Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their …
Read More »Sasami's 'Skin a Rat' Is a Snarling, Self-Aware Hard-Rock Sucker Punch
There’s something about the act of headbanging that’s more than just an expression of joy — something that speaks to the way a great riff makes you wish your head was a boxer’s speed ball getting walloped into oblivion. “Skin a Rat,” a new song from L.A.-based artist Sasami, has …
Read More »The Last Word: Brandi Carlile on Worshipping Dolly Parton, Her “Cult-y” Living Situation, and Telling Her Inner Child to Shut Up
Brandi Carlile was looking forward to some time off when she finished work on her bestselling memoir, Broken Horses. But instead, when her friend Bernie Taupin sent her some poems he’d written, she found herself inspired to write an album’s worth of songs — just as reading his words in …
Read More »'I Had a Lot of Fun With My Band': Maureen Tucker on 'Velvet Underground' Doc, Lou Reed, and Retirement
Maureen “Moe” Tucker, 74, remains one of the most important drummers in rock-music history. Her minimalist pulse — typically hammered out on tom-toms and an upended bass drum, which she played standing up, with mallets — was a signature of the Velvet Underground. And a dazzling new documentary on the …
Read More »TikTok's 'Messy' NFT Gambit Is Spooking Its Biggest Artists
At the end of September, TikTok trumpeted a pair of milestones. First, the company announced it had over a billion monthly active users worldwide. Second, the wildly popular short-form video app-turned-cultural juggernaut was preparing its first-ever NFT collection, diving into a buzzy new technology that would allow any well-heeled consumer …
Read More »The 10 Greatest Mississippi Artists of All Time
Arguably no other state has contributed as much to American music and culture as Mississippi. Situated smack in the middle of the Americana music triangle, whose anchor points are Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans, Mississippi is the cradle of blues, country and rock & roll music. It’s easy to overlook …
Read More »Alex and Ernie Isley on Aaliyah's Intergenerational Appeal
Good music can time travel. Aaliyah Dana Haughton was fifteen years old in 1994, when she released her cover of the Isley Brothers “(At Your Best) You Are Love.”The song debuted in 1976, almost three years before Aaliyah was born. In young adulthood, she’d take what was then a modest …
Read More »Chucky Thompson, Hitmaker for Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige, Dead at 53
Carl “Chucky” Thompson, a producer and multi-instrumentalist whose slick samples of Seventies and Eighties soul underpinned some of the most popular R&B and hip-hop tracks of the Nineties, died on Monday at age 53, his rep confirmed to Rolling Stone. A cause of death was not immediately available. In the …
Read More »Bob Daisley on His Years With Ozzy Osbourne, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio
Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their …
Read More »George Harrison's New 'All Things Must Pass' Box Set: An Exclusive Guide
When George Harrison went into the studio in 1970 to make All Things Must Pass, he was a man on a mission. He’d spent years waiting for this moment. George had so many songs saved up from his years in the Beatles, when he was limited to two or three …
Read More »