#rolling-stone

Mick Jagger just became a dad again for the eighth time

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones performs in concert on Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012 in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Image: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

He may be the world’s biggest rockstar, but today, he’s just a dad.

Seventy-three year old Mick Jagger and his girlfriend, ballerina Melanie Hamrick, welcomed a boy into the world on Thursday, according to a statement made to BBC UK.

by Miriam Coleman

Kendrick Lamar made his debut on Saturday Night Live nearly two years ago, basking in the acclaim of his first album,  Good Kid, m.A.A.d City. With his follow-up in the works and expected to arrive sometime soon, the 27-year-old Compton rapper made a triumphant return to the show last night, in an episode hosted by Woody Harrelson.

Kendrick Lamar Promises ‘Aggression and Emotion’ on New LP

For his first set, Lamar brought out a full live band and a chorus of backup singers for the as-yet-unnamed new album’s first single, the Isley brothers-sampling “i.” Wearing creepy black contacts and punctuating the beat with frenetic, jerking choreography, Lamar dedicated the song to his homies in the pen.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lamar gave some insight into what listeners can expect from the forthcoming new album, promising “aggression and emotion.” “If I can say anything about this record,” he said, “it’s that it will connect again.” He also noted at the time that he hadn’t yet called in any guest MCs for tracks. ”I have so much to say!” he says, laughing. “It’s somewhat selfish of me.” But he was happy to share the stage last night. 

Canadian singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk ushered in the second act, singing the intro at a piano before Jay Rock emerged from the shadows to deliver the first verse of “Pay for It.” It was nearly two minutes into the song before Lamar himself took the stage with his searing verse before graciously ceding the spotlight once again.

Lamar’s performances weren’t the only musical numbers to grace last night’s episode. In addition to the “Tarts and Old Farts” duets album ad (which featured a cameo by Lamar, paired with a disgruntled Barry Manilow) and the “Campfire Song,” Harrelson’s opening monologue featured his own take on Taylor Swift’s new album as the host paid tribute to the year of his first time on the show.

"With all due respect to Miss Swift, I think I know a little bit more about 1989 than she does – even if the memories are a little bit fuzzy. Because of the drugs," Harrelson said as he launched into a hazy acoustic tour of the year ("thought I met Margaret Thatcher, but it was Saddam Hussein"), before his Hunger Games co-stars arrived to give him a little help.

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by Daniel Kreps

In addition to breaking news stories like the capture of Eric Frein and the Maine nurse evading her Ebola quarantine, a recent episode of Anderson Cooper 360° weighed in on another important topic: Billy Corgan posing with two cats on the cover of Paws Chicago magazine’s Summer 2014 issue. “Where are they now? From 6 million-selling album to posing with cats,” the 360° Twitter also teased.

Hear the Intense First Track off Smashing Pumpkins’ New LP

"Tonight, I’m happy to report that [Smashing Pumpkins] frontman Billy Corgan is back and edgier than ever on the cover of Paws magazine,” Cooper told his 360° viewers (via Pitchfork). “So perhaps Billy Corgan is I don’t know, off his alternative rocker, but I think maybe there’s more to this. Maybe he’s being ironic, or maybe when the cool rock stars start doing less rock starry things, it kind of makes us face our own morality.”

Cooper also called Smashing Pumpkins’ landmark LP Siamese Dream “derivative” of My Bloody Valentine and shared that odd Chicago furniture store commercial that Corgan and his Resistance Pro wrestling company starred in. “See, I want R.E.M. to stay just the way I know and love them, I don’t want ‘Everybody Hurts’ to suddenly be used in an Excedrin commercial. I don’t ever want to see a product called Eddie Vedder’s Prune Jam. I want to see neither Stephen Malkmus nor Thom Yorke on the cover of AARP Magazine.”

After being teased on CNN for a cover that came out over five months ago, Paws Chicago first responded by Photoshopping Cooper’s head onto a magazine about dogs. Corgan then took to Twitter to answer Cooper’s claims that he sold out. “Sorry to disappoint, but when I’m not raising cain for a great organization like @PAWSchicago, I’m still making REAL music,” Corgan tweeted. “I realize you’re too busy being a globalist shill to know the difference, but there are those of us who do as we like.”

In what is likely breaking news to Cooper, Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins (including Tommy Lee) will release their new album Monuments to an Elegy on December 9th.

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by Reed Fischer

U2 are one of rock & roll’s greatest success stories for their artistry, but also for their marathon endurance. Friendship, health and serendipity have kept founding members Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. together since 1978. Our current cover stars lead an elite group of bands who have fought off death, drugs, dysfunction and ugly extended hiatuses to keep their original lineups intact.

With that in mind, we broke down which still-active bands have been at it the longest — with no breaks, no lineup changes, no hiatuses. Our apologies to long-running bands like Rush, Green Day and ZZ Top who all had drummer turnover early on. Here’s to U2 and 16 other bands that are still stuck in a lineup they can’t get out of.

by Jeff Allen

Late last month, Pearl Jam put Lightning Bolt to bed, wrapping a tour in support of the album that took them around the world yet again.

Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament on Basketball and Breaking Noses

Now almost a quarter-century into their existence, Pearl Jam seem to have reached a new level of appreciation for how far they’ve come, the distinctiveness of their longevity and each other. That’s evidenced by their interplay onstage, and the warm vibes exuded offstage by bassist Jeff Ament, who, at 51, still plays with the same youthful vigor he did years ago, but has also come to appreciate a little downtime now and then.

Days before the final show on the Lightning Bolt tour, Ament spoke with Rolling Stone about ending another chapter in the band’s career, how he plans on spending his time away from the spotlight and what’s next for Pearl Jam.

At this point, Pearl Jam has been around for almost 25 years. When you first started, did you ever envision it lasting this long? I’ll be honest, when things blew up around the second or third record, I thought it could implode at any time. It felt like it was sort of out of control. There weren’t a lot of real conversations about what we were doing or why were doing it. It was all sort of by feel. We were winging it.

But there was some deep part of us that trusted one other enough to decide this was the right group of guys to do it with. That’s been a huge life lesson in a lot of ways. Whether it’s your relationship with your wife or your family or your friends, where do you draw the line that says “I’m done with this” or “I’m gonna persevere through this?”

It feels like it’s all bonus time at this point, you know? And it makes you want to try harder. I feel like our last couple records are pretty strong, because we worked super hard on them. As long as we’re in the room we might as well go super hard. Everybody’s writing songs and everyone’s super motivated creatively. As long as that’s all still there, there’s no reason we can’t do it for a while.

Do you want to be like Springsteen or the Stones and still be doing it in your 60s and 70s? Right now? No. I’m at the end of this tour and my knee hurts and my ears are ringing and I miss my wife and I miss my dogs. So right now, I gotta say I can’t wait to not be out here for a while. But I’ll get a couple weeks away and I’m sure I’ll fall back in.

The time off is good. I can’t think of a time in the last 10 years where I wasn’t like [claps hands] “I can’t wait to see the guys” after we’ve been away from it a couple months. You’re curious. We don’t necessarily stay in super-close contact when we’re away from each other. When you get back together you’re genuinely excited to find out “Hey, how are things going with your kids?” or “Let’s hear your new songs.” All that stuff. That’s as much of a part of it as anything. The lifelong friendship part of it is more important to me than the legacy of the band at this point.

You guys are on the road a lot. Do you have favorite venues you like to play? The place like we played in Moline the other night, those 10,000-seat arenas, the Joe Louis in Detroit that’s like 50 years old, the Forum in L.A., places like that. There’s something about those older basketball and hockey arenas. I don’t know if it’s the dust and the grime that deadens the room? Part of it is that the seats are sort of straight up in those places, so it feels like even the in far away seats you can see the faces of all the people like they’re right next to you.

Madison Square Garden is always an amazing place to play. The Gorge if it’s not 180 degrees is a great place. We haven’t played Red Rocks in a long time; I’d love to go back there at some point.

The Lightning Bolt tour is wrapping up. Is that all the touring planned for a while? Yeah, I think we sort of relish having nothing on the calendar, even if it’s just for a couple months. I would guess we’ll get through the holidays and then talk at some point after that and figure out what we’re doing.

We went pretty hard this last year, so I think everyone is ready to take a break and just wash the dishes and change some diapers.

Is the band working on a new record at this point? No. But I think everybody’s got some stuff stowed away. All the stuff I’ve written recently is gonna go into the RNDM box with Joe Arthur. It’s pretty easy for me at this point because we don’t have kids, so when I’m home I’m tinkering in the studio all the time.

You’ve also been involved in the funding and construction of multiple new skate parks throughout Montana. How’d that come about? It started for me like three or four years ago, when actually I made out a living will. There’s an organization called the Montana Skatepark Association, and I was planning out that I wanted “X” amount of money to go to future skateparks in the state, and then I thought, “Well, why don’t I just do that now? Why wait until I’m dead, you know?”

So in the back of my head I just said “I’m gonna give a certain amount of money to it over the next few years.” I sat down with a map and sorta mapped out about 10 towns that I thought made sense and started putting feelers out. And from there it just sort of snowballed.

And these aren’t rinky-dink little ramps. I’ve seen pictures; it’s pro stuff. It’s dream-gig stuff. Growing up in North Central Montana the only thing we had was my parents letting me build a little ramp in my yard.

It’s kind of not the normal way that you’d be philanthropic. It’s not an obvious thing like giving to a food bank, which obviously is a place that’s in need. We need to get kids outdoors and we need to get kids active. And some of these places like the Blackfoot Reservation where diabetes is kinda high you need to get kids out doing things.

And I love it. I’ve seen kids turn their lives around. It’s usually a kid who’s outside of the team-sport world, or maybe has a darker personality or doesn’t fit in. Skateboarding ends up being something they latch onto. It sounds hokey, but finding a focus on something – whether its skateboard or playing your guitar – can be life changing.

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