U2 is currently tweaking their new album, No Line on the Horizon, and Rolling Stone visited the band to get a preview.
The journey was as spellbinding and energizing as you might imagine, and you’ll be able to read all about it when our new issue hits newsstands on Wednesday, January 7th. To tide you over, here’s a track-by-track preview of 10 choice songs (and you can dig deeper into all our U2 coverage in our archive):
“Get On Your Boots”
The likely first single, this blazing, fuzzed-out rocker picks up where “Vertigo” left off. “It started just with me playing and Larry drumming,” the Edge recalls. “And we took it from there.”
The preview goes through a list of 10 songs in the same manner, but don’t be surprised if titles change or the songs disappear altogether. Apparently, the album is still in a state of flux.
It used to be that “55” was the number most associated with Sammy Hagar, but wrap your head around this figure: the Red Rocker is now 61 years old. Not that it’s stopped him from rocking and / or rolling, you understand. Hagar has just released a new album, Cosmic Universal Fashion, and he’s making the press rounds to promote it, which is how Bullz-Eye came to speak with him.
Bullz-Eye asked Hagar about life as an elder statesman of rock, his thoughts about Van Halen, and playing in a new band with Chad Smith and Joe Satriani, and he offered up stories of being denied the right to change the lyrics to a Beastie Boys song, of how he screams to prepare for shows, and how he once tried and failed to win over an audience when opening for KISS.
“The worst experience I ever had was opening for Kiss. For some reason, it just didn’t work. I got booed off the damn stage. I had to bust my guitar up and say ‘fuck you’ to people and I left…and it was Madison Square Garden! But it was their first hometown gig after they made it ,and they came back and played Madison Square Garden for four nights for the first time. And I was on the bill and I played first, and I said to the guys, ‘Bye-bye! You guys can do this on your own; you don’t need me as a whipping boy.’”
Check out the chat here, or by clicking on the below image:
Tonight’s installment of “Spectacle: Elvis Costello with…” finds our man Elvis opening the proceedings with a cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.” One presumes that his guest for the evening, Lou Reed, was at least tolerant of the rendition, since it’s not as though ol’ laughing Lou has ever been afraid to speak his mind. (Plus, the two of them team up later in the episode for performances of “Perfect Day” and “Set the Twilight Reeling.”)
Maybe it’s just the interviews I’ve read, but most of the time, Reed tends to come off as not just prickly but downright grouchy; it’s therefore a testament either to Elvis’s ability as a moderator or Lou’s respect for him that the conversation between the two of them is actually rather illuminating. Mind you, there was no discussion about Lester Bangs (I’m sure Reed is tired of being asked about Bangs’ love/hate relationship with his work, but I’d still love to have heard Elvis pose a question about it), but be sure to catch the discussion of the R&B great who played on Reed’s very first record, the relationship between Reed and Doc Pomus, the hard and fast rule in the VU about not copping blues licks, the secret chord in “Sweet Jane” that everybody gets wrong, and how he thought he spent his youth convinced that he was utterly unemployable.
The most fascinating moment of the conversation, however, comes when filmmaker Julian Schnabel joins Costello and Reed onstage. At first, it sounds like Schnabel more or less just happened to be in the crowd, but we soon learn that Reed and Schnabel are longtime friends, and before long, the discussion leads into a moment that the two of them shared as a result of the death of Schnabel’s father. It’s a story that starts out rather disconcertingly, but as it progresses, it becomes a testament to the healing power of music.
Most fans of Adult Swim’s “Home Movies” series are probably still angry and bitter over creator Brendon Small’s decision to make his next project about a death metal band, but while the animated adventures of young Brendon, Jason, and Melissa regularly skewered the world of Hollywood, so does “Metalocalypse” poke fun at the music industry. The series focuses on Dethklok, a death metal band so popular that, indeed, by the second season of the series (:::coughing::: now out on DVD :::coughing:::), they rank as the seventh largest economy on the planet Earth; as a result, they answer to no authority but their own, lest the world’s financial solidity fall apart. If you can get past the music and the rampant violence, it’s actually an extremely funny and clever series.
Here’s the test: if you can get through the video for Dethklok’s song, “Mermaider,” and not feel repulsed in any way, then you should give “Metalocalypse” a chance…possibly starting with the Season 1 DVD set.
Be forewarned, however, that it’s very much for mature audiences only.
There is no quicker way to our hearts during the holiday season than by covering “Fairytale of New York,” the staggeringly awesome duet between the Pogues and the late, great Kirsty MacColl. So congratulations, Amy MacDonald: we liked your debut album well enough, but this live version of “Fairytale,” recorded at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, permanently puts you in our cool book. Her bassist and duet partner does a mean Shane MacGowan impression to boot.
The journey was as spellbinding and energizing as you might imagine, and you’ll be able to read all about it when our new issue hits newsstands on Wednesday, January 7th. To tide you over, here’s a track-by-track preview of 10 choice songs (and you can dig deeper into all our U2 coverage in our archive):
