ride,” a song where she sings about feeling “fucking crazy” – not an isolated sentiment in her catalog. “Well, I feel fucking crazy,” she says. “But I don’t think I am. People make me feel crazy.” We talk a little about the “I wish I were dead” thing, which she blames on leading questions. “I find that most people I meet figure I kind of want to kill myself anyway,” she says. “So, it comes up every time.”
Then, really without warning, her mood shifts. It’s a powerful thing, palpable in the room, like a sudden mass of threatening clouds. Her eyes seem to turn a shade darker: Trust no one. I ask, perversely, about “Fucked My Way Up to the Top,” one of Ultraviolence‘s best songs, which attacks an unnamed imitator who didn’t have to go through the gauntlet Del Rey did. It may be about Lorde, who criticized Del Rey’s lyrics but has a not-dissimilar vocal style.
She just released the song yesterday, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. “Now you are annoying me,” she says, half-trying to sound like she’s kidding. She lights a cigarette, looking miserable.
We begin an agonizing, endless meta-conversation about our interview and her relationship with the press. “I find the nature of the questions difficult,” she says. ” ‘Cause it’s not like I’m a rock band and you’re asking how everything got made and what it’s like touring in arenas and what are the girls like. It’s about my father. It’s about my mental health. It’s fucking personal. And these questions all have negative inferences: It’s just like, ‘SNL. Do you actually want to kill yourself?’ … Maybe I’m sensitive. Do you think?”
That’s when she says she doesn’t want to be on the cover of Rolling Stone anymore. She also says, “What you write won’t matter” – meaning that nothing will change her detractors’ minds about her.
It goes on and on. “You hit all my more sensitive weaknesses, all my Achilles’ heels. You’re asking all the right questions. I just really don’t want to answer them.”
Every attempt to talk her off this rhetorical ledge seems to make it worse. Del Rey stands up, in a distinct “time to go” gesture.
“I definitely presented myself well, and that’s all I’ve ever done,” she says, walking me downstairs. “And that’s never really gotten me anywhere. I’m just uncomfortable, and it has nothing to do with you.”
Stepping out, I try to convince her that her crisis of confidence over the interview is no big deal. It is, again, the wrong thing to say.
“It’s not a crisis of confidence, it’s not,” she says, standing in the doorway. “I am confident.” Her eyes are ablaze with hurt and pride. “I am.” She says goodbye, and shuts the door.
Originally published on rollingstone.com with the headline Lana Del Rey: The Saddest, Baddest Diva in Rock, and in the July 31, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone with the headline Vamp of Constant Sorrow.
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they did put him as the writer
Thanks Ash, I didn't saw the writer name's when I read it and I was confused when I saw only the freelancer after. Interested to see what happenes with this whole saga.
I hope you have a nice day :)
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Im bored and also working on a big post with some head canons about several characters with ref sheets, so im gonna make a birthday list real quick. I tried to keep a lot of this as canon as possible, but I have changed some ages and some birthdays aren't accurate because for some of these characters nothing would show up. Itll be going in order from January to December, 1st to the last day of the month.
January:
-Rogue(Heather Sam Marshall) - January 7th. She's currently 24, and her zodiac sign is a Capricorn.
February:
-Hoodie(Brian Hiatt Thomas) - February 5th. He's 24, and his zodiac is a Aquarius.
March:
-Eyeless Jack(Jack Zin Nyras) - March 15th. He's 24, and his zodiac sign is a Pieces.
April:
-Judge Angels(Dina Angela Clark) - April 2nd. She's 26, and her zodiac sign is a Aries.
-Alex Kralie - April 4th. He's 27, and his zodiac is a Aries.
-Sally Mae Williams - April 5th. She's physically and mentally 8. Her zodiac is a Aries.
-Ben Drowned(Benjamin Scott Lawman) - April 23rd. He's 22, and his zodiac sign is a Taurus.
-Ticci Toby(Toby Erin Rogers) - April 28th. Hes 22, and his zodiac sign is a Taurus.
May:
-Seedeater - May 27th. His zodiac sign is a Gemini. He is a creature that does not age, just exists.
June:
-Jeff the Killer(Jeffery Alan Woods) - June 2nd. He's 23, and his zodiac sign is a Gemini.
-Lost Silver(Jae-Ing) - June 6th. Hes 21, and his zodiac sign is a Gemini.
-Skitles(OC) - June 24th. He has no age. His zodiac sign is a Cancer
Kate the Chaser(Kate Miller Hayes) - June 25th. She's 25, and her zodiac sign is a Cancer.
July:
-Nina the Killer(Nina Rose Hopkins) - July 24th. She's 20, and her zodiac sign is a Leo.
-The Puppeteer(Blake Simon Smith) - July 25th. He has no age. His zodiac sign is a Leo.
August:
-Candypop - August 1st. He has no age. His zodiac sign is a Leo.
-Hobo Heart - August 3rd. He’s 23, and his zodiac sign is a Virgo.
-Eyeless Lulu(Lulu Mary Millers) - August 6th. She’s 15, and her zodiac sign is a Virgo.
-Occisus(OC/Samantha Lin Locke) - August 11th. She’s 24, and her zodiac sign is a Virgo.
September:
-Jane the Killer(Jane Eve Richardson) - September 1st. She’s 23, and her zodiac sign is a Virgo.
-HeartFixer(OC/Jamie Noel Martinez) - September 3rd. She’s 25, and her zodiac sign is a Virgo.
October:
-Bloody Painter(Helen James Otis) - October 1st. He’s 24, and his zodiac is a Libra.
-Suicide Sadie(Sadie Dawn Myers) - October 21st. She’s 20, and her zodiac sign is a Libra.
-Zero - October 25th. She’s 23, and her zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
-NightOwl(My boyfriends OC/Lin Felix Gaspar) - October 29th. He’s 25, and his zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
Nurse Ann(Michelle Ann Quesnberry) - October 31st. She’s 28, and her zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
November:
-Clockwork(Natalie Gwen Oulette) - November 6th. She’s 23, and her zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
-Sonic.exe - November 7th. He’s 15, and his zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
-Tails Doll - November 7th. He’s 15, and his zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
-Jason the Toymaker - November 15th. He doesn’t have a age. His zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
-Lure(OC) - November 17th. Hes 21, and his zodiac sign is a Scorpio.
-Dark Link(Shadow) - November 21st. Hes 21, and his zodiac sign is a Sagittarius.
-Jay Merrick - November 23rd. Hes 26, and his zodiac sign is a Sagittarius.
-Smile Dog - November 27th. He has no known age, as a hellhound. His zodiac sign is Sagittarius.
December:
-X-Vrius(Cody Swann Diller) - December 9th. He’s 21, and his zodiac sign is a Sagittarius.
-Homicidal Liu(Liu Vicki Woods) - December 21st. He’s 24, and his zodiac sign is a Sagittarius.
-Laughing Jack - December 25th. He has no age. His zodiac sign is a Capricorn.
-Lazarus(Lazarus Dae Swann) - December 25th. He’s 12, and only ages every two years due to being part Zalgoid. His zodiac sign is a Capricorn.
-Masky(Timothy Que Wright) - December 26th. He’s 25, and his zodiac sign is a Capricorn.
-Kagekao - December 29th. He’s 27, and his zodiac sign is a Capricorn.
#creepypasta#ben drowned#creepypasta fandom#gaymer ramble#bendrowned#jeff the killer#creepypasta headcanon#Rogue#brian thomas#Hoodie#Eyeless jack#EJ#Judge angels#Alex kralie#Marble hornets#jay merrick#sally williams#ticci toby#Seedeater#Lost silver#Skittles#Kate the chaser#nina hopkins#Nina the killer#The puppeteer#Candypop#Hobo Heart#Eyeless Lulu#Occisus#jane richardson
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The Spider Globular Cluster, M4 // Brian Hiatt
#astronomy#astrophotography#stars#star cluster#globular cluster#spider globular cluster#messier#messier 4#M4#NGC 6121#scorpius
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Decision making within the Beatles
So the re-formation suggestions were never convincing enough. They were kind of nice when they happened – ‘That would be good, yeah’ – but then one of us would always not fancy it. And that was enough, because we were the ultimate democracy. If one of us didn’t like a tune, we didn’t play it. We had some very close shaves. ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was a pretty close shave.”
“Paul McCartney’s New Album, New Life and How the Beatles Almost Reunited” by Brian Hiatt for Rolling Stone (1 March 2012).
"Well, say if George was the only one who didn't like a certain script but we were all mad about it, then we would try everything we could to change his mind, persuade him," he joked, as he raised his fist menacingly. "But if he just didn't want to do it, that would be it. We just wouldn't do it. We've always got to be in complete agreement on things as important as this, otherwise, later on it just wouldn't work out."
Paul McCartney interviewed by Maureen O’Grady for Rave, December 1965
“If they are asked to do something as a group and any one of them doesn’t want to take part, then the scheme is dropped,”
Norrie Drummond’s 1967 Melody Maker interview with McCartney
“We had a democratic thing going between us. Everyone had to agree with everything that was done, whether it was a concert in Liverpool or to go to Hamburg”
Harrison’s May 1998 testimony to the London High Court regarding the Star Club Tapes
Paul was the only thorn in his side. Paul refused to sign the contract and walked out of the offices. This left things in limbo, since according to the terms of the Beatles’ partnership agreement, all their business decisions had to be agreed by quorum. It might seem remarkable that Klein so quickly acquired this degree of power over the Beatles’ affairs. But bizarre at it might seem, the matter of the quorum was totally ignored. It might even have been that none of the Beatles were really aware that this clause had been written into their partnership contract by Brian. I doubt if at that stage any of them even had a copy.
Magical Mystery Tours My Life with The Beatles by Tony Bramwell
GEORGE: But it’s more of a personal thing. That’s down to the management situation. You know, with Apple. Because Paul, really, it was his idea to do Apple, and once it started going, Paul was very active in there. And then it got really chaotic and we had to do something about it. When we started doing something about it, obviously Paul didn’t have as much say in the matter, and then he decided – because he wanted Lee Eastman – you know, his in-laws – to run it, and we didn’t. Then that’s the only reason, you know. That’s the whole basis. But that’s only a personal problem that he’ll have to get over because that’s the reality. [It’s] that he’s out-voted, and we’re a partnership; we’ve got these companies which we all own 25 percent of each, and if there’s a decision to be made, then like in any other business or group you have a vote, you know. And he was out-voted three to one. And if he doesn’t like it, it’s really a pity. Because we’re trying to do what’s best for the Beatles as a group, or best for Apple as a company. We’re not trying to do what’s best for Paul and his in-laws, you know?
May 1st, 1970 (New York): George
It was true, that when the group was touring, their work and social relationships were close, but there had been a lot of arguing, mainly about musical and artistic matters. I suppose Paul and George were the main offenders in this respect, but from time to time we all gave displays of temperament and threatened to ‘walk out’. Of necessity, we developed a pattern for sorting out our differences, by doing what any three of us decided. It sometimes took a long time and sometimes there was deadlock and nothing was done, but generally that was the rule we followed and, until recent events, it worked quite well.
John Lennon’s affidavit – From “The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001” by Keith Badman
“I kept saying [to the other Beatles], ‘Don’t give Allen Klein 20 per cent, give him 15, we’re a big act!’ And everyone’s going, ‘No, no, he wants 20 per cent.’ I say, ‘Of course he does, he wants 30, really, but give him 15. It’s like buying a car. You don’t give the guy what he asks for.’ But it was impossible in the end, because it became three to one and I was like the idiot in the corner – trying, I thought, to save the situation. And to Klein it looked like I was trying to screw the situation. He used to call me the Reluctant Virgin. I said, ‘Fuck off, I don’t want to fucking marry you, that’s all.’ he’s going, ‘Oh, you know, he may, maybe he will, will he, won’t he, that’s a definite maybe.’ It was really difficult.”
Paul McCartney, interview w/ Paul Du Noyer for The Word: Let it be… naked. (December, 2003)
“On the way in which the four of us had sorted out our differences in the past, I deny that it had been on a three-to-one basis. If one disagreed, we discussed the problem until we reached agreement or let the matter drop. I know of no decision taken on a three-to-one basis”
Paul Mccartney - Keith Badman, The Beatles After the Breakup
John was a very forceful personality. Mostly – I mean, if we had arguments within the group, I remember George would turn to us, “Oh, he’s won again. John’s won again.” Just because he shouted loudest. And that often used to happen. “Ah, I’m not bloody doing that—” “Alright then, alright alright.” So there was a lot of that going on. So you do tend to get forced into another position, you know, if somebody’s very loud and very – I mean, I’m not saying he was just loud, he was a wit. He was a funny man, John, he was a clever guy, I loved him, you know. But somehow we got this anti position.
November 26th, 1984 (Soho Square, London): On British television show The Tube
“It’s not like we spend our time wrestling in the studio trying to get our own songs on. We all do it the same way… we take it in turns to record a track. It’s just that usually in the past, George lost out because Paul and I are tougher.
“It’s nothing new, the way things are. It’s human. We’ve always said we’ve had fights. It’s no news that we argue. I’m more interested in my songs. Paul’s more interested in his, and George is more interested in his. That’s always been.”
John Lennon Interview: New Musical Express 12/13/1969
GEORGE: "Yeah, well, I wrote some songs -- in fact some songs which I feel are quite nice which I'll use on this album -- I wrote about four years ago. But, uhh, it was more difficult for me then to, you know, get in there to do it. It was the way the Beatles took off with Paul and John's songs, and it made it very difficult for me get in. And also, I suppose at that time I didn't have as much confidence when it came down to pushing my own material as I have now. So it took a while. You know, I think the first... I did write one song on about the second album, and I left it and didn't write any more. That was just an exercise to see if I could write. About two years later I recorded a couple more songs -- I think 'Rubber Soul.' And then I've had one or two songs on each album. Well, there are four songs of mine on the double White Album. But now, uhh, the output of songs is too much to be able to just sit around, you know, waiting to put two songs on an album. I've got to get 'em out, you know."
"Yeah. It's always... it was whoever would be the heaviest would get the most songs done. So consequently, I couldn't be bothered pushing, like, that much. You know, even on 'Abbey Road' for instance, we'd record about eight tracks before I got 'round to doing one of mine. Because uhh, you know, you say 'Well, I've got a song,' and then with Paul -- 'Well I've got a song as well and mine goes like this -- diddle-diddle-diddle-duh,' and away you go! You know, it was just difficult to get in there, and I wasn't gonna push and shout. But it was just over the last year or so we worked something out, which is still a joke really -- Three songs for me, three songs for Paul, three songs for John, and two for Ringo."
George Harrison Interview: Howard Smith, WABC-FM New York 5/1/1970
GEORGE: To get it straight, if I hadn’t been with John and Paul I probably wouldn’t have thought about writing a song, at least not until much later. They were writing all these songs, many of which I thought were great. Some were just average, but, obviously, a high percentage were quality material. I thought to myself, If they can do it, I’m going to have a go. But it’s true: it wasn’t easy in those days getting up enthusiasm for my songs. We’d be in a recording situation, churning through all this Lennon-McCartney, Lennon-McCartney, Lennon-McCartney! Then I’d say, [meekly] “Can we do one of these?”
George Harrison, Guitar World: When we was fab. (1992)
John: Well, I’m saying that “Dear Prudence” is arranged. Can’t you hear [John vocalizes part of the song]. That is the arrangement, you know? But I’m too frightened to say “This is it.” I just sit there and say, “Look, if you don’t come along and play your bit, I won’t do the song,” you know? I can’t do any better than that. Don’t ask me for what movie* you’re gonna play on it. Because apart from not knowing, I can’t tell you better than you have, what grooves you can play on it. You know, I just can’t work. I can’t do it like that. I never could, you know. But when you think of the other half of it, just think, how much more have I done towards helping you write? I’ve never told you what to sing or what to play. You know, I’ve always done the numbers like that. Now, the only regret, just the past numbers, is when because I’ve been so frightened, that I’ve allowed you to take it somewhere where I didn’t want
...
John: And that’s all I did on the last album was say, “OK, Paul, you’re out to decide [how] my songs [are] concerned, arrangement-wise.” … I’d sooner just sing them, than have them turn into, into ‘[Being For the Benefit of] Mr. Kite,’ or anything else, where I’ve accepted the problem from you that it needs arrangement. … I don’t see any further than the guitar, and the drums, and, and George Martin doing the … I don’t hear any of the flutes playing, you know? I suppose I could hear ‘em if I [spoken as if straining] sat down and worked very hard! You know, I could turn out a mathematical drawing, if you like …
Jan. 13: The Lunchroom Tape
PAUL: You see the thing is also, I, I get to a bit where I just sort of push all my ideas, you know, and I know that my ideas aren’t the best, you know. They are [mechanical voice] “good, good, good” but they’re not the best, you know. We can improve on it. Because we write songs good, and we improve on it. [to Ringo] And you can improve on your drumming like it is, if you get into it. If you don’t, you know, then okay, I have better ideas, but if you get into it, you’re better! You know. It’s like that.
Twickenham, January 6th
I wasn’t surprised that Paul disliked “Revolution 9” as much as he did. Although he was well versed in all musical genres—in fact, he’d been into avant-garde well before John—he simply didn’t see it as Beatles music, and he certainly didn’t agree that it was the direction that the Beatles should go in. Later on, when they were sequencing the White Album, I heard through the grapevine that John and Paul ultimately had a huge row over “Revolution 9.” Paul absolutely did not want it on the album, and John was just as adamant that it would be on there. In the end, of course, he got his way.
Here, There and Everywhere, Geoff Emerick
I was more ready for the drink or a little bit of pot or something. I’d not wanted to do it, I’d held off like a lot of people were trying to, but there was massive peer pressure. And within a band, it’s more than peer pressure, it’s fear pressure. It becomes trebled, more than just your mates, it’s, 'Hey, man, this whole band’s had acid, why are you holding out? What’s the reason, what is it about you?’ So I knew I would have to out of peer pressure alone. And that night I thought, well, this is as good a time as any, so I said, 'Go on then, fine.’ So we all did it.
Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
"John's fellow student Helen Anderson remembers him ushering Paul in, with George, their tag-along junior, usually following a little later. The three would go into the cafeteria for a cheap lunch of chips then take their guitars into an empty life-drawing room, which tended to be more spacious than the others. Helen, being extraordinarily beautiful, was among the very few they allowed to watch while they rehearsed. 'Paul would have a school notebook and he'd be scribbling down words,' she says. 'Those sessions could be intense because John was used to getting his way by being aggressive---but Paul would stand his ground. Paul seemed to make John come alive when they were together.”
Paul McCartney: The Life - Philip Norman.
“I don’t know about being in a band with him, how that would work out,” he told Rolling Stone in 1979. “It’s like, we all have our own tunes to do. And my problem was that it would always be very difficult to get in on the act, because Paul was very pushy in that respect. When he succumbed to playing on one of your tunes, he’d always do good. But you’d have to do fifty-nine of Paul’s songs before he’d even listen to one of yours. So, in that respect, it would be very difficult to ever play with him.”
A Conversation With George Harrison
What was clear from the start was that writing would be a matter of Lennon and McCartney. “I remember walking through Woolton, the village where John was from, and saying to John, ‘Look, you know, it should just be you and me who are the writers,’ ” McCartney recalled. “We never said, ‘Let’s keep George out of it,’ but it was implied.”
In “Paul McCartney Doesn’t Really Want to Stop the Show” by David Remnick for The New Yorker (11 October 2021).
“I do stand back at times, unlike John. I look ahead. I’m careful. John would go for the free guitar and just accept it straight away, in a mad rush. I would stand back and think, but what’s this bloke really after, what will it mean? I was always the one that told Klein to put money away for tax. “I don’t LIKE being the careful one. I’d rather be immediate like John. He was all action. John was always the loudest in any crowd. He had the loudest voice. He was the cock who crowed the loudest. Me and George used to call him the cockerel in the studio.
Paul and Hunter Davies, 1981
George “I’ve got about forty tunes which I haven’t recorded, and some of them I think are quite good. I wrote one called ‘The Art Of Dying’ three years ago, and at that time I thought it was too far out. But I’m going to record it. I used to have a hang-up about telling John, Paul and Ringo I had a song for the albums, because I felt mentally, at that time, as if I was trying to compete. And, in a way, the standard of the songs had to be good, because theirs were very good. Another thing is I didn’t want The Beatles to be recording rubbish for my sake, just because I wrote it. On the other hand, I don’t want to record rubbish just because they wrote it. The group comes first. It took time for me to get more confidence as a songwriter, and now I don’t care if they don’t like it. I can shrug it off. Another thing with The Beatles is it’s sometimes a matter of whoever pushes the hardest gets the most tunes on the album, then it’s down to personalities, as to whoever is going to push. And more often, I just leave it until somebody says that they would like to do one of my tunes.”
The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)
Paul came across in 1963 as a fun-loving, footloose bachelor who turned on his charm to devastating effect when he wanted to manipulate rivals, colleagues or women he fancied. (...) He had enormous powers of persuasion within The Beatles. He would get his own way by subtlety and suaveness where John resorted to shouting and bullying. John may have been the loudest Beatle but Paul was the shrewdest. I watched him twist the others round to his point of view in all sorts of contentious situations, some trivial, some more significant, some administrative, some creative.
John, Paul, George, Ringo & Me: The Real Beatles Story, Tony Barrow (2005)
#the beatles#paul mccartney#john lennon#george harrison#ringo starr#i just find it funny that yelling the loudest supposedly won arguments#makes me imagine them as the always sunny gang#pressing x to doubt when j&g claimed 3-to-1 was their usual decision making process
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Eighteen years ago, Madonna observed: “Once you pass 35, your age becomes part of the first sentence of anything written. It’s a form of limiting your options and almost putting you in your place. For women, naturally.” She was 47 when she said that and intent on challenging the cultural script that suggested women, especially female performers, had a use-by date.
“Why is that acceptable?” she asked the music writer Brian Hiatt nearly 10 years later, still battling critics who told her to dress her age, act her age — in short, pack it in and retreat from the spotlight because she was past her prime. “Women, generally, when they reach a certain age, have accepted that they’re not allowed to behave a certain way. But I don’t follow the rules.”
To the question “Is she still relevant?” her Celebration Tour, which concluded this month, is proof that she is. Madonna performed before the largest audience ever gathered to watch a female artist and mounted the single biggest free stand-alone concert in history: 1.6 million people turned Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach into a dance floor on May 4. According to Billboard, her six-month, 80-show tour grossed $225.4 million, making her the only woman in history to gross more than $100 million during six concert tours. (The only solo male in that category is Bruce Springsteen.)
But there’s so much more to her triumph than numbers. That a 65-year-old female pop star pulled off this tour and, despite our increasingly intolerant times, the performance was her most relentlessly and delightfully queer since 1990’s groundbreaking Blond Ambition Tour would be unimaginable, except that it was Madonna. The Celebration Tour proved that Madonna wasn’t afraid of drawing attention to her long career; she owned it proudly.
All of her past selves showed up, in role and in costume, to help celebrate the many ways she has evolved and the many ways she and her collaborators have explored and expressed gender throughout the years. It was a beautifully inclusive, encouraging spectacle. If history is a guide, the social and artistic ramifications of her performance will extend well beyond the numbers and long after her tour.
Madonna’s 1985 Virgin Tour, her debut, included only 40 shows in North America and grossed about $5 million. But its impact on young lives is immeasurable. The young women and girls in her audience were on the cusp of unleashing their sexual selves and embracing their independence, which is what made them so terrifying to a broader society intent on keeping them polite, passive and manageable.
Madonna’s message to her young audience was: Embrace your power, dream big and dare to be your own damned self. That message would resonate through a generation and across the globe, as aspiring Madonnas grew up to be politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, members of the armed forces, Third Wave feminists, Riot Grrrls and pop stars themselves.
Madonna was, in fact, the lead author of the female pop star playbook, and she continues to write the unexplored and perilous back end of it while artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish adapt the front end and more established stars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift refine what’s possible in the middle. Madonna’s continuous career represents a universe of possibility for their own, despite the entertainment industry’s willingness to jettison midcareer women in favor of artists with younger faces and bodies.
But for women not named Madonna (or Beyoncé or Taylor Swift), growing older and maturing in public is much more fraught. Older men are considered wise, but older women are often ignored or discounted. Thanks to the intervention of the pharmaceutical industry, men are encouraged to have an active sex life into their 80s. The idea of older women having sex remains, for many, repellent.
Madonna has challenged our notions of what a woman should do and be on all those counts: She chooses to age as she sees fit, she says what she believes loudly and forcefully, and she is as proudly sexual as she was in 1985.
With her Celebration Tour, Madonna demonstrated night after night for six months that an older woman can exhibit power and strength — joyfully, generously and defiantly. Her glorious performance was perhaps even sweeter when we recall that hip and knee injuries disrupted her Madame X tour four years ago and a bacterial infection threatened not only the Celebration Tour but also Madonna’s life.
Forty years ago, Madonna showed audiences, particularly girls and women, that they could mute the killjoy chorus keeping them from self-realization. On the Celebration Tour, Madonna doubled down on this idea, encouraging fans to follow their hearts, minds and inner freaks by both being herself onstage and employing diverse and talented dancers to carry that message in their own convincing and resonant ways.
If this were the last tour of Madonna’s career — and we sincerely hope it is not — she would retire as the most influential female pop star of all time, a legitimate legend who wowed audiences, defied expectations and broke records. Having served more than 40 years in the public eye, she could take a holiday, take some time to celebrate. It would be, it would be so nice.
NY Times
#Madonna#2024#New York Times#Celebration Tour#Mary Gabriel#NY Times#Madonna 2024#Queen Of Pop#The Celebration Tour
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AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU (OUTTAKE. THE PROMISE)
This appealingly goofy frat-rock track had little chance of making any Springsteen album-the fact that he actually mentions Iovine by name in the lyrics, apparently praising his fashion sense, makes that clear. Iovine says the nod was inspired by his habit of visiting Bloomingdale's, the upscale department store, before the day's sessions. "I'd go with a friend of mine and we'd look at the girls in the makeup section, you know," he says. "Bruce would say, 'Where ya been?' I got a bag in my hand the whole time, right? I said, 'I went to Bloomingdale's. He said, 'What's Bloomingdale's?' I said, 'It's a shop, Bruce, they got all this stuff. I bought this shirt today. And he just put it in his song."
--Brian Hiatt, Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs
#the look on his face when he makes everyone else laugh!!!! too cute#bruce springsteen#jimmy iovine#e street band
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mcrscans:
“I thought, ‘It needs to sound like the most violent Saturday-morning-cartoon theme song ever.’” -Gerard Way, on “Na, Na, Na”
Rolling Stone, December 23, 2010 by Brian Hiatt, photography by James Minchin III.
#interviews#gerard way#mikey way#frank iero#ray toro#behind the scenes#rolling stone#promotional photography#music#scans
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MONKEYING AROUND
Alex Turner Knows You Want Arctic Monkeys to Make ‘AM’ Again. Sorry! (Rolling Stone)
The frontman on big rock guitars, evolving as a band, and revving up for their latest album, The Car.
BY BRIAN HIATT, OCTOBER 21, 2022
FROM THE MOMENT the world heard the frantic majesty of Arctic Monkeys’ classic debut, 2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, it was obvious the U.K. foursome were headed for rock greatness. But great bands have always reserved the right to swerve into detours that baffle some fans — while perhaps making new ones — and Arctic Monkeys are no exception. Their commercial and creative high point, the groove-rock stomper AM, was one of the last albums by a rock band to truly shake the culture. They followed it with five years of silence. Then, in 2018, came the gorgeous but defiantly odd space-lounge concept album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
With their lush new follow-up, The Car, they’re still a lot more interested in sculpting hi-fi soundscapes than blasting your face off, with rich strings and Steely Dan-level studio gloss applied to mostly slow-burning songs, albeit with a bit more rock muscle this time. “I don’t think it sounds like a different band, but I can imagine that’s something that can get thrown around,” says frontman Alex Turner. “I think what makes it sound like the same band is that we’re not betraying our instinct to challenge our idea of what the band can be.”
Did you, on any level, feel burned out on big rock after making AM?
[Speaks using DJ voice] “You’re listening to Burned Out … on Big Rock” [laughs]. It’s definitely a rock record, that AM, isn’t it? But to us, there was always something else going on in there that gets it over the line. I don’t know if it’s the break after it or what, but it doesn’t seem that straightforward getting back there. I don’t ever remember feeling burned out on big rock. It just seemed, you know, any moves you made to try and move back in that direction.… These other paths that we’ve discovered always seemed to make more sense. I dunno how to put it.
You once said that somehow a direct progression from AM wasn’t an option, that you did the only thing you could do.
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it was important to step away. I worked on other things, and they probably led to Tranquility being what we ended up doing there. And there may have been, honestly, occasions where I’ve attempted to sort of put the motorcycle boots back on and figure out what an AM-type tune would be. But it almost seems like a spoof or something when I start playing it out with those ideas at the moment. It remains to be seen. I’m not saying we’re never going to do something that sounds a bit like Sabbath again. I’m not ruling out the possibility — ’cause I feel that there are moments of big rock on this record, even, possibly.
You kind of pull those sounds in and out, right?
On some of these songs, you’ve got the band on a fader, and they come in. On the third song on the record, “Sculptures of Anything Goes,” it’s all just a Moog and a drum machine and a vocal. But there’s a few bars in it where the rock band gets switched on and then goes into the background again.
That is one of the key differences between this album and the last one.
You’re getting some distorted guitar. And I would attribute that to having the session with the band and everyone together. On “Body Paint,” I was surprised how distorted and rock the ending of that [song] got on the guitar. When I started playing with the lads again, it’s like, “Oh, yeah. I want to dig in a bit and play rock guitar.”
When you’re using the band as only one element in the sound, what kind of dissension, if any, is there?
From the rest of the guys? Those sort of ideas, the more time’s gone on, the more encouraging they have been about them. I think once upon a time, when we had the windbreakers zipped up to here and the guitar was really tight, we were all playing all at once all the time, and that’s how it was. But I think we all have started to realize that using that space can be quite effective. And if you’re the one not playing, you’re still the one that’s not playing, you know?
The “Do I Wanna Know” riff is everywhere — kids learning guitar constantly play it on TikTok. It’s the new “Wonderwall” or “Seven Nation Army.” What do you make of that?
Wow. I dunno, man. That guitar, the 12-string orange Vox guitar we bought right at the end of the Suck It and See session [in 2011] … the “Do I Wanna Know” riff, like, came with it. It was built in.
Matt Healy from the 1975 said that he thought the first decade of the 2000s belonged to you guys, but that his band took the second decade.
[Laughs.] Oh yeah?
Are you willing to cede that territory?
I concede. And now we’re in the third. Watch this space.
Your band has been around for 20 years, incredibly. Do you want to be like the Stones and stay together pretty much forever?
I’m just trying to get through [our next show at] Kings Theatre at the moment. I don’t think that’s a plan I’m gonna draw up tonight. The show’s getting stronger. It feels like it’s becoming something else, and I think the inclusion of this new material within that is only gonna hopefully help. It’s hard not to get excited about that. It’s one step at a time. Let’s see where this Car leads us.
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Hi Marte. So does this interview change any of your thoughts? Do you think there could still be seeding going on for Harry and Louis to come out?
Hi, anon!
I don't think this interview had anything to do with the narrative. Mark Boardman is doing something illegal for clicks and attention. I hope Brian Hiatt will send a cease and desist. Louis' PR should have picked up on MMM announcing the exclusive interview with him in february and shut them down. MMM using a real journalist's name on a AI generated article about Louis is also affecting Louis' image negatively. Louis image is a mess as it is and so is our trust in him and his words. This is incredibly embarrassing.
If this has thought us anything, it's to not trust anything attributed to "Louis" in any print interview. We never did anyway. It's so sad though, that events like this is eroding the trust even more. This is not good for Louis. Everything is fake and nothing is real.
#i don't think this is seeding#it's just bad management and image handling again...#we've seen that too many times to count from louis' team#larry denials#markmeets magazine#louis image#fandom
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Please, no one was deluded to think Joe had big reputation. Only shippers thought his "panty dropper" reputation at college days was referenced. Even Brian Hiatt from RS was joking and saying that Taylor was being generous to evenly distribute her reputation. However, it is like sio where she takes creative licence to tweak things as it makes it more prettier or rhymes better.
Thank you. I respect her ability to take creative license in these matters.
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Do you think Taylor will do any official, like media, promo for 1989 TV?
B, coming through in the clutch! Thank you!
I sure, sure hope she does media. The problem is, I am not sure what avenues will be open to her.
If the strike continues, there will be no late night shows, and will daytime will likely also be dark. She’s a SAG member so she would never cross a picket line. Would she do shows in the UK like Graham Norton? Or a Zane Lowe interview? I don’t know where she would draw the line.
She could leverage her own social media again like she did with Midnights. But will she? Or print media - I bet Rob Sheffield or Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone would kill to do a profile, or Brian Hiatt would be thrilled for a hat trick! But is she willing to open up to an insightful, perceptive investigative journalist right now?
Let’s see how she handles any promo during the first few weeks of her break, and if she does the VMAs on Sept. 12th.
I think if she is close to smashing the OG 1989 sales numbers based on her preorders, she might push simply because she’d like that triumph. And I am right there with her, throwing my $ at her variants (which I want anyway) and driving the (admittedly Canadian) numbers up.
What do YOU think?
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Teezo Touchdown for Rolling Stone’s Future of Music digital cover, March 2024
“I could sit here and pout,” he says. “I can take all of this off, wipe the glitter off and go apply to any one of these jobs that’s hiring for the holiday season, and Teezo Touchdown is over.” But that’s not the plan. “I can’t stop right now,” he says. “I’ve chosen to do this.” Read full cover story.
Teezo Touchdown's Rolling Stone Digital Cover Shoot | Behind the Scenes
Credits:
Words by Brian Hiatt
Photographs by @aijanipayne
Photography Direction by Emma Reeves
Styling by Jenny Haapala
Styling Assistance by Dom Alexander
Hair by Monique Avant
Makeup by Keita Moore @ The Only Agency using Pat McGrath Labs
Videography by Athina Sonitis
VFX Design by Miguel Fernandes
BTS Editing by Aden Khan
Lighting Direction by Hayden Bullard
Digital Technician: Duck Feeney
Styling Assistance/Interns: SaraJane Owusu and Jordan Peterson
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I'd like to recommend to my fellow TSSQers the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, "Taylor Swift Eras Tour: The Ultimate Breakdown" (it can be found in the article entitled "Maximum Taylor: Here's How the Eras Tour Hits New, Swift-ier Heights"). It's hosted by Brian Hiatt, who has interviewed Taylor at least twice for RS (famously, he was the passenger on the day that Taylor got in two car accidents in Nashville while being interviewed), with Brittany Spanos (who has also interviewed Taylor in the past, and also taught the NYU course about Taylor and her discography in 2021 or 2022), and Waiss Aramesh, who was actually reporting on opening night in Swift City/Glendale. It's a good, balanced listen, and I enjoy and appreciate their insights and views (more so that Nano's, it must be said, although I do appreciate them as well). I'm biased, but I think any time you have Brittany Spanos talking about Taylor is worth the time (throw in Rob Sheffield and you've got gold!).
Thanks so much for this v thoughtful rec!
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was this rolling stones reporter named rob... just a guess lol - no, Brian Hiatt. But still a good guess. They are all bad apparently. And RS is particularly bad these days because they are all up TS's ass. Their Midnight's review was embarrassing. They are doing her art no favors by being such blind sycophants. Like, I loved midnights. I listen to it all the time. But let's be honest, in terms of Taylor's incredible discography, it is a mid-album. Their reviews made it sound like it was the greatest album ever recorded. They need to take a step back from her so they can assess her reationally and actually give some constructive criticism which I feel is invaluable to an artist. And they need to stop comparing literally everyone on gods green earth to her. Let these other artists breath.
Oh Brian is the one who interviewed her for red era I think, makes sense he probably thinks they’re friends and he’s doing her a favor or something.
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