sign in sign up
<<
Home , 3rdeyegirl, Are We There, Billy Corgan, Dan Snaith, David Fricke, Every Breaking Wave

Issue 1224/1225 December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 $5.99

TONY BENNETT &

DECEMBER 30 & 31 FOR TICKETS AND ROOM PACKAGES VISIT COSMOPOLITANLASVEGAS.COM

PRODUCED BY LIVE NATION GLOBAL TOURING

Management reserves all rights. Subject to change without notice. © 2014 The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. All rights reserved. When The Fun Stops.™ problem gamblers helpline. 1-800-522-4700.

TheCosmopolitan @Cosmopolitan_LV “A ll the NEWS THAT FITS”

FEATURES 47 The Secret Deal to Save the Planet Inside the high-stakes drama behind Obama’s climate talks. By Jeff Goodell 52 Seth Rogen at a Crossroads Can he be a responsible adult and still make a living telling dick jokes? By Josh Eells 58 XCX Marks the Spot A wild night with Charli XCX, pop’s most exciting new star. By Caryn Ganz 62 The Interview: The on how he fi nally conquered fi lm. By Brian Hiatt 68 Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State After 13 years of war, we haven’t defeated the Taliban, but we have created a nation ruled by drug lords. By Matthieu Aikins

2014 YEAR IN REVIEW

Albums of the Year ...... 21 Singles of the Year ...... 32 Movies of the Year ...... 39 Television of the Year ...... 40

DEPARTMENTS

Rock & Roll ...... 15 Record Reviews ....77 Random Notes ....43 Movie Reviews ....82 “White entertainers don’t ON THE COVER Seth Rogen photographed have a responsibility to a in on July 30th, 2014, by community. Nobody’s telling Mark Seliger. them to keep it real.” Set design by Rob Strauss Studio. Styling by Brian Coats at the —CHRIS ROCK PETER HAPAK PETER Wall Group. Grooming by Losi at Brydges Mackinney. Shirt by GANT.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 7 ROLLINGSTONE.COM EDITOR AND PUBLISHER: Jann S. Wenner

MANAGING EDITOR: Will Dana EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Nathan Brackett YEAR IN REVIEW DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR: Sean Woods SENIOR WRITERS: David Fricke, Brian Hiatt, SENIOR EDITORS: Christian Hoard, Coco McPherson, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Thomas Walsh ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Patrick Doyle, Andy Greene, Swift: Jessica Machado, Phoebe St. John EDITORIAL MANAGER: Alison Weinflash One-woman ASSISTANT EDITORS: Corinne Cummings, wrecking crew Elisabeth Garber-Paul, Chris M. Junior, Jason Maxey ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER: Ally Lewis EDITORIAL STAFF: Cady Drell 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.), James McGill (Visual Designer) SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER: Nina Pearlman EDITOR AT LARGE: Jason Fine CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Mark Binelli, David Browne, Rich Cohen, Jonathan Cott, 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

DESIGN DIRECTOR: Joseph Hutchinson CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Jodi Peckman ART DEPARTMENT: Matthew Cooley, Mark Maltais (Art Dirs.), Toby Fox, Yelena Guller (Assoc. Art Dirs.) PHOTO DEPARTMENT: Deborah Dragon, Sacha Lecca (Deputy Photo Eds.), Griffin Lotz (Assoc. Photo Ed.), 2014: BEST AND WORST Sandford Griffin (Finance Mgr.) DESIGN PRODUCTION MANAGER: Eric Perinotti ART AND PHOTO ASSISTANT: Meghan Benson

More of the year’s highs and lows, from “Fancy” to the night- PUBLISHER: Michael H. Provus ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Mark Oltarsh mare of Transformers 4 to ’s war against Spotify. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, DIGITAL ADVERTISING: Matthew Habib HEAD OF MARKETING: Kerri Mackar

Including: Peter Travers’ 10 worst movies of 2014, the year in ADVERTISING BUSINESS DIRECTOR: Danika Parente NEW YORK: James Craemer, Lora Logan, Craig Mura MIDWEST: Adam Anderson (Dir.) weed, and expanded lists of the best songs and . WEST COAST: Kurt DeMars (Dir.) SOUTHWEST: Adam Knippa, Ellen Lewis, Michael Stafford SOUTHEAST: Christine Costello, Peter Zuckerman NATIONAL MUSIC DIRECTOR: Mitch Herskowitz ADVERTISING BUSINESS MANAGER: Jessica Grill DIRECT-RESPONSE ADVERTISING: Chelsea Kaufman MARKETING: Artie Athas (Dir.), Gina Abatangelo, Michael Boyd, Summer Hawkey, Sara Katzki, Jennifer Zyski PUBLICITY: Melissa Bruno

SETH BIGGEST HEAD OF DIGITAL: Gus Wenner DIGITAL SALES: Anna Solomon, Nina Sasson (), ROGEN: BANGS: Brian Szejka () DIGITAL OPERATIONS: Alvin Ling (Exec. Dir.), BACK FOR GROUND- Eric Ward (Dir., Custom Solutions), Justin Harris CIRCULATION: Elyse Kossin (Dir.), Amy Fisher, ANOTHER BREAKING Mee-Vin Mak, Jeff Tandy WATCH LIST Beatles MANUFACTURING: John Dragonetti, Kevin Jones (Dirs.), ROUND ALBUMS Jessica Horowitz, Therese Hurter, Paul Leung, Chris Marcantonio CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER: Timothy Walsh In a video bonus to our cover story, the Forty records that created movements, GENERAL COUNSEL: Dana Rosen HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR: Interview star talks about his friendship invented genres and shook the world – Amy Burak Schoeman with James Franco and why Adaptation is from ’s Dust Bowl Ballads INTERNATIONAL LICENSING DIRECTOR: Maureen Lamberti his favorite movie of the 2000s. to Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak. RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Amy Matoian Ninomiya CONTROLLER: Karen Reed

Wenner Media CHAIRMAN: Jann S. Wenner VICE PRESIDENTS: Victoria Lasdon Rose, CULTURE Timothy Walsh, Jane Wenner MAIN OFFICES

MUSIC NEWS, ROB SHEFFIELD 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104-0298; RollingStone.com/shef eld 212-484-1616 AROUND THE CLOCK NATIONAL MUSIC ADVERTISING: 441 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017; 212-490-1715 Get breaking music news from ROLLING DIRECT-RESPONSE ADVERTISING: 212-484-4256 MOVIES STONE’s award-winning staf of writers REGIONAL OFFICES 333 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1105, Chicago, IL 60601; PETER TRAVERS 312-782-2366 and reporters 24 hours a day, 365 days RollingStone.com/travers 5700 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 345, Los Angeles, a year at RollingStone.com – and on the CA 90036; 323-930-3300 Nicki Lewis Stafford Co., 5000 Quorum Dr., Suite 545, ROLLING STONE MUSIC NEWS iPHONE ROCK & ROLL Dallas, TX 75254; 972-960-2889 Minaj Z Media, 1666 Kennedy Causeway, Suite 602, APP, available for FREE at the iTunes Store. DAVID FRICKE Miami Beach, FL 33141; 305-532-5566 RollingStone.com/fricke Copyright © 2014 by Rolling Stone LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Rolling Stone® is a registered trademark of Rolling IN PARTNERSHIP WITH YAHOO MUSIC FOLLOW Stone LLC. Printed in the of . US ON RALPH J. GLEASON 1917-1975 MUSIC.YAHOO.COM/ROLLINGSTONE/ HUNTER S. THOMPSON 1937-2005

ROLLING STONE is printed on 100 percent carbon-neutral paper. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PREMIERE/ROCSTAR/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES; JOHN DOWNING/“DAILY EXPRESS”/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; PICTURE PERFECT/REX USA; ANNIE WOODS

8 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 ®/TM trademarks © Mars, Incorporated 2013 © &

betterwithmms # holidays are better with better are holidays LOVE LETTERS CORRESPONDENCE & ADVICE

bitingly funny comedian, the pugilist vigorously engaging humanity’s worst offenders. But The Whistle-Blower in Andy Greene’s Q&A, we also In “The $9 Billion Witness” [RS 1222], contributing editor Matt get to see what a serious guy Taibbi made a triumphant return to ROLLING STONE, with the Stewart is too. I can’t wait to explosive story of Alayne Fleischmann, a securities lawyer who watch Rosewater and experi- blew the whistle on massive fraud at JPMorgan Chase and ence how his curiosity and vi- helped trigger one of the largest Department of Justice fi nes sion have played out onscreen. in U.S. history. Thrilled and enraged, RS readers responded. Avery Cole, via the Internet the brilliant matt taibbi has always had a Jack Bruce, R.I.P. Taibbi has given us anoth- talent for taking financial is- er tool for understanding sues the mainstream press my heart really hurt our current economic mess proclaims are “too com- when I saw that Jack Bruce and who its culprits are. This plex” for us stupid, ordinary had died [Tribute, RS 1222]. Dylan’s Deep Cuts piece particularly needs to Americans and making them A truly visionary musician, be read by that Tea Party comprehensible without Bruce is rightly lauded as one david browne’s piece on uncle who likes to blame ever dumbing them down. of the greatest bassists ever to ’s Basement Tapes homeowners, welfare recip- Now what will it take for the play the instrument. But it’s his [“Dylan’s Accidental Master- ients or for the 2008 American people to listen? voice that always got me. Crank piece,” RS 1222] was sensa- meltdown and the ongoing Wayne Martorelli “White Room” and hear classic tional. Dylan has enjoyed such aftereffects. Lawrenceville, NJ at its finest. a long and fascinating career Jim Corbin Oscar Diaz, via the Internet – he’s still touring, and his Portland, ME together, taibbi and “found” music is better than Fleischmann refute the Allman Love 99 percent of what’s being pro- as usual, outstanding claim that the prosecution duced today. Nothing but re- reporting by Taibbi. as a longtime allman spect for a living legend. Thanks to Fleisch mann Brothers fan and RS subscrib- Daniel Bellay, via the Internet from those of us who er, I was very disappointed that wish that ethics and in- you didn’t give the Brothers the dylan cover story tegrity were not a com- the cover to celebrate the end was just the kind of inside- modity to be bought and of their 45-year ride [“The All- baseball reporting that we sub- sold like those scratch- mans’ Last Stand,” RS 1222]. scribe to Rolling Stone for. and-dent securities. Still, the road goes on forever! It still floors me that Many people still believe Ed Chiusano, via the Internet crossed paths with the song- doing the right thing is writer of our generation. To- honorable, though the sys- of multibillion-dollar fraud Gotham’s Finest gether, they made some truly tem suggests otherwise. cases are too complicated incredible music. Jef Searcy, Seattle to pursue. the new issue – dylan, Michael Lien, via the Internet Robert Porath, Boulder, CO Foo Fighters, – had how sad for the fami- me salivating. But what did I david browne’s and greil lies who lost their homes as a canadian, i find it turn to first? The article about Marcus’ articles on the Base- during the financial cri- worth noting where Fleisch- Donal Logue [“The Ultimate ment Tapes were superb. The sis that the DOJ has cho- mann comes from. Maybe ‘That Guy’ Guy,” RS 1222]. I’ve Band keyboardist Garth Hud- sen to make tax-deductible it has something to do with been a huge fan of his for years, son, as the keeper of the tapes settlements the punishment having a conscience. Amer- so I was happy to see this versa- for so many years, emerges as for banks that committed ican politics and big busi- tile actor getting his due. His ré- the true savior. mortgage fraud and ruined ness are now so intertwined, sumé may be “weird,” but “that Richard Thorum, via the Internet so many lives. there’s really no hope for the guy” makes weird seem cool. Sheila Stuewe U.S. system as it stands. Kathleen Kent, via the Internet i thoroughly enjoyed The Woodlands, TX John Lymer, Ottawa, Ontario Browne’s story. I learned new Contact Us details about the recordings, LETTERS to ROLLING STONE, 1290 Avenue and I’m a devoted fan. And the aside, we are truly lucky to have of the Americas, New York, NY Stewart Speaks 10104-0298. Letters become the Basement Tapes documentary him holding up a mirror to our- property of ROLLING STONE and may on the RS website, “The Return great interview with selves – even when it looks ugly. be edited for publication. to Big Pink,” is just spectacular. one of my favorite people S. Shott, via the Internet E-MAIL [email protected] Garth Hudson is like the wise [“Checking In With Jon Stew- SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Go to rollingstone.com/customerservice old man of the mountain. art,” RS 1222]. Stewart’s tire- stewart is all things – •Subscribe •Renew •Cancel •Missing Issues Naomi Johns, via the Internet some Springsteen worship the charming cable host, the •Give a Gift •Pay Bill •Change of Address

10 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 THE NEW MICROTHERM ® STORMDOWN ™ JACKET. LIGHTEST. WARMEST. GUARANTEED. A fusion of bulkless micro-channel construction, hydrophobic 800-fi ll StormDownTM powered by DownTek TM, and streamlined alpine style. Available in jacket, vest, or hoodie. Guide-built and trusted by Eddie Bauer athlete Drew Tabke. eddiebauer.com/microtherm EXPERT THE PLAYLIST OPINION OUR FAVORITE SONGS, ALBUMS AND VIDEOS RIGHT NOW

6. Jessica Pratt “Back, Baby” The San Francisco folkie has a charming, squeaky, gently aching Pete voice. It’s perfectly suited to this lovely Wentz acoustic breakup tune. We asked the Fall Out Boy bassist – whose band has a new due out soon – to tell us what he thinks of fi ve songs .

OLD “Dream Police” From the opening synth ri , this is a power-pop 1. Beyoncé “7/11” video classic. I always felt like When an average person decides to throw a dance party in a hotel this one should play at room, it’s no big deal. When Queen B does it, it’s a major world event 7. Mary J. Blige the end of a video game – as you can see in this absurdly fun video for her jumpy new jam. “Follow” when you win. Who knew the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul could also 2. The Decemberists be a dance-fl oor-rattling “Dirty Diana” house diva? This Disclo- One of my favorites. I “Make You Better” video sure-produced cut from spent a lot of time trying The fi rst single from the dictionary-loving folk- her new LP, The London to imitate the guitarist’s rock crew’s new LP is a sweet, R.E.M.-ish love Sessions, is the proof. stage moves in the video. song. The video is presented as a very funny I remember he wore a lot fake German TV show from the , starring of belts – like, 12 or 13. Parks and Recreation’s Nick O erman as a seed- ily charming host with an atrocious accent. NEW Taylor Swift 3. Elvis Depressedly 4. Hudson Mohawke “Blank Space” “Oh, my God, look at that “No More Sad Songs “Chimes” face/You look like my (N.M.S.S.)” You might have heard next mistake” – I mean, This South Carolina band’s latest the Scottish EDM pro- how many times have I laid-back tune feels like gathering ducer’s hammer-of-Thor thought this through my around a campfi re with an acous- beat in a TV commercial life? Taylor nails it. tic guitar, a lot of feelings, and recently, but we guar- even more marshmallows. Color antee that it will sound us psyched for their album New even better booming Weezer “Back to the Shack” Alhambra, due in the spring. from your stereo. I always feel like Rivers Cuomo is talking to me, and it always feels honest. 5. Smashing This is no exception. Pumpkins “Tiberius” FKA Twigs There’s a certain kind “Two Weeks” of grungy, proggy, This feels so otherworldly. majestic rock song It cuts through the noise that of what’s going on now does better than because it’s so di erent. nearly anyone It drew me in, and for the else. This new next four minutes or so, I Pumpkins cut is closed my eyes and didn’t a prime example. know where I was. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY IMAGES; JONATHAN LEIBSON/GETTY IMAGES; C BRANDON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; NO CREDIT, 2; COLBY DROSCHER

12 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

NOW THERE ARE TWO EASY WAYS TO STREAM. Introducing Fire TV Stick. The newest member of the Fire TV family. Just plug & play.

• Voice search that actually works. Simply download the free app for Fire TV Stick, or use remote that comes with Amazon Fire TV. • Watch, play & listen. Both let you enjoy Netfl ix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, YouTube.com, Spotify, and more. • Massive selection. Each delivers access to over 200,000 TV episodes and movies, millions of songs, and hundreds of games.

Go to Amazon.com today to see which one is right for you. Now available on Amazon Instant Video: 12 Years a Slave, Alpha House and more. NOW YOUR PHONE CAN BE A STRAIGHT TALK PHONE.

(Place Your Phone Here and Cut Your Cell Phone Bill in Half **) THE BRING YOUR OWN PHONE PLAN That’s right. Just about any phone can be a Straight Talk Wireless phone. It’s as easy as switching out a SIM card. You can keep your phone and number and network but still cut your phone bill in half. Without the long- term contract. All with 4G LTE+ nationwide coverage on America’s largest and most dependable networks. Now with 3 GB of high-speed data, the most high-speed data of any $45 plan. Bring your own phone and start saving today. Go to www.StraightTalkBYOP.com. $ UNLIMITED* 45 TALK • TEXT • DATA 30-DAY PLAN NO-CONTRACT

*30-day Unlimited Plans include 3 GB of high-speed data per 30-day cycle. After 3 GB, your data speeds will be reduced for the remainder of the 30-day cycle. High-speed data is restored once a new 30-day card is redeemed at the end of the 30-day plan cycle. Other limitations, terms and conditions of service apply. Straight Talk reserves the right to terminate service for unauthorized or abnormal usage. Please refer always to the latest Terms and Conditions of Service at StraightTalk.com. **Phone and plan sold separately. Not available in all stores. “Half the Cost” is based on the savings of the two largest major carriers’ online published prices for comparable individual contract plans and Straight Talk Wireless 30-day Unlimited talk, text, data and 411, excluding the cost of the phones. Plans, features, coverage and limitations may vary. Source: Carriers’ websites as of March 2014. A month is 30 days. +4G/4G LTE networks are not available in all locations and require capable device and SIM card. Actual availability, coverage, and speed may vary. LTE is a trademark of ETSI.

Stefani Strikes Back How the singer reconnected with Pharrell, discovered emojis, and jump-started her career By Patrick Doyle

had a couple of hard years,” says , looking back on the sessions for No Doubt’s 2012 ‘I Push and Shove album, . It was the band’s fi rst LP in 11 years, and Stefani re- corded much of it while her husband, Gavin Rossdale, was on tour with a reunited Bush, which left her to handle her sons King ston, now 8, and Zuma, 6. “I would get my kids ready for school, drop them of , go in the studio and be home by four [Cont. on 16] © JOE STEVENS/RETNA LTD./CORBIS STEVENS/RETNA JOE ©

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 15 ROCK&ROLL

GWEN STEFANI

[Cont. from 15] to make dinner.” The record scored no hits, and the band didn’t tour after its release. “I’m sad it didn’t connect,” she says. Stefani, 45, has channeled the tur- moil into her new solo album (out early next year), her fi rst since 2006’s The Sweet Escape. She had been thinking for years about going solo again, but strug- gled to write material on par with hits like 2004’s “Hollaback Girl.” “I wasn’t gonna bring back the Harajuku Girls,” she says, referring to her former Japa- nese backup dancers. “You kind of run out of ideas. After a while, you’re just competing with yourself.” Stefani points to the birth of her third son, Apollo, in February, as the turning point. After a rough pregnancy (“I was throwing up all the time and couldn’t do anything”), she took a job as a judge on The Voice, partly to be close to Pharrell Williams, who helped write and pro- IN THE STUDIO duce several of her hits. Williams was determined to get Stefani back in the studio. “It was time for her to really ex- press herself and not have a bunch of Mark Ronson’s Uptown- people telling her what to do,” he says. “I held up the mirror and [said], ‘Do you know who’s in there? Do you know how Extravaganza many people respect that person?’ The more she saw, the deeper she reached, Producer scours the South for ing tracks that he imagined being sung and the crazier the stuf came out.” vocalists, recruits Bruno Mars by “a young Chaka Khan.” Bhasker sug- They recorded two songs, the frenet- gested they take a road trip to hear gos- ic dance-pop cut “Spark the Fire” and a and for new LP pel groups in Southern churches. “I just punkish track on which Stefani sings thought he was talking shit at two in the about emojis. “I went, ‘Oh, my God, it’s t’s nearly 10 a.m., and mark morning, drunk,” says Ronson. “But it be- the evolution from what I did before,’ ” Ronson has just arrived 40 minutes came a reality.” They spent 10 days driving she says. After that, Stefani started re- late to a session at a midtown Man- from New Orleans to Chicago. In Jack- cording in her living room with produc- I hattan studio. But it’s not his fault son, Mississippi, they found Keyone Starr, er Benny Blanco. “She’s an open book,” – it’s Stevie Wonder’s. Ronson had been a preacher’s daughter, in a club. says Blanco. “She’s cuckoo, she’s a su- trying to get his hero to play harmoni- “I had the voice in my head, and she em- perhero, but there’s vulnerability there.” ca on his new album for months, and was bodied it,” Ronson says. They took her to Stefani also wrote with young hitmak- even thinking of browsing You- Memphis’ Royal Studios (where ers like Calvin Harris and Charli XCX Tube for a Stevie impersonator. “Getting made his best work) (“I don’t usually want to work with other But the day before, Wonder fi nal- Stevie is and recorded cuts like the deeply girl writers – but she had my vibe”). ly cut his part in a Chicago studio, the musical funky “I Can’t Lose.” “It breathes “Even the biggest people [she worked and Ronson stayed up most of the music,” Ronson says of the stu- with] were star-struck,” says Blanco. night listening to the takes. He highlight dio. “You want to start playing Most of the album came together cues up a track, and Wonder’s un- of my life.” the minute you walk in.” within six months – unusually fast for mistakable harp fl oats through From there, Ronson recruit- the obsessive Stefani. “It’s addictive,” the room. Ronson gets a little misty. “It’s ed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael she says. “I can put this out, and do an- probably the peak musical highlight of Chabon to write lyrics and vocalists like other No Doubt record.” She probably my life,” he says. “I’m fi ne if I never top it.” Bruno Mars and Mystikal to deliver them. won’t tour behind the LP, but is already Wonder’s cameo is the final piece of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker sings “Daf o- working with No Doubt on a Phar- Uptown Special (due January 27th). “It’s dils,” a psychedelic epic about a made-up rell-produced song for the Paddington my best record, for sure,” says Ronson, drug. “I started it, but he developed it fur- , and the band will play fes- the dance-pop guru whose past LPs have ther to this weird, progressive , great tivals this summer. “I’m shocked peo- featured everyone from D’Angelo to Boy pop track,” says Parker. Mars fl ew to Mem- ple still care,” she says. “Doing anoth- George to Amy Winehouse (Ronson co- phis to write “Uptown Funk,” which is get- er solo record and recording No Doubt produced her LP). Ronson ting heavy radio . “I got in an Uber music and being on The Voice and hav- says he went through a “musical identity last night, and I was like, ‘That’s . . . holy ing three boys all at one time, that just crisis” after 2010’s Record Collection. He shit, that’s me!’ ” Ronson says, laughing. wasn’t something I could dream up in started writing with producer Jef Bhask- “The driver was probably like, ‘Who the my mind.” er (Kanye West, Bruno Mars) – craft- hell are you?’ ” PATRICK DOYLE

16 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com Photograph by Griffin Lotz AVAAVAILAIILL BLBBEBLE 1S1 TQT QTRR 201215.5 DODDDD GE ANDADA SSRRT ARERE REGRERRGEGGISTITIISSTEREERED TRADRADEMAMAARRKSRK OF CHCHRYSRYSSLERLLER GRGROUPUP LLLLCC.

HORACE DODGE JOHN DODGE

AT DRIVESRT.COM

Introducing the new members of the Dodge SRT family: the 707 HP Challenger and Charger SRT Hellcats. ROCK&ROLL

ENCOUNTER Lunch with Lady Soul: A revitalized Aretha on feminism, Beyoncé and who should star in her biopic By Patrick Doyle

isten,” aretha franklin says to a waiter as she points at her fish sandwich. “Don’t you have ‘L the smoked salmon?” She’s sitting in the restau- rant at New York’s Ritz-Carlton on a rainy Friday afternoon, wearing a bright fur coat, hair spilling out of a win- ter cap. The waiter explains that Franklin’s lunchtime staple – salmon and cream cheese on whole-wheat bread – isn’t on the menu anymore. “But I will talk to the chef,” he adds quickly. “He will do it for you right now.” Franklin, 72, just finished signing a stack of copies of her new album, Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics, her first recording since she was re- portedly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2010. Franklin canceled several shows at the time; tab- loids had her on deathwatch. When she was hon- ored at the Grammys the next year, she looked no- “I met the ticeably thinner. Frank- producers of lin denied the diagnosis, the James but last June, onstage at Brown movie. Radio City Music Hall, If we had seen she recalled receiving a grim diagnosis from eye to eye, it doctors: “[I told them,] would have ‘You burn the midnight been my movie.” oil, you read books, but you really don’t know that much about me. You see, I come from a praying family.’ . . . A couple of years later, I went back to the hospital, and those same doctors are saying, ‘Miss Franklin, the thing we saw before, we don’t see no more.’ Hallelujah!” This week, Respect, a new biography by David Ritz, has been getting a lot of publicity – and Franklin is not happy about it. Ritz ghostwrote Franklin’s 1999 autobiography but was unsatisfied with the results. “Self- reflection doesn’t come easy to her,” Ritz says. So, drawing from his interviews with her and her close family, he pub- lished a book that details the wild ofstage promiscuity of the Fifties gospel circuit as well as Franklin’s troubled mar- riage to Ted White, who managed her before their divorce in 1969. “[It’s] a very trashy book – all lies,” she said recently. Today, Franklin is careful with her words and at times com- bative. When I ask if I can record our conversation, she flatly de- clines. “You can take notes,” she says. When I mention praise in the book from her sister Carolyn – “She slips into a zone when she sings . . . and connects to the Holy Spirit” – Aretha [Cont. on 19]

18 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com Illustration by Tyler Jacobson ARETHA FRANKLIN included , though Franklin downplays her influ­ and . “I had a teenage crush on ence on the latter: “I think that’s Gloria [Cont. from 18] cringes. “I don’t think him,” Franklin says of Cooke. “Very classy, Steinem’s role. I don’t think I was a cata­ Carolyn ever said anything like that. That very classy. He came from the church, so it lyst for the women’s movement. Sorry. But doesn’t even sound like Carolyn.” would be hard not to have class.” if I were? So much the better!” Today, she Franklin’s new album – on which she Franklin’s early records sold poorly – praises Beyoncé for carrying the torch for covers Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to her Columbia material was lounge­y and feminism in pop. “Astrologically, for what Georgia” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” overly slick, and she was mistakenly mar­ it’s worth, she’s a Virgo, like Michael Jack­ – reunites her with Clive Davis, who helped keted as a supper­club soul singer in the son,” Franklin says. “A very hard worker.” revive her career in the Eighties with a se­ mold of Dinah Washington. She didn’t be­ Franklin’s classic work earned her the ries of hits on his Arista label. Davis had come the Queen of Soul until she signed to top spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the been pushing Franklin to record an album Atlantic Records in 1966. There, she was greatest singers of all time, in 2008. “I of diva classics for years, sometimes over backed by the Muscle Shoals rhythm sec­ went, ‘What?’ I did a triple take!” It’s one of dinner at Seasons. According to tion and produced by Jerry Wexler, who dozens of accolades she’s earned in recent Davis, Franklin hasn’t lost any fire. “She’s added a funky, psychedelic edge to match years: There are also honorary doctorates come back in peak form,” he says. “The her gospel fervor. “Jerry asked me to play from Harvard and Yale, and the Presi­ wonder of Aretha is she can do any song. the piano [in the studio],” she says. “You dential Medal of Freedom in 2005. “Hard And with very, very few excep­ to beat that,” she says. “But 20 tions, two takes is as close to the Grammys is not bad either.” maximum as she does.” These days, Franklin does her For Franklin, the album is a best to keep up with pop culture. chance to prove herself in a pop (“If you missed something, you world with more divas than ever. can always go to YouTube.”) She “It was never as competitive as listens to a lot of pop radio. “I like it is now,” Franklin says. “Peo­ ‘Bang Bang,’ ” she says. “Ariana ple are being very selective about Grande – I like her a lot.” She’s what they spend their money on. not as keen on Taylor Swift, who I understand that this year they ended up beating Franklin to haven’t had any platinum rec­ the first platinum album of the ords. I hope to have the first one. year. “I heard ‘Shake, Shake’ – is That would be fabulous.” that what it’s called?” she says. Soon, the salmon hors d’oeuvre What does she think? “I love her arrives, which she ofers me. “A gowns. I went to her website and little caviar, too,” she says, savor­ saw she wore Oscar de la Renta. ing a bite. “Great!” I tried to order that gown. I love whoever is dressing her. She franklin has lived in de- wears some beautiful clothes.” troit for most of her life, but vis­ The last movie she saw was iting New York reminds her of OLD FRIENDS With Clive Davis at a party for her 72nd birthday. Get On Up, the bi­ when she moved there in 1960. “Centuries from now, people will be listening to Aretha,” Davis said. opic. “It was good, up to a point,” She was 18 and had just been she says. “I met with the produc­ signed to Columbia Records. “I always could call my piano my trademark, or one ers prior to that movie. Had we agreed on had a chaperone,” she says with a smile. “I of my trademarks.” a creative approach, it would’ve been my was working with the greats – Char­ Soon, Franklin was topping the charts movie.” She says she’s in negotiations again lie Mingus, , Blue Mitchell. with songs like 1967’s “I Never Loved for her own biopic – she even has someone All of the best of the best.” a Man (the Way I Love You)” and “Re­ in mind for the lead role: Audra McDon­ Franklin had been a star in the gospel spect,” which she singles out as her two ald, who won a Tony for portraying Billie world for years before signing to Columbia. favorite songs in her catalog. “Everybody Holiday in Lady Day. “It would be her job At 12, she joined her father, the Rev. C.L. wants respect,” she says. “In their own to bring it home,” Franklin says. “The ques­ Franklin – whose sermons sold millions way, three­year­olds would like respect, tion is whether she has that ability.” of copies on Chess Records – on the road. and acknowledgment, in their terms.” Franklin has some other big plans in “His delivery was very dynamic,” she says. As for the “sock it to me” backing vocals mind: She hopes to teach a “master class” “If he had chosen to be a singer, he would’ve in “Respect,” she clarifies: “There was at Carnegie Hall and would like to record been a great one.” Her favorite sermon of nothing sexual about that. Some people with both (“the fact his was “A Wild Man Meets ,” about a thought that, but it wasn’t.” that we haven’t yet is crazy”) and Stevie man who goes insane, abandons his fami­ Franklin lights up when she remembers Wonder. “I saw him play ’s ly and winds up living in a graveyard. Jesus February 16th, 1968. The mayor of Detroit tribute the other night, and Stevie was so sails through a rainstorm to meet him and christened it Aretha Franklin Day, ahead good. The level of music was ‘Whoa!’ You exorcises him of demons, to the dismay of of her show that night at Cobo Hall. “Dr. should’ve been there.” townspeople who prefer the man as the King was there, my dad was there,” she re­ Franklin will play one­off shows village idiot. “The man walks into some­ calls. “When we walked into the arena and throughout the coming year, sprinkling in one he immediately knows is superior and became visible to the audience, then the covers from the new album alongside her supreme to him, without any words,” says crowd erupted. It was like the ceiling was biggest hits. “I find new ways to just keep Franklin. “That’s what I love about that. It coming down.” it fresh for me,” she says. “I still don’t think underscores a supreme being.” Songs like “Respect,” “Chain of Fools” I would do anything else. I guess I could’ve Franklin was no stranger to big person­ and “Think” became anthems for the civil been a prima ballerina. Or a nurse. Aretha

J. COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES COUNTESS/GETTY J. alities growing up – her parents’ parties rights and women’s liberation movements, Nightingale!”

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 19

OF ALBUMS THE unleashed a brilliant surprise, hit a new peak, St. Vincent made YEAR deliciously weird noise and Taylor Swift went full pop

Guess who’s back: Edge, Clayton, , Mullen (from left).

is personal history with details. In the furi- its range of sounds, there may be no more ously brooding “Cedarwood Road,” named complete U2 album: The band bonded its U2 after Bono’s home address as a boy, he re- founding post-punk values with dance 1 calls the fear and rage that momentum in “Volcano” Songs of Innocence drove him to . “The and the raw, jagged “Raised Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” is by Wolves,” and humanized a glam-stomp homage to the the digital pathos of “Every There was no bigger album of 2014 – in misfi t voice that inspired Bono Breaking Wave” and the har- terms of surprise, generosity and contro- to sing. And that’s his moth- rowing “Sleep Like a Baby versy. Songs of Innocence is also the rebirth er, who died when Bono was Tonight” with the vocal folk- of the year. Bono, , 14, still guiding and comfort- soul warmth of The Joshua and Larry Mullen Jr. put their lives on the ing him in the chorus of “Iris Tree. “I have a will for surviv- line: giving away 11 songs of guitar rapture (Hold Me Close).” al,” Bono sings in the closing and frank, emotional tales of how they be- This is a record full of the band’s sto- track, “The Troubles.” Songs of Innocence came a band out of the rough streets and ries and triumph, memory and confession is the proof – and the emotionally raw rock spiritual ferment of Seventies Dublin. This detonated with adventure and poise. In album of the year, at any price.

Photograph by Mark Seliger rollingstone.com | Rolling Stone | 21 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

madness over much of it – but in the early 1990s by an ob- Springsteen was so much older scure L.A. punk crew called the then. Now he’s more unpredict- Havalinas), the bar-band romp able than ever, and it’s work- “Frankie Fell in Love” and the ing: Despite the varied origins gangster’s portrait “Harry’s of the songs, High Hopes hangs Place.” The revamped version together with striking sonic of “American Skin (41 Shots)” and thematic consistency, fi nd- – a song about police shooting Bruce Springsteen ing fresh angles on his cen- a young black man, originally The Black Keys 2 High Hopes tral concern: the fault lines in echoing the killing of Amadou 3 Turn Blue the American dream. Spring- Diallo in 1999 – proved to be a This new peak in Springsteen’s steen worked on much of the tragically prescient choice for The Keys and 21st-century hot streak is his album during his year-and-a- the year of Ferguson. But the spool out everything from Sev- most gloriously loose, vibrant half-long Wrecking Ball world album’s high point is the Mor- enties funk to disco throb to album in years. In the past, tour, and the expansiveness of ello-Springsteen duet on “The drive-time guitar grind, mak- Springsteen would never have that tour’s 19-piece incarna- Ghost of Tom Joad,” where Mo- ing music that could evoke allowed himself to release an tion of the – fea- rello’s rage-fi lled, celestial solo lonely late nights or burnt- album that includes two cov- turing a , back- is a song in itself. The whole rubber desert highways, jittery ers and reworked versions of up singers and a percussionist thing runs together like a mar- paranoia and boundless possi- his own older tunes, let alone – carries over to the big, bold athon gig, united by a hard eye bility. It’s the sound of Amer- give Tom Morello license to of tracks like on the national condition and ica’s most innovative arena splatter virtuoso wah-wah’ed “High Hopes” (fi rst recorded the fi re in Springsteen’s voice. rockers in full command.

St. Vincent Miranda Lambert 4 St. Vincent 5 Platinum After her string of increasingly Lambert began as a main- excellent records, indie guitar stream-country bad girl. This heroine Annie Clark’s fourth year, she became an institu- solo album felt like a corona- tion. Platinum smoothly bal- tion: a masterful set of skewed ances solo-act introspection but sticky pop hooks, subtly with A-list ring grabs, co-star- sexy electro-funk grooves and ring the likes of Carrie Un- Dada poetry that aches for real. derwood and Little Big Town. And her fi ery guitar solos are Notably absent, though, is su- sharper and more surprising perstar hubby Blake Shelton – than ever. Bow down. sister’s doin’ it for herself.

Charli XCX Run the Jewels Mac DeMarco 6 Sucker 7 Ultraviolence 8 9 Salad Days

Charli XCX is the pop star 2014 Del Rey silenced her detractors El-P and Killer Mike made The 24-year-old Canadian was waiting for: a bad ass song- with an intoxicating collection 2014’s greatest hip-hop rec- singer-guitarist’s second album writing savant who’s the most of indie-noir anthems. With ord. Guest shots flare in the – a warm, polished set of sun- fun girl in any room she steps more live instrumentation in avant-noise darkness: Zack de drenched folk-rock jams – feels into. The 22-year-old Brit came her smoky glam grooves, she la Rocha rif s on Philip K. Dick; like it could have been a lost into her own with Sucker, a plays enough characters to fi ll Gangsta Boo fl ips a porn-rap used-vinyl-bin treasure from middle-fi nger-waving teenage a Raymond Chandler novel: On script. But it’s the chemistry the Seventies. DeMarco chan- riot packed into 13 punky gems. “Sad Girl,” she’s a sultry mis- between Mike’s on-the-ground nels Harry Nilsson, the Beach It’s a dance party, a mosh pit tress; on “Brooklyn Baby,” she’s Dirty South fl ow and El’s big- Boys, and the Beat- and a feminist rally – Charli’s a snarky kid. Most of all, she’s a picture indictments that lights les, but the of beat stoner vibes

defi nitely in charge. pop voice like no other. this up like a Brooklyn bridge. are all him. AU WINNIE

22 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

©2014 FX Networks, LLC. All rights reserved. ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

Taylor Swif Foo Fighters Ought 10 1989 11 You’re Dead! 12 Sonic Highways 13 More Than Any Other Day America’s sweetheart has been “Step inside of my mind and This multifaceted travelogue is writing perfect pop tunes since you’ll fi nd/Curiosity, animosi- the most ambitious album Foo “I feel a habit forming,” sings the day she hit Nashville. Yet ty, high philosophy.” It’s a guest Fighters have made in their 20- frontman Tim Beeler, and so it’s still a delectable shock to rap from , but year career. Whether they’re did we. On the year’s most ir- hear her ditch the banjos for an it could also be a mission state- celebrating in Chi- refutable rock debut, you can album of expert Top 40 gloss – ment for Flying Lotus. The cago or getting in touch with hear in the like Dylan going electric, ex- tripped-out producer’s latest is their punk-rock roots in D.C., vocals and Voidoids in the gui- cept with more songs about an LP about mortality that ex- the bedrock force remains their tars. But this Montreal crew’s Harry Styles. She sounds right plodes with life – jazz that re- anthemic guitar charge. By post-punk panic attacks have at home over these Max Martin spects no dogma, and pop that now, that’s a classic American a doomed optimism that feels beats, sick and otherwise. reveals more with each listen. sound in its own right. utterly of the moment.

Weezer Against Me! 14 Everything Will Be 15 Transgender Alright in the End Dysphoria

After a few hit-or-miss rec- Transgender frontwoman ords, Weezer fans needed Laura Jane Grace poured all of some reassurance from Rivers her own deep pain and hard- Cuomo. He delivered big-time won pride into a bold new start on the band’s cheeky, ambi- for one of America’s greatest tious ninth LP – rediscover- punk-rock bands. It’s a roiling ing the art of the three-min- attack with a fragile, beating Back to ute girl jam (“Lonely Girl”) but the shack: heart – few albums this year stretching out in fruitful new Cuomo were as relentlessly heavy and ways, too. fi ercely melodic.

FKA Twigs Jenny Lewis Sturgill Simpson Jackson Browne 16 LP1 17 The Voyager 18 Metamodern Sounds 19 Standing in in the Breach For many, there was no sexi- It took the ex-Rilo Kiley front- er pop listen in 2014 than FKA woman six years, but Lewis fi - “Marijuana, LSD, psilocy- Browne confi rmed his place as Twigs’ full-length debut. It’s a nally returned to the studio to bin, DMT, they all changed an essential voice in the wilds of feminist take on the Weeknd’s make the kind of sweetly bit- the way I see/But love’s the the 21st century with this pow- druggy avant-R&B, with self- ing solo record that earned her only thing that ever saved my erful set of songs about love and loathing and sleaze replaced a permanent place in the indie life,” sings Simpson. The Ken- progressive ideals – forces that by self-possession and hunger. canon. Blending Laurel Can- tucky-born singer-’s a corrupt world can never truly The haunting mix of pop and yon sensibilities with modern breakthrough album features defeat. Songs like “The Long EDM weirdness takes a while wit, The Voyager shows she’s plenty more folk wisdom, deliv- Way Around” are the most el- to kick in – which only makes stronger and wiser – and can ered in a singular barrel-aged oquent protests against apathy

it more delicious when it does. still draw blood. baritone. you’ll hear this year. MOSENFELDER/GETTY TIM IMAGES

24 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

Sharon Van Etten Eric Church Skrillex War on Drugs 20 Are We There 21 The Outsiders 22 Recess 23

On her fourth album, the New In an era teeming with bro- Skrillex’s whirling neon knife- These Philly dudes broke Jersey-native singer-songwrit- country, Church made a great storm was the album of the through by tripping out on a er took the heartbreak she’d ex- record by following his rock year for modern EDM – a genre classic-rock vibe, Eighties style: plored on past records and blew & roll rebel heart. Prog rif s, that can currently fi ll arenas “Boys of Summer” melodies, Ne- it up to massive scale. Bringing bourbon-drawl raps and ston- without albums at all. After braska harmonica, Brothers chilly synth beats into her mix er funk sit straight-faced next a four-year run of killer sin- in Arms guitar shimmer. But for the first time, Van Etten to radio-friendly takes on NAS- gles, the drop-aholic DJ made a the album’s pleasant aimless- gives songs like “Your Love Is CAR good times and broken surprisingly varied full-length ness – as songs choogle past the Killing Me” a morbid grand- hearts – styles and subjects that packed with mind-blowing ex- fi ve-minute mark and lead lines ness, all the better to comple- connect because Church obvi- periments with two-step, jun- curlicue across the sky – says ment her passionate vocals. ously loves every one of them. gle, vintage techno and more. plenty about right now.

Leonard Cohen YG 24 Popular Problems 25 My Krazy Life What a year for footloose Most rap fans probably didn’t eightysomethings: Yoko Ono expect the Cali guy behind topped the club charts, Rob- 2010’s goofy minor hit “Toot ert Morse stole Mad Men, and It and Boot It” to make a debut Cohen danced to the end of love. album this rich and ambitious. He whispers a dusky farewell My Krazy Life is a detailed day- on “Almost Like the Blues.” Yet in-the-life tale of robbery and in the sensual sway of “Slow,” regrets, with YG’s charming he’s got time for one more Hypnotist: fl ow set against DJ Mustard’s round: “A weekend on your Petty new-school bounce like a long- lips/A lifetime in your eyes.” lost sequel to The Chronic.

Tom Petty and the Alt-J Parquet Courts Spoon 26 Heartbreakers 27 This Is All Yours 28 Sunbathing 29 They Want My Soul Hypnotic Eye Animal The English prog-- Vintage ooh-las, art-brut Petty and Co. made their fi rst ers grew to arena scale without These Brooklyn jokers stepped rhythm guitar and head-crack Number One album by tight- losing their weirdness – like the up their game something fi erce, drum beats fit together like ening their Sixties-punk clang Incredible String Band via Kid romping from the twin-guitar idealized Ikea furniture on the and firing it through flinty A, Joe Newman’s Bilbo Bag- heroics of “She’s Rolling” to the latest jewel from Britt Daniel’s songs about a nation on the gins warble wanders through psychedelic love buzz of “Raw crew; it’s all clean lines and for- ropes and Petty’s determina- monkish choirs, electronic Milk.” They make it all sound mal balance. And co-producer tion not to take it lying down. “I squelches and woodland chirp- so easy, you wonder why there Dave Fridmann’s discreet got a dream,” he sings in “Amer- ing, with a Miley Cyrus sample aren’t a dozen bands this great splashes of color and texture ican Dream Plan B.” “I’m gonna representing the world outside in every town. But these guys add new fl avor to the minimal-

fi ght till I get it right.” the band’s cozy hideaway. are in a league of their own. ist feng shui. PAUL R. GIUNTA/GETTY IMAGES

26 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

ON NEWSSTANDS NOW

Also available at bn.com/rsneilyoung.

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

Portlandia: Young Thug

Thom Yorke Young Thug Damon Albarn 30 Tomorrow’s 31 Black Portland 32 Everyday Robots Modern Boxes Young Thug was 2014’s most Modern British pop’s most The man’s second exciting new weirdo, an ATL obsessive explorer turned his proper solo album got oddly star-child who stretches his curiosity inward on this inti- slept on, but these are his most Lil Wayne yelp like Silly Putty mate solo triumph. There are intense songs since In Rain- until you’re hanging on every hints of his bands Blur and bows. Yorke puts on the chill in mangled syllable. This mixtape Gorillaz and of his African for- “Truth Ray” and “Nose Grows (with buddy Bloody Jay) is his ays in the hooks and rhythms. Some” – even when he sings fi nest hour: catchy, woozy, idea- But Albarn mostly evokes about a dystopian future, the stuf ed songs about sex, gangs and that Brit-pop anxious yearning in his voice and not giving a damn whether ideal, ’ , in is all too immediate. what he says bothers you. Everyday Robots’ stark grace.

The Ghost of a Alvvays 33 Saber Tooth Tiger 34 Art Of cial Age 35 Strut 36 Alvvays Midnight Sun Prince proved himself as bril- He may keep homes in Paris The lyrics on this Toron- Sean Lennon fi nally found his liant and confounding as ever and the Bahamas, but Kravitz to band’s accomplished own voice as a singer-songwrit- in 2014, releasing this fantastic has never stopped being a New debut read like a great short- er in late-Sixties British psy- old-school funk record in tan- Yorker. Strut looks back on story collection, full of wild ro- chedelia. His second full LP dem with a weird, fl at album the 1970s metropolis of his mance, quarter-life confusion with partner Charlotte Kemp recorded with his new group, youth with funky after-hours and sly humor. Set to exquisite- Muhl has disarming emotional 3rdEyeGirl. A r t O f c i a l A g e re- grooves and soulful hooks. ly yearning melodies and pitch- intimacy (inherited from Len- calls the plush swagger and pop “” is the best perfect guitar jangle and fuzz, non’s parents) draped in the mastery of his Eighties classics tune Mick Jagger didn’t get songs like “Party Police,” “Next bright, surrealist magnetism – all psychedelic pimp style and around to writing in his Stu- of Kin” and “Archie, Marry Me” of Syd Barrett-era . spectacular balladry. dio 54 days. are as catchy as they are clever.

Benjamin Booker Hurray for Caribou 37 Benjamin Booker 38 the Rif Raf 39 Our Love 40 Lazaretto Small Town Heroes This 25-year-old punk-blues Dan Snaith’s psychedelic dance White’s second solo album is a bowled over fu- Alynda Lee Segarra was raised grooves have always had a deep paranoid palace of earth-shak- ture tourmate Jack White, and on the New York punk scene be- emotional core. This year, the ing blues rif s and weird vibes you can see why. Booker’s raw- fore fi nding her folk-rock muse Canadian producer super- – the long, high howl of a lone throated boogie blues proves in New Orleans. Her band’s sized both sides of his music: wolf. Whether he’s hulking out rock & roll can still function as breakthrough fl ips the script The beats on Our Love are his on the unstrung crazy-ass party music – when on woman-hating murder bal- biggest, shiniest, rave-iest cre- “High Ball Stepper” or laughing he confesses to wasting time on lads and ponders the romance ations ever, backing a heady to himself on the -tonky “a fi ve-year bender” in the midst of dangerous behavior, over fi n- set of songs about the mind- lark “Alone in My Home,” this of “Violent Shiver,” you may be gerpicking and fi ddling. Some- expanding possibilities of long- is an album only one man could

tempted to join him. where, is smiling. term partnership. have made. BRINSONKENDRICK

30 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 AND THEY SAY YOU CAN’T BUY GOOD TASTE OF SINGLES THE YEAR Beyoncé made the best drunken-hookup song ever, DJ Snake and Lil Jon refused to turn down for any reason, and Sia swung from the chandeliers

Queen of Beyoncé hearts: 1 feat. Jay Z Beyoncé “Drunk in Love”

Of all Beyoncé’s flawless ac- complishments over the past 12 months – pulling of the ul- timate surprise-album stunt; raking in millions on one of the year’s hugest stadium tours; coming out as a proud femi- nist on national TV – this one stands out as the fl awless-est: She managed to make marriage sound ridiculously hot. This fu- ture-pop fantasy was the sexi- est thing on the radio, from the heavy bass throb to the wild thrill in her voice when she sings about juicy nights (“I get fi lthy when that liquor get into me”), hung-over mornings and, uh, surfboards. So steamy, even her famous husband’s uncomfort- able joke couldn’t kill the vibe.

DJ Snake 2 feat. Lil Jon “Turn Down for What” The year’s nutsiest party jam was also the perfect protest banger for a generation fed up with everything. DJ Snake brings the synapse-rattling EDM and Southern trap music; Lil Jon brings the dragon-fi re holler for a hilarious, glorious, glowstick-punk “fuck you.”

U2 Future feat. Pusha Jenny Lewis Taylor Swif 3 “Every Breaking Wave” 4 T, Pharrell, Casino 5 “Just One of the Guys” 6 “Blank Space” “Move That Dope” The emotional centerpiece of The sharp-witted, golden- “They’ll tell you I’m insane,” Songs of Innocence is a stark, A rap song about dealing drugs? voiced queen of L.A. indie pop Swift sings. No way! The high shimmering ballad that recalls How novel! In fact, Auto-Tuned dropped a beautiful, - point of 1989 was a superstorm “” in its ATLien Future turned well- produced truth bomb about ballad that hits like a pitch- searching power. “Are we so worn boasts about the gold on midlife malaise – from not yet ing wedge through your wind- helpless against the tide?” Bono his links and the coke in his sink having kids to dealing with shield. And in inventing her asks, staring down time’s pas- into an irresistible anthem. The her aging guy friends’ forev- own sound between Beyon- sage. The music answers back beat makes you feel high as hell; er-24 girlfriends. Just like that, cé and the Pet Shop Boys, she with gently heroic uplift, giv- the joy in the hustle makes you Lewis flips the script on the brings the cray-Tay with as GARETH CATTERMOLE/PW/WIREIMAGE GARETH ing him the salvation he seeks. wanna be a customer. male gaze. Checkmate. much elegance as vengeance.

32 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

SINGLES OF THE YEAR

Bruce Springsteen Future Islands Kendrick Lamar 7 “Frankie Fell in Love” 8 “Every Time the Sun 9 “Seasons (Waiting 10 “i” Comes Up” on You)” A rock-soul riot that boils the Hip-hop’s most exciting young world’s wisdom down to one “I washed your dishes/But I shit Synth-pop to send a chill up voice rocks some spiritual self- simple phrase – “It all starts in your bathroom,” Van Etten your spine: Singer Samuel T. love over a classic Isley Brothers with a kiss” – and proceeds to sings on this majestic stomp- Herring walks a fi ne line be- lick: “Peace to fashion police, I drive home that gospel truth er – bad-mood indie folk that tween Erasure and Tina Turn- wear my heart on my sleeve.” with fi re-starting fury. hits as hard as any rock all year. er, oozing sad-white-boy soul. He wears it well.

Staying Alvvays Sam Smith power: 11 12 Sam Smith “Archie, Marry Me” “Stay With Me” Three minutes of uncut in- The breakout hit from U.K. die-guitar bliss: Singer Molly soulman Smith is a slow- Rankin takes the initiative and burn ballad about a romance promises her boy a lifetime of he knows won’t last. But be- trouble over swirls of hope- tween the gospel-choir back- ful noise, to give us the fuzzy- ing and Smith’s achingly gor- cardigan “Drunk in Love” we geous singing, you might just never knew we needed. fall in love to it anyway.

Foo Fighters Grimes 13 “Outside” 14 “Go”

On this powerful Sonic High- Canadian electro-R&B sing- ways track, the Foos peel er Grimes doesn’t push at pop’s out searing alt-rock, and Ea- boundaries – she torches them. gles guitarist Joe Walsh adds “Go” is a club hallucination a mythic Seventies-L.A. solo, somewhere between Rihanna making for a stadium-size, and Skrillex, sung with a rav- cross-generational blowout. enous desire that’s all her own.

Sia Beck Bleachers 15 “Chandelier” 16 “Blue Moon” 17 “” 18 “I Wanna Get Better”

Aussie songwriter Sia had her No one does heartsick Califor- This Mississippi hip-hop duo Therapy rock that’s as fun as fi rst U.S. hit with this skyscrap- nia folk rock like Beck. This sound like they’re still in junior it is cathartic: Jack Antonof ing ballad, inspired by her bat- isn’t his version of the pop clas- high. But that boyish hypeness shouts about fear and desper- tle with alcoholism. The mas- sic so much as an all-new sé- and an eerily sparkling beat ate loneliness, while the crazy- sive chorus captures the exact ance that sends its lonely-world from Mike Will Made-It make catchy group chorus and hyper- moment boozing stops being desolation through a mellow for a zany baller anthem that active synths suggest he’s going fun and starts to get terrifying. haze of Laurel Canyon beauty. pops like bubble gum. to be just fi ne.

Iggy Azalea feat. Old Crow Weezer Lana Del Rey 19 Charli XCX 20 Medicine Show 21 “Back to the Shack” 22 “Brooklyn Baby” “Fancy” “Sweet Amarillo” Imagine there’s no Radi- Lana making fun of hipsters is On paper, it sounds ridiculous: Ten years ago, Old Crow turned tude. It’s easy if you try: On sorta like Ted Cruz making fun a Dirty South throwdown by a Dylan fragment into “Wagon this comeback single, Rivers of assholes. But when she pouts, way of . . . Australia? But “Fancy” Wheel.” Here’s the sequel: a Cuomo apologizes to the fans “My boyfriend’s in a band/He ruled the summer of ’14, thanks pristine cowboy ballad based he’s tortured for years by “rock- plays guitar while I sing Lou in no small part to Charli XCX’s on an outtake from the Pat Gar- in’ out like it’s ’94” with some Reed,” she speaks for genera- weapons-grade hook. rett and Billy the Kid sessions. perfect power-pop guitar buzz. tions of cool-kid dreamers.

Tove Lo The Black Keys Caribou Drake 23 “Habits (Stay High)” 24 “Gotta Get Away” 25 “Can’t Do 26 “0 to 100/ Without You” The Catch Up” This ode to self-medication is The closing track on Turn both a little bit Lorde (the cushy, Blue is a dazed and confused Canadian avant-pop experi- The year’s most bodacious post-hip-hop beat) and a little Seventies-radio scorcher, right menter Dan Snaith (a.k.a. Car- bragfest: six minutes that pan bit (opening lines: “Eat down to the Stones guitar strut, ibou) goes all-in on dance-fl oor across the whole Drake saga. my dinner in the bathtub/Then bell-bottom-blues grind and soul and shows us how smooth He even claims he’s got as good

I go to sex clubs”). cowbell thump. and subtle EDM can be. a jump shot as Steph Curry. IMAGES BOURNE/REDFERNS/GETTY PHIL

34 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 Started my Camry. Rescued a dog. Searched for the owners. Uncovered a plot. Escaped with the evidence. Took a leap of faith. Left them all behind. Kept the dog. ONE BOLD CHOICE LEADS TO ANOTHER.

The 2015 Camry. Our boldest Camry ever. toyota.com/camry Prototype shown with options. Production model will vary. ©2014 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. 27. Thurston Moore “Grace Lake” OF Seven wordless minutes of pure guitar bliss and blaze, REISSUES THE YEAR as only Moore can do it. Dylan let the world into his basement, CSNY revisited their wildest tour, plus 28. Prince “This Could Be Us” defi nitive sets from , the Allmans and more By David Fricke Prince turned a jokey Twit- ter hashtag into a sparkling sex jam. Voilà! Finally 29. Miranda Lambert Bob Dylan released: “Smokin’ and Drinkin’ ” The Basement Tapes Dylan in The country star teams with Complete: The Boot- 1968 Little Big Town for this love- 1 leg Series Vol. 11 ly, bittersweet ballad. 30. “Magic” In 1967, Dylan was far of the A gently burbling beat and pop-star grid: writing and an aching chorus made this recording with his ’66 road 2014’s chillest love song. warriors in upstate New York seclusion. The rough clatter 31. EMA “So Blonde” of bar-gig covers, acutely re- Scream yourself hoarse on fl ective ballads and apocalyp- the most empowering alt- rock rager Hole never made. tic surrealism that emerged became the greatest acciden- 32. Maroon 5 “Animals” tal album ever made. This box Don’t even bother trying to set is that season of discovery resist this hook. It’ll be in complete: Dylan in extend- your head until 2016. ed, pivotal rebirth as a singer, storyteller and, with the Band, 33. Jackson Browne collaborator. Rock’s greatest “The Birds of St. Marks” songwriter was, after a rock- Memories of youth in the Sixties, reflected through et ride through protest and decades of lived truth. electricity, becoming a voice for all America. 34. Sylvan Esso “Cof ee” We haven’t loved a trip-hop vibe-out this much since the Mike Bloomfi eld The Allman summer of 1997. 2 The Beatles 3 From His Head to His 4 Brothers Band 35. First Aid Kit Heart to His Hands The 1971 Fillmore East The Beatles’ longest, most “Master Pretender” Recordings These alt-country-loving eclectic album was the last to The late guitar hero’s friend Swedes sing like true sweet- be mixed by them in mono and Al Kooper curated this inci- In the year that rock’s hardiest hearts of the rodeo. issued that way – in Britain in sive retrospective, drawing on a improvising band finally re- 1968. This vinyl reissue marks lifetime of treble, grit and maj- tired, the March ’71 weekend 36. Beverly “Honey Do” its fi rst American release, as esty, right up to a last, searing that produced At Fillmore East A garage-pop treat with the they intended you to hear it. 1980 live show with Bob Dylan. was unleashed in full. perfect ratio of fuzzed dis- tortion and melodic sugar. 37. Tom Petty and Chuck Berry Crosby, Stills, the Heartbreakers 5 Rock and Roll Music 6 I’m Just Like You: Sly’s 7 Nash and Young “Fault Lines” – Any Old Way You Stone Flower 1969-70 CSNY 1974 A barreling groove with a Choose It winningly sour narrator. After Stand!, before his 1970s This sprawling account of Here is rock’s Book of Genesis: free fall, Stone previewed the CSNY’s ’74 tour caught Amer- 38. YG feat. Young Jeezy 16 CDs of prime and rare Berry future of R&B – an eerie elec- ica’s only true supergroup at a and Rich Homie Quan from 1954 to ’79. Paul McCart- tro-hip-hop – in this brief run blazing, prolifi c high, making “My Hitta” ney wrote the liner-notes intro. of funky, dynamic productions. magic on the edge of chaos. Monumentally chronic beat plus extra-slick rhymes.

39. Priests “Doctor” The Posies Bob Carpenter A furious, exhilarating blast 8 Failure 9 Singles A’s and B’s 10 Silent Passage of punk-rock snarl. 1965-1970 The 1988 debut of this indie- Carpenter’s unissued 1974 40. Sleater-Kinney power-pop duo was classicist This L.A. band stretched the debut was a Canadian coun- “Bury Our Friends” jangle and chorales with alt- pummeling minimalism of its try-folk union of Nick Drake A great band’s guns-blazing rock edge. Failure was so good signature mantra, the ’66 hit and Gram Parsons, with help return to form after nearly that the Posies later became “Pushin’ Too Hard,” over near- from members of Little Feat. It

a decade apart. Hallelujah! half of the revived Big Star. ly a dozen hot, terse 45s. is now rescued treasure. © ELLIOTT LANDY/CORBIS

36 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

rollingstone.com/subscribenow

OF MOVIES THE YEAR From a boy to a birdman, from a gone girl to the potently present talents of two women directors, 2014 hit hardest by going rogue By Peter Travers

1 Boyhood 7 The Grand Budapest Hotel The smallest, quietest, least pushy fi lm of 2014 is also the doesn’t make year’s best and biggest emo- movies like other people. Bless tional powerhouse. For Boy- him. Beneath the confection hood, writer-director Richard of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Linklater carved out shoot- set in a luxury spa between the ing time over 12 years to tell two world wars, is a deep mel- the story of a then-six-year- ancholy personifi ed by a con- old Texas boy (stellar newcom- cierge, wonderfully played by er Ellar Coltrane) growing up Ralph Fiennes, who believes et- as the child of divorced par- iquette helps defi ne civilization. ents, indelibly played by and . 8 Unbroken But what about the risk if the actors got sick or worse? Who Here’s a stirring love letter does that? Linklater does that. from director Angelina Jolie Boyhood, sculpted from the to Louis Zamperini, an Olym- highs and lows of his own life, pic runner who found his cour- is his landmark, his purest per- age sorely tested in a Japanese sonal expression. POW camp. Jack O’Connell as Louis and Miyavi as his sadis- 2 Birdman BOY TO MAN Ellar Coltrane grows from ages six to 18, from kid stuf tic guard are both superb, but to the brink of college, in Boyhood, 2014’s crowning achievement. it’s Jolie who took a story Hol- Nothing this year had the lywood ignored for decades, got power to make us drunk on () and his famed mund Pike, in a fi reball turn as it done and made it resonate. movies again like Birdman, 1965 voting-rights march from Ben Af eck’s cheated-on wife, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s cine- Selma, Alabama, to Montgom- takes us to hell and back. 9 Under the Skin matic roller coaster about a ery. Oyelowo is magnificent, Hollywood superhero (Michael and DuVernay makes every 6 Whiplash This year brought many un- Keaton) trying to get respect moment intimate and electric. der-the-radar gems, includ- on Broadway. Keaton gives the In only his second film as a ing Snowpiercer, Locke, Love performance of the year in this 5 Gone Girl director, Damien Chazelle Is Strange, Nightcrawler, Force whirling comic assault in which scores a breakout by dipping Majeure, Dear White People, the laughs leave bruises. Gillian Flynn’s bestseller about into his own musical educa- Mr. Turner, A Most Violent a marriage gone lethally wrong tion to show us a young jazz Year, Leviathan and Citizen- 3 Foxcatcher becomes, in the hands of direc- drummer (Miles Teller) damn four, but the one I can’t get out tor and Flynn’s near destroyed by an instruc- of my head is Jonathan Glazer’s This true story of wrestling, incisive script, a searing social tor (an Oscar-bound J.K. Sim- Under the Skin, in which a nev- wealth, insanity and murder about the lost art of mak- mons) who’s never happy un- er-better becomes a chilling work of art in ing a relationship work. Rosa- less there’s blood on the sticks. plays an alien cruising Scotland the hands of fi lmmaker Bennett for men she can understand. Miller, and performances from Steve Carell, Channing Tatum 10 Interstellar and Mark Ruf alo that mark high points in their careers. ’s space odys- sey is the only epic on my list. 4 Selma His fi lm is as concerned with a relationship between parent Kudos to director Ava DuVer- Michael (Matthew McConaughey) and nay, who blows the dust of his- Keaton hits child () as Boy- an acting tory in Selma and cuts straight hood is. Both fi lms make perfect high in to its beating heart. It’s a big Birdman. bookends for a movie year that

FROM TOP: MATT LANKES/IFC FILMS, 4; FOX SEARCHLIGHT subject: Martin Luther King Jr. got good when it got personal.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 39

OF BEST TV THE YEAR True detectives, breakout broads, scathing , and Shonda Rhimes asking the question on everyone’s mind By Rob Shef eld

the name of science. But the McConaughey’s bedroom role-playing opens up 1 Manson Lamps the NSFW feelings they spend True Detective the rest of their lives ignoring. An hour of erotic agony, from a Damn, just look at those eyes. drama that never plays it safe. The way he fiddles with a crushed Lone Star beer can and Selina Meyer Hails muses, “Time is a fl at circle.” 8 to the Chief Matthew McConaughey faces all the horror of True Detec- tive with his vacant Joe Walsh- Armando Iannucci’s political after-electroshock stare, which satire had a daring plot twist only makes it more chilling. nobody saw coming – Julia Nothing else this year could Louis-Dreyfus’ toxic-tongue top True Detective. The South- vice president somehow stum- ern Gothic noir got some new bles into the Oval Of ce, with shivers out of the cop-show cli- Crazy eyes: her path fi nally clear to take ché: Fighting monsters turns McConaughey’s over. Hopefully, now she can you into one. But the most ter- True Detective implement her domestic agen- rifying monster in it? The one da: “God, I would love to fuck lurking in McConaughey’s eyes. peals like Jimmy Page’s “Stair- Yael Stone’s Morello, who used a fi r e fi g h t e r . ” way to Heaven” solo. On trial to seem like a harmless nit- Abbi and Ilana for his life, with his despised wit. Until we get a fl ashback Amy Schumer 2 Hit the Big Town father as judge, Tyrion fi nally to her previous life as a psy- 9 Declares War Broad City snaps and rails against his fam- chotic stalker. It’s a profound- Inside Amy Schumer ily: “I wish I had enough poi- ly sad, cruelly funny highlight Abbi: “What’s an Arc de Tri- son for the whole pack of you!” from A woman watches her boy- omphe?” Ilana: “It’s when two Only Dinklage could pull it of . – the superb second season of friend play a Call of Duty-style dudes go down on us, butt to A true mind-blower. And not the prison drama everybody combat video game. Hey, that butt, then you and I do Oprah just in that “your skull in the assumed was just a one-shot. looks fun. So she takes a turn. hands.” How did the rest of us Mountain’s hands” kind of way. Except she fi nds out that her function before we met these Goes Long adventure as a female soldier two ladies? The Broad City Bert Cooper’s 6 Last Week Tonight is a little dif erent. (“My char- BFFs were the comedy rookies 4 Dancing Farewell acter was just raped.” “That’s of the year. To celebrate Abbi’s Mad Men Last Week Tonight was the never happened to me – you 26th birthday, they raise hell in year’s triumph, as Oliver must have pressed the wrong a fancy restaurant and get the It was sad to see Bert Cooper defi ed our click-click-click at- button!”) In an abundant year busboy stoned. It all ends with take a final bow. But what a tention spans with long-form for comedy, Schumer really them cuddling in a hospital bed farewell: Ghost Bert gives Don rants about political crises, dropped the bomb. at 3 a.m., eating cake while lis- Draper one last piece of advice, from Net neutrality to Right tening to the old man in the singing “The Best Things in Said Fred. What do you know – ShondaLandia! next bed die. A perfect Broad Life Are Free,” dancing in socks somebody scored a hit betting 10 How to Get Away City moment – brutal, tender, with the kind of footwork that on the intelligence of the Amer- With Murder hilarious. More, please. made a Broadway star out of ican people. It fi gures it took a Robert Morse, now 83. As Bert British geek to make it happen. If anything could sum up the The Trial of Tyrion himself would say: Bravo. madness of 2014, it would have 3 Game of Thrones Lizzy Caplan’s to be the pivotal scene from Morello Goes 7 Heartbreak Hotel Shonda Rhimes’ latest sex- If TV shows are the new rock 5 Gangsta Masters of Sex and-murder soap. Law pro- bands, and seasons are the Orange Is the New Black fessor Viola Davis holds up a new albums, Game of Thrones’ A couple of Fifties sex research- phone and utters the immortal fourth season is some kind of All the jailbirds at Litchfi eld ers – and Lizzy words: “Why is your penis on a blood-crazed women’s penitentiary have Caplan – sneak of to a posh dead girl’s phone?” The ques- IV epic. And Peter Dinklage’s some dark shit in their past – hotel for a little horizontal lab tion of the year. Anyone got an

courtroom rampage of bile that’s how they got there. Even work. It’s supposed to be all in answer? K. SHORT/HBO MICHELE

40 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

WWWWW ROLLING STONE

“SIMPLY SOUND “ROLLS ROYCE QUALITY” BETTER IN MONO” THE NATION NPR “THE RESULT… “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD IS JAW DROPPING” THE BEATLES SOUND Q MAGAZINE W W W W W LIKE THIS BEFORE” CNET “BOASTS AUTHENTIC SOUND” “THESE LPS ARE USA TODAY HEAVEN” PSYCHOBABBLE “THE FANATIC’S ULTIMATE POSSESSION” “THE MOST CRUCIAL THE TIMES W W W W W BEATLES RELEASE” VH1 “AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE HEARD” “A SONIC TRIUMPH...” GUITAR PLAYER THE ABSOLUTE SOUND

Available At

U z www.thebeatles.com

Amazon, Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affi liates. “The female species is, like, one of the most essential reasons why our race still continues.” —Pharrell Williams

Geldof’s Anti-Ebola All-Stars It’s been 30 years since , Bono, and a lot of other awesome 1980s U.K. stars recorded “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to fi ght famine in Ethiopia. In November, Bob Geldof called up Bono, One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Chris Martin and Ellie Goulding to record a new version for the Ebola crisis. Geldof admits it’s not his favorite tune: “I associate it with the meat counter Chris Martin channeled at my local supermarket. I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Give me the fucking , dude.’ ” Stevie Wonder.

KATY ROARS BACK lashed out at the paparazzi on tour in Australia: “You have no respect, no integrity, no character.”

POP, ROYALTY Harry Styles met a 16-weeks-pregnant Kate Middleton at a London theater. “I said, ‘Congratulations on the bump,’ ” said Styles, adding, “She didn’t look bumpy.”

AB-WHO DHABI kicked of their 50th- anniversary tour at an Abu Dhabi arena. Highlight: fi rst “Squeeze Box” performance in 32 years! High Bleachers BleachersCAPTION brought LEDE their big hooks to a party at DummyL.A.’s Boulevard3 tktkt nightclub, hosted by FULFILLINGNESS President ROLLING STONE and Fiat. “I’ve never played festival gig, Dylan Obama honored hero Stevie on a stage that high,” says frontman Jack harped on Wonder with the Presidential Pharrell Antonof“Tangled , who Up wraps in up his fall tour this was also in month. “I’m going to incorporate something Medal of Freedom. “It was Blue” and played one of the greater days of town, for the

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © BAND AID TRUST/BRIAN INFPHOTO.COM ANGELO; ARIS/CAMERA KOURY REYNOLDS/EPA/LANDOV; MICHAEL THOMPSON/GETTY IMAGES; MARK IMAGES; PRESS/REDUX,SUNDER/AP 2; KGC-375/STARMAXINC.COM/NEWSCOM; BAIJU like that into the stage show for the next tour.” my life,” says Wonder. Formula 1 Grand Prix.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RANDOM NOTES

I Knew You Were Dribble Of cial NYC tourism ambassador Taylor Swift was liking her new job, until she had to sit through a loss by the hapless New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. “The dancers came out to ‘Shake It Of ,’ and she got a little red. It was kind of sweet,” said , who was at the same game. “She’s like Cinderella or something.”

Jay Z and Beyoncé danced the night away. “They both kept putting their hands on each other’s butts,” said one guest. Solange’s Joy Ride Solange Knowles tied the knot with 51-year-old video director Alan Ferguson at a big white GARDEN STATE wedding in New Orleans. The BRO-DOWN Jon COME couple planned to enter the Bon Jovi attended TOGETHER Paul church on white bicycles, but the premiere of McCartney and the groom got a fl at tire and Jon Stewart’s fi lm, Dhani Harrison had to walk (d’oh!). Later, they Rosewater. “It’s hung out at an celebrated with shrimp, grits the New Jersey event honoring and an all-star dance party. connection,” said Stella McCartney Stewart. “We have at New York’s to stick together.” Lincoln Center.

MILEY SMILES Miley Cyrus and a distracted Patrick Schwarzenegger got close before Miley’s phallus-themed 22nd birthday in West Hollywood.

WEIR ARE FAMILY Bob Weir took daughters Shala and Chloe and wife Natascha (from left) to the . CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: INFPHOTO.COM; JAMES DEVANEY/GC IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; BRASTED/ PATRICK JOSH MCMULLAN/SIPA USA; KRAVITZ/AMA2014/FILMMAGIC; JEFF HARRY IMAGES; GETTY HOW/ CURTIS/STARTRAKSPHOTO.COM MARION WIREIMAGE;

44 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 Put the “happy” in holidays.

GET iPHONE 6 FOR $0 DOWN AT AT&T

AND NOW GET A $150 CREDIT FOR EACH LINE YOU SWITCH. Req’s porting your number.

iPhone 6 isn’t just bigger – it’s better in every way. Larger, yet thinner. More powerful, yet power effi cient. It’s a new generation of iPhone.

OUR FASTEST WAY TO ORDER IS ATT.COM

Bill Credit: Requires porting an eligible number to AT&T from another carrier. New lines only; excludes upgrades. Must purchase a new smartphone via an AT&T NextSM installment agmt & activate a new qual. postpaid line of wireless service. Excludes GoPhone,® Lifeline, Residential Wireless, and select discounted plans. Must be active & in good standing for 45 days. Credit rec’d w/in 3 bill cycles. Limit one credit per eligible ported number. May not be combinable w/other credits, discounts, and offers. $0 Down with AT&T NextSM: Tax due at sale. If wireless service is cancelled, remaining device balance is due. Limit four financed devices per consumer wireless account may apply. Avail. at select locations only. Visit att.com/next for details. Return/Restocking: Restocking fee up to $35 may apply. Gen. Wireless Svc. Terms: Subject to Wireless Customer Agmt. Credit approval req’d. Other Monthly Charges/Line: May include taxes & federal/state universal svc. charges, Reg. Cost Recovery Charge (up to $1.25), gross receipts surcharge, Admin. Fee & other gov’t assessments which are not gov’t req’d charges. Terms subject to change and may be modified or discontinued at any time. Coverage & svc. not avail. everywhere. Other restr’s apply & may result in svc. termination. See a store or att.com/150billcredit for credit details. Screen images simulated. ©2014 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

THE SECRET DEAL TO SAVE THE PLANET Inside the high-stakes drama behind Obama’s China climate talks H By Jeff Goodell H

week after democrats was stunned when the agreement was an- Stern knew that Xie, with whom he has took a drubbing in the midterm nounced on November 12th. shared many dinners at climate conferenc- elections, as pundits were sug- Negotiations started in February when es all over the world, was a straight shoot- gesting President Obama should Todd Stern, the State Department’s lead er whose goal, like his own, was to actually start packing up the Oval Ofce, climate negotiator, put in an explorato- make progress on solving the climate cri- A he stood beside Chinese Presi- ry phone call to his counterpart in the sis. “I made the case that if the deal were dent Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the Chinese government, Xie Zhenhua. Stern done well, and it had enough ambition, People in Beijing and announced a histor- was in Seoul, South Korea, and would it could help to build momentum for Paris ic climate deal that may be one of the most soon be joining his boss, Secretary of State next year,” recalls Stern. “Xie was interest- significant accomplishments of his presi- John Kerry, in Beijing for a series of high- ed. But there were obviously a lot of issues dency. In the works for nearly a year, the level meetings with the Chinese leadership, to work out. So we proceeded cautiously.” agreement unfolded in a series of secret including Xi Jinping. Kerry, long a force- Obama arrived in the White House meetings in the United States and China ful advocate for action on climate change, in 2009 determined to take on climate and was carried out with the brinkman- simply wanted Stern to see if there was change. In his first term in ofce, he in- ship and bravado of a Vegas poker game. any possibility the upcoming talks might stituted tough new automotive fuel- The agreement comes at a time when yield a joint public statement on the issue. efciency standards and pushed through awareness of the risks of climate change Beyond that, the State Department team $90 billion for clean energy in the stimulus

has never been higher, thanks to the so- sensed that the Chinese were looking for bill. But after legislation to limit CO2 pol- bering accretion of extreme weather events areas of common ground to help improve lution failed to pass in the Senate in 2010, around the world. But the prospects for relations. White House counselor John Po- climate change seemed to slide down the significant action to reduce carbon pollu- desta, President Obama’s de facto point list of issues that engaged the president. tion have never been lower. Which is why person on climate, agreed that it was an That changed after his re-election, when virtually everyone in the climate world idea worth pursuing. he ordered the Environmental Protec-

Illustration by Victor Juhasz RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 47 tion Agency to write new rules to govern But for the U.S., nothing with China traveled to Rancho Mirage, California, to carbon emissions from power plants and comes easy. “The relationship between meet with Obama for two days of infor- brought in Podesta. Early this past sum- China and the U.S. has been on a downhill mal talks, where, among other things, they mer, those plans took shape when the slide,” says author Orville Schell, who has struck a deal to limit emissions of hydro- EPA finally announced its plan to crack been writing about China since the 1970s fluorocarbons, a climate-eating gas. Schell down on carbon pollution from existing and now heads the Center on U.S.-China describes their relationship as wary, but power plants. Relations at the Asia Society in New York. pragmatic. “There is no warmth between But Podesta understood that no mat- The Chinese fear the U.S. has a long-term them,” he says. “There is a lack of trust, ter what the U.S. did, it wouldn’t matter strategy to contain China, while the U.S. a paranoid attitude toward each other. without larger global cooperation. The fears China’s increasing strength means But also an awareness that they have to last major round of international climate trouble for American interests in Asia work together.” negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 had and beyond. Obama’s hand was strengthened in early been a festival of conspiracy and betray- On top of the rising superpower ten- June, when the EPA formally announced al, ending with an 11th-hour, closed-door sions, climate negotiations are made more the Clean Power Plan, which would cut confrontation between rich and poor na- difcult by the fact that China is a develop- carbon from power plants by 30 percent tions that only deepened the cynicism ing nation. It may be the world’s number- by 2030. The result of a 2013 executive ac- among many that the world would ever one polluter by volume, but its per-capita tion in which Obama instructed the agen- strike an agreement to cut carbon pollu- emissions are far lower than ours. The Chi- cy to come up with new regulations on tion. A year from now, the world is set to nese argue (with some justification) that power-plant emissions, the plan was well- meet in Paris for another summit. Would global warming is a problem that has been constructed and would likely hold up in this next meeting be any diferent? Prob- largely caused by 200 years of fossil-fuel court. It was an important sign of the seri- ably not, concluded Podesta and the State burning, mostly in the U.S. and Europe, ousness of the administration’s efort, and Department’s climate negotiators, unless and so it is the West that bears most of the it gave U.S. negotiators leverage to say to they could get China to the table. responsibility for fixing it. Which meant the Chinese, “Hey, we mean business.” It was not just because China was the that if U.S. negotiators were going to entice A few weeks later, a swarm of U.S. diplo- world’s biggest polluter (an honor the U.S. China into making a commitment to cut mats, including Kerry, Podesta and Stern, had held until about 2006), but the Chi- carbon emissions, the U.S. needed to jump flew to Beijing for the Strategic and Eco- IT IS VERY HARD FOR ONE SIDE TO BELIEVE WHAT THE OTHER IS SAYING,” SAYS ONE CHINESE OBSERVER. “THERE’S A LONG HISTORY OF SUSPICION ON BOTH SIDES. nese also hold tremendous sway over de- first. But Obama’s hands were tied. The nomic Dialogue, a high-level diplomat- veloping nations of the world. Get China U.S. Congress was not going to pass global- ic meeting between the United States and to take action, and chances were good warming legislation, so the only option China. I accompanied the U.S. delega- that , , South Korea, Mexico, was executive action. Everything depend- tion on this trip. There was a lot of talk and other increasingly prosper- ed on the EPA rules on power-plant pol- about what kind of commitment the Chi- ous nations would come along too. lution, which were still in the works, and nese might make in Paris and about what But moving climate to the top of the dependent on withstanding court chal- the U.S. could do to strengthen that com- agenda, Podesta realized, would be dif- lenges – not at all a sure thing. mitment, but no indication, on or of the ficult. “In China, the politics of climate Still, after some discussion between the record, that a secret deal was in the works. change are diferent than in the U.S.,” says White House and the State Department, But clearly, talks were serious. The day Li Shuo, a Greenpeace activist in Beijing. Obama gave them the go-ahead to pur- before the ofcial meeting, Podesta and “No one in China denies climate change sue a deal. After Stern made the phone Stern, as well as U.S. Energy Secretary is a problem. But we have more immedi- call to Xie in February, Kerry broached Ernest Moniz, spent a full day at the Di- ate problems – like air and water pollu- the idea with many key figures in the Chi- aoyutai State Guest House with their Chi- tion, most of which come from our depen- nese leadership, including President Xi, nese counterparts, going over economic dence on coal.” According to one study, on his swing through Asia a few days later. modeling results and various technolog- air pollution contributed to the prema- The response: “ ‘Oh, this is interesting,’ but ical options, trying to get a sense of what ture death of 1.2 million people in China they were not eager to pursue it,” Podes- the costs of various levels of carbon reduc- in 2010. “China today is a lot like Amer- ta says. It became clear it would take pres- tions would be. ica was in the 1960s and Seventies – the idential muscle to get any kind of a deal In addition, Stern and Podesta had rivers are on fire, the sky polluted, and the moving. In mid-March, Obama sent a pri- one-on-one meetings with Xie Zhenhau rising middle class is not going to put up vate letter to President Xi that brought and Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (“the man with it anymore,” says Jigar Shah, a solar- up a range of subjects, from the nuclear- with the portfolio,” Podesta says). “They industry pioneer. For U.S. negotiators, it ization of North Korea to territorial dis- told us we might be able to put a deal to- was important to convince the Chinese putes in the South China Sea, but which gether, but not until 2015,” Podesta re- that cutting carbon pollution would not also pushed for a climate agreement be- calls. “But Todd and I both thought there only clean up the air but also lead to more tween the two nations. The gist of the let- was potential to do something earlier.” political stability for the regime. “They ter, according to Podesta, was that “ ‘this U.S. negotiators knew that the sooner the will have a social revolt on their hands if could be meaningful, if we both make deal could be announced, the more lever- they don’t come up with a way of dealing serious post-2020 contributions.’ ” age they would have to shape the outcome with this,” U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus Soon after Xi, whom Schell describes of the Paris negotiations. told me bluntly when I was in Beijing this as “a ruthless utilitarian,” ascended to the But the complexity of these negotiations past summer. role of China’s president in 2013, he had is hard to overestimate. For one thing, CO2

48 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 cleared by the Standing Committee [i.e., A NEW CLIMATE the leaders of China’s Communist Party],” The U.S. and China “are pulling in the Podesta says. same direction,” says For the U.S. team, the carbon- White House climate reduction targets that they put on the table adviser John Podesta were a mix of technical capacity and politi- (far right), with cal aspiration. They had to be deep enough Secretary of State to be meaningful, but they also had to be John Kerry this past politically plausible, given the fact that July in Beijing. Below: there is no chance of anything moving Heavy pollution in through Congress in the next two years October prompted China to raise its and the unpredictability of the 2016 pres- smog alert to the idential election. The number they came second-highest level. up with, 26 to 28 percent by 2025, repre- sents the greenhouse-gas reductions pro- posed under existing U.S. law, plus possi- ble further reductions based on executive actions the president may take during the rest of his term. “It’s a serious commit- ment,” says Stern, essentially requiring the United States to double its rate of car- bon reductions in the next decade. Twen- ty-eight percent, says Stern, puts the U.S. on a straight-line path to 80 percent re- ductions – from 1990 levels – by 2050, a broadly shared goal within the interna- tional climate community. Still, these targets – which were volun- tary, after all – were nowhere near enough to put the world on track to limit warm- ing to 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 de- grees Fahrenheit), which is the level sci- entists have identified as the threshold for dangerous climate change. But negotia- tors on both sides knew the deal could be pollution is on some level a proxy for eco- Paris next year. Instead Xi sent Vice Pre- nonetheless deeply significant, for it could nomic development, so agreeing to cut mier Zhang Gaoli, who asked to meet with shift the political calculus of internation- carbon emissions is tantamount to call- Obama in New York, which, Podesta said, al climate negotiation and virtually assure ing for limits on economic growth – a tall was “unusual.” some kind of success in Paris next year, order on its own, but even more difcult in At that meeting, Zhang told Obama that when an agreement to replace the 1997 an atmosphere of deepening distrust. “It Xi had decided to do the deal – and that he Kyoto Protocol is supposed to be finalized. is very hard for either side to believe what wanted to announce it in Beijing around “The question was, once we settled the other is saying,” says Li Shuo. “There the time of the APEC summit. But many on the targets, was this deal significant are many cultural barriers, and a long details were still unresolved – including enough for an announcement from the history of suspicion on both sides.” the all-important question of how strong presidents of both countries?” says Po- On the final day of the conference, I the targets would be. For an agreement to desta. Stern and Podesta weren’t sure.

took a walk around the grounds of the Di- have any meaning, the U.S. and the Chi- By China refusing to cap CO2 emissions aoyutai State Guest House with Stern. nese had to commit to carbon reductions until 2030, the U.S. team knew it would He seemed tense, unsure any deal could that were both significant and credible. be open to the charge that we were giv- be worked out, and not even clear what During the last week of October, Podesta ing China license to increase its carbon kind of goal the Chinese might be willing and Stern traveled to Beijing to meet with pollution for 16 years, while making cost- to commit to: “Will it be a carbon cap? A Xie Zhenhau and others at the National ly promises to double our own reduc- coal cap? A renewable-energy quota? We Development and Reform Commission. tions in the same period. But they saw are not sure.” It was there that the Chinese finally put a solution: The Chinese had mentioned The U.S. negotiators left China in a numbers on the table. The key figure was they’d set an internal goal of generating somber mood. During the first week of their pledge to cap carbon emissions by 20 percent of their nation’s power from September, Obama sent President Xi a 2030. While carbon restrictions that don’t nonfossil fuel sources by 2030. (To meet second letter. “It was a focused two-page go into efect for 16 years in the future may the goal, the Chinese will essentially have letter on what could be delivered during not sound significant, for a country as big to build the equivalent of the entire U.S. the November APEC visit to Beijing, and and fast-growing as China, such a promise electrical system in the next 16 years – and it emphasized the climate joint announce- translates into huge reductions over time. do it with wind, solar and nukes.) U.S. ne- ment,” Podesta told me. But if Xi was se- (Climate scientist Raymond Pierrehum- gotiators pushed the Chinese to make this rious about pursuing this deal, he didn’t bert estimates that the cap, if extended goal part of the agreement. But the Chi- show it by appearing at the U.N. Climate out to 2060, would reduce China’s carbon nese were hesitant to go public with it. Summit in New York later that month. pollution by 790 gigatons over business as In addition, they wanted language in the It was interpreted by some outsiders as usual.) U.S. negotiators were not overjoyed agreement about diferent obligations be- a signal that the Chinese were not gear- by China’s ofer. “We wanted sooner than tween the developed and the developing

FROM TOP: U.S. DEPARTMENT; STATE GA LA/IMAGINECHINA/AP IMAGES ing up to make a serious commitment in 2030, but they told us that 2030 had been world that the U.S. team couldn’t live with.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 49 For the second time in just a few months, through. “In one move, Obama and Xi nothing for the next 16 years is only true if Podesta and Stern left Beijing not sure broke the logjam of climate politics,” says you believe that Chinese leaders are going they’d be able to make a deal at all. Jairam Ramesh, a member of Indian Par- to wake up on New Year’s Eve in 2029 and In the next few days, there was a flurry liament and a longtime climate negotia- suddenly build 1,000 gigawatts of clean en- of e-mail and phone exchanges. The APEC tor. “Until now, China has insisted that the ergy in one night.” summit in Beijing was just a week away, U.S. and the EU are largely responsible for The more substantial question is wheth- and the Chinese clearly wanted to have climate change. But this raises the bar for er China and the U.S. can follow through something big to announce. But as Obama other nations.” on their commitments. Ironically, the Chi- flew to Beijing, there was still no deal. Po- The deal also has huge economic impli- nese may have more credibility than the desta told the president they were close to cations both for fossil-fuel industries that U.S. “ ‘Face’ is very important to the Chi- an agreement, but they were still juggling dominated the 20th century (i.e., the los- nese,” says Schell. “When they commit the language. The deal had to be “some- ers) and the alternative-energy entrepre- to something publicly, they do it.” Podes- thing we could feel good about,” says Pod- neurs poised to grab a much bigger piece ta agrees: “The Standing Committee has esta. “Otherwise, we could still walk away.” of the world’s energy mix (i.e., the winners). approved this commitment. The People’s The day before the summit began, Po- “There is no question where the world is Congress will approve it. It will be imbed- desta and Stern hammered out the last headed,” says Podesta. “Instead of think- ded in Chinese law. That is significant.” details. The Chinese agreed to go pub- ing of the U.S. and China as two captains The U.S. commitment, on the other lic with the 20 percent renewable goal, on two diferent teams, it’s a sign to every- hand, stands on shakier political ground. as well as agreed to language that they one that we are both pulling in the same As David Victor, professor of Internation-

would work to hit the 2030 CO2 cap ear- direction.” For tech investors, this kind of al Relations at the University of California, lier and to make clear that these reduc- high-level alignment has a powerful im- San Diego, and author for the Intergovern- mental Panel on Climate Change, puts it, “It’s not clear yet if it is an Obama climate A CANDIDATE WHO DENIES THE agreement or a U.S. climate agreement.” In the Senate, Mitch McConnell has already REALITY OF CLIMATE CHANGE,” SAYS said that he will use his new powers as ma- jority leader in 2015 to launch a full-scale PODESTA, “WILL HAVE A HARD TIME attack on the EPA rules on power-plant pol- lution – if that attack is successful, it would GETTING ELECTED PRESIDENT. be all but impossible for the U.S. to meet its carbon-reduction commitment. tions were made in the context of a long- pact on strategic decisions about where to Podesta, who will leave the adminis- term deep decarbonization efort (a point put their money. It will particularly bene- tration in early 2015 and will likely play that Podesta says was “very important” to fit clean-tech companies that can help the a senior role in Hillary Clinton’s not-yet- the president). In return, Chinese negotia- Chinese figure out ways to integrate mas- announced presidential campaign, relishes tors made sure the distinction between the sive amounts of renewable energy into the fight. “They can investigate us, harass obligations of the developed and the devel- their grid. “This is not some bullshit deal us, try to defund us,” warns Podesta. “But oping world was not lost in the agreement. between [former U.S. Secretary of Energy] the president won’t flinch on this. This is The next evening, Obama and Xi met Steven Chu and Tsinghua University,” says our line in the sand.” privately to discuss the agreement. “It was Shah. “This is the U.S. government saying The fact that implementation of the EPA important to both Obama and Xi to have to American companies, ‘Go ahead, set up rules is likely to come in the middle of the real understanding where they were going shop in China – we’ve got your back.’ ” 2016 election campaign is just another with this, and to agree to keep talking Finally, the agreement eviscerates one part of the White House political strategy. throughout the year as we head toward of the favorite talking points of climate de- “What will become more apparent is that Paris,” says Podesta, who briefed Obama niers. “Their argument has always been a candidate who denies the reality of cli- beforehand. “The thing everyone wants to we can’t do anything to cut emissions be- mate change will have a hard time getting avoid is a last-minute Perils-of-Pauline sit- cause China is not doing anything,” says elected president,” Podesta says. “The can- uation like we had in Copenhagen.” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of didate who says, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem, Rhode Island. “Well, now China is doing I think we can work to solve it’ is going to n china, response to the deal something pretty significant, while Re- win. I don’t think you ever go wrong play- was straightforward: President Xi publicans are still huddled in the dark cas- ing for higher ground.” had not only pledged to clean the air tle of denial.” However this plays out in the U.S., it and reduce carbon pollution, he had Of course, in the U.S., it took con- is an indisputable fact that this deal has I proved his diplomatic chops by strik- servatives 30 seconds to begin ham- changed the odds for a new global cli- ing a deal with the most powerful nation mering the deal as an economic suicide mate agreement in Paris in 2015. Big ques- on Earth. “Xi was like a hedge-fund man- pact, arguing that the U.S. had commit- tions remain about how much cash the ager who just acquired a trophy wife,” one ted to deep carbon reductions over the West will pony up to help the developing experienced Chinese observer notes. “It’s next decade, while the Chinese agreed world finance clean-energy projects and an affectation of being a great power.” to basically do nothing until 2030. In a adapt to climate change, but that can be In the developing world, there was crit- column titled “The Climate Pact Swin- resolved. “This is a sea change in how we icism of the low ambition of the carbon- dle,” Fox News regular Charles Kraut- think about solving the problem,” says Mo- reduction targets. “These commitments hammer called the agreement “the most hamed Adow, Christian Aid’s senior cli- are nowhere near the kinds of reductions one-sided deal since Manhattan sold for mate-change adviser in London. “We will we need to limit warming to 1.5 degrees $24 in 1626.” Among other things, Kraut- get a deal in Paris now, I’m certain of it. Celsius or even 2 degrees Celsius,” one hammer’s argument ignores China’s com- Will it be enough? No. But it will lay the South American activist told me. mitment to 20 percent nonfossil fuel power foundation for the future. And it will say But more practical-minded observers by 2030. As Sen. Whitehouse told me, “The to the world, for the first time, ‘We are se- saw the announcement as a major break- idea that China has committed to doing rious about this.’ ”

50 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

HAS JONG-UN KIM WORLD THREATENED WAR III OVER BUT ROGEN’S WHAT NEW MOVIE. WORRIES REALLY FAVORITE IS: AMERICA’S STONER SCHLUB CAN A MAN ADULT BE A RESPONSIBLE AND STILL MAKE A LIVING TELLING DICK JOKES? ★ AT ★ SETH ROGEN ★ THE BY JOSH EELLS CROSSROADS 53 Stone ||| ★ PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK Rolling SELIGER SETH ROGEN

t’s not every day you get the second is: Seth Rogen? That lovable he offices of rogen and to sit down with the guys who man-child who makes dopey movies with Goldberg’s production compa- might be responsible for start- his friends? The one who’s probably too ny – a Spanish-style bungalow ing World War III. And it’s defi- stoned to play a video game about a nucle- near the back of Sony Pictures nitely not every day that they’re ar war, much less incite a real one? What’s Studios, right next door to Adam getting baked when you do. a nice guy like him doing in a diplomatic T Sandler’s – used to be Louis B. “Hell-o!” booms Seth Rogen crisis like this? Mayer’s private dining room, back when on a June afternoon as the door “It’s funny, because we’ve been in the the lot belonged to MGM. Later on, it to his L.A. ofce swings open, world of North Korea for so long that was a classroom for MGM’s child stars revealing him and comedy part- when we heard it, we were like, ‘Yeah, like , Mickey Rooney and ner/hetero lifemate Evan Gold- OK,’ ” Rogen, 32, says. “They say crazy shit Elizabeth Taylor. (“This is where the kids berg preparing to take a mighty about America all the time. Literally, the all got hooked on drugs,” Rogen jokes.) hit from a bong. The pair co- opening scene of our movie is a little girl Now, there’s a big whiteboard with a note wrote and directed the new singing pretty much the exact thing they about a “jerk-of challenge,” and an exer- movie The Interview, in which a said about us.” cise ball that doesn’t seem to get much pair of bumbling entertainment “We have a file in the building some- use. A dozen multicolored index cards journalists played by James where of all the insane shit they say,” adds are thumbtacked to a bulletin board – Franco (a Ryan Seacrest-ish Goldberg. “They called Obama, like, ‘an the outline for their next movie – and the celebrity talk-show host) and Rogen (his evil monkey’ – you have to look up the sounds of NBA Jam fill the air. faithful, somewhat put-upon producer) exact wording, because whatever I say Rogen is dressed in his typical work land an interview with Kim Jong-un and won’t be as crazy as what it actually was.” uniform of a worn T-shirt and flip-flops, are enlisted by the CIA to assassinate him. (It was actually “wicked black monkey.”) accessorized with several days of scruf. It’s a movie no one expected to be well- Rogen admits that they did get called in In person, he’s trimmer and more kempt received in North Korea, where even tak- for a meeting with Sony’s North American than you’re conditioned to expect, but ing a picture of a statue of the Supreme CEO (“Any time a movie causes a country with the same doofily expressive face Leader could land you in a prison camp. to threaten nuclear retaliation, the higher- and bowling-league physique that plays But the trailer came out earlier that week, ups wanna get in a room with you”), but so well onscreen. (His friend and men- “FOR A JEWISH MOTHER, HAVING A COUNTRY WAGE WAR ON YOUR SON IS THE WORST,” ROGEN SAYS. “IF KIM JONG-UN ONLY KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING TO MY MOTHER!” and it turns out North Korea is way more otherwise he’s taking the bluster in stride. tor Judd Apatow says Rogen is built for pissed than anyone saw coming. He says he might stay away from South comedy the way LeBron is for basket- A spokesman for North Korea’s for- Korea for a while, just in case (although ball.) He laughs constantly, that trade- eign ministry has declared the movie “a Franco is attending an event at a Gucci mark Beavis-meets-Butt-Head cough, most wanton act of terrorism and war.” store in Hong Kong, which is supposed- like a motorcycle engine that won’t turn The “gangster filmmaker” has incited “a ly safe). “And in terms of getting the word over. (Goldberg says he would have made gust of hatred and rage” among the North out about the movie, it’s not bad,” Rogen a great voice for a Muppet.) On his desk is Korean people, and if the U.S. govern- points out. “If they actually make good on a hot-pink prescription bottle filled with ment allows the film to proceed, “merci- it, it would be bad for the world – but luck- some of Southern California’s finest me- less countermeasures” will be taken. The ily that doesn’t seem like their style. dicinal cannabis, which he absent-mind- threats made headlines from Al Jazeera “Although it did worry my mother,” he edly rolls into a tight joint. to the BBC; coincidentally or not, a few says. “For a Jewish mother, having a coun- Rogen and Goldberg are on their way days later the real Kim Jong-un launched try wage war on your son is the worst. No to a theater across the lot, where they’re a few ballistic test missiles. “Our stuf is Jewish mother should have to deal with going over some special effects for the in the news sometimes,” says a slightly that.” He pulls out his phone and reads movie. The Interview features hundreds dazed Goldberg, a rumpled 32-year-old the texts she sent him yesterday. of visual efects – even more than their in shorts and New Balances. “But this is Mrs. Rogen: Did you hear the news apocalyptic comedy This Is the End, diferent – this is real news.” today? An act of war? which literally showed the Hollywood Upon hearing all this, you may be Seth: Don’t worry. It’s crazy rhetoric. Hills being Raptured. “My respect for struck by two simultaneous thoughts. Mrs. Rogen: But how can we be sure?! Michael Bay quintupled when we start- The first is: classic North Korea. And Rogen laughs. “If Kim Jong-un only ed doing this shit,” says Goldberg, split- knew what he was doing to my moth- ting the joint with Rogen as they walk. Contributing editor Josh Eells wrote er! He would know he had exacted his They arrive in a theater with leather arm-

about Taylor Swift in September. revenge.” chairs and small bowls of pita and hum- OPENING SPREAD: SHIRT BY TURNBULL & ASSER, PANTS BY TOM FORD,SUSPENDERS BY WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND, TIE BY RALPH LAUREN,UNIFORMS FROM EARLY HALLOWEEN NYC.

54 ||| Rolling Stone December 18, 2014–January 1, 2015 Rogen and Goldberg fi rst started kick- ing around the idea for The Interview a few years ago, around the time despots like Saddam and Qaddafi were getting offed. They started joking about what might happen if a journalist got to inter- view one and was recruited to take him out. “I feel like it’s a conversation a lot of people have,” Rogen says. “Like, ‘Oh, Barbara Walters could have killed bin Laden,’ or whatever.” They knew relative- ly early on they wanted to make the tar- get a real-life dictator, and Kim Jong-il was the natural choice – but when he died and his son Kim Jong-un took over, they put the script on hold, in case he turned out to be cool. “There was a real moment where we were like, ‘Maybe this guy’s not bad!’ ” Rogen says. “And then we started reading about him killing his girlfriend and feed- ing his uncle to the dogs.” In fact, the change was a blessing in disguise. “Kim Jong-un is a lot closer in 1 age to Franco and me, which is better co- FROM MANCHILD TO MAN medically,” Rogen says. “And he also just seems a lot funnier. You see him in pic- While filming The Interview, James tures, he’s, like, laughing hysterically, but Franco and Randall Park take direction from Rogen (1), who got his start doing he’s an evil fuck! You’d probably like him, stand-up as a teen (2). Rogen and but you shouldn’t like him.” Franco met on Freaks and Geeks (3), They wrote the script with Dan Ster- where Rogen would write short scenes ling, a veteran of . (“We for their characters. “Those were seeds literally just hired a writer who’s smart- for the way we work now,” says Franco. er than us,” Rogen says.) They read tons of books. (“Well, we had them summarized for us.”) And then 3 when went, 2 which hadn’t happened when they wrote it, “We were like, ‘Oh, mus, and each grabs a small laser- my God, this lends even more pointer and takes a seat. credence to the fact that this “This is where we get to play could actually happen!’ ” Rogen with lasers,” Rogen says excitedly. says. “It was fucking weirder than “It’s fun to put them in people’s anything we had thought of.” eyes,” says Goldberg, aiming his For the role of Kim, they cast at the face of Franco on the big Randall Park, a Korean-Ameri- screen. He moves it southward. can actor best known for his work “And on their dicks.” on Veep. “Randall was the fi rst to “Sometimes me and Evan audition, and when he walked team up,” adds Rogen, their twin out of the room, we were liter- lasers dancing around Franco’s ally like, ‘Cancel everyone else,’ ” balls. Rogen says. “We had written him The ef ects supervisor cues up the fi rst They make tweaks for about an hour, as more robotic and strict – what you shot, a big crowd scene at the Pyongyang adjusting everything from the bright- would expect – but Randall played him airport. Goldberg says the crowd was ness of a pair of grapefruits to a climac- as a lot more sheepish and shy, which digitally borrowed from 22 Jump Street; tic chase scene involving a tank and a was much funnier.” Before fi lming, Park Rogen laughs, but they’re not kidding. helicopter. “We wanted this movie to packed on 15 pounds and shaved his head “Everyone else is Korean, I swear!” Rogen feel like it had a lot of scope to it,” Rogen into Kim’s distinctive crew cut. “I remem- says. “That’s the only exception we made!” says. “It’s set in all these dif erent coun- ber the fi rst time he walked on set,” Rogen Next, there’s an aerial shot of a North tries, you’re fl ying all over the world. . . .” recalls. “The whole crew was like, ‘Oh, Korean forest, which they fi lmed outside They found inspiration in action mov- shit – we’re really doing this.’ ” Vancouver. “Seth and I were born in that ies like Spy Game, as well as real-world After fi nishing the visual ef ects, Rogen forest,” Goldberg deadpans. thrillers like The Insider and Argo: “We and Goldberg grab some crackers from a Rogen: “We made the computer that kept saying we wanted it to feel like a kitchen and head to a dif erent theater,

TOP: ED ARAQUEL/; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF MATT LABOV we wrote Superbad on out of that wood.” real movie.” where their audio team is doing sound

December 18, 2014–January 1, 2015 Rolling Stone ||| 55 SETH ROGEN effects. (“Later on, we’ll taste things,” they get when they start to make the “McLovin” – were based on their actu- Goldberg jokes.) They change a bunch of other crack up.” al friends. sounds and add some more; at one point, As the sound guys fiddle with a few Rogen wasn’t the coolest kid in school, Rogen utters the words “You can just get more things, Rogen flips through his but he wasn’t an outcast either. He liked rid of the ‘balls deep’ line.” (They’d also e-mail. “What are you guys working on East Coast hip-hop (Wu-Tang Clan, previously asked for a “louder dick-flop next?” he asks them. ) and Nineties nu metal sound.”) During one scene, where a bunch “Dolphin Tale 2,” a sound guy says. (, White Zombie, Marilyn Man- of cellphones are going of, Rogen asks Rogen makes a dolphin sound. Then he son) and wore his hair in dreadlocks that if they can use the actual iPhone alert. starts in on a story he read about a fe- he dyed green. He was a little bit jock-y, Someone points out that playing rugby and earn- the movie is being released ing a brown belt in karate, by Sony, a competitor of until a foot injury prompt- Apple. Rogen chuckles: ed him to focus on come- “OK, then can we use that dy instead. He did stand- famous Xperia sound?” up about gym class and his Eventually they arrive grandparents and trying to at a scene where Rogen’s touch boobs, until a local character is, in the inter- casting call got him in est of international espio- front of Apatow and scored nage, called upon to hide him a role on Freaks and a small missile inside his Geeks. The idea was to rectum. (It’s that kind of go to Hollywood and get movie.) They play the mo- his foot in the door, and ment back a few times, Goldberg would join him Rogen and Goldberg after college and they’d cracking up every time. Fi- make their own movies. nally, Goldberg speaks up. Which is more or less how “I’m wondering if it sounds it went. too slimy . . . going into his Rogen moved to L.A. butt?” with his parents in 1999, “Come on!” Rogen says. when he was 17. “He was a “I’m not saying it’s too gross! I’m just little less open, a little more reserved,” re- thinking about laughter.” calls Franco, one of his fellow Freaks. “I “It’s pretty funny,” counters Rogen. ★ ARTIST AND ADVOCATE ★ don’t remember him smiling as much.” “You want, like, a slurp? A scrape-y Rogen testifying about Alzheimer’s in Their co-star Jason Segel had an apart- sound? A sandpaper-y, scrape-y sound?” front of a Senate subcommittee ment nearby, and Rogen and Franco “Maybe just a slight suction-y sound,” would hang out there and watch Kubrick Goldberg says. The sound guy punches a movies and rehearse. “At some point, Seth few buttons, and a slight suction-y sound male dolphin researcher whose dolphin started writing these little scenarios for fills the theater. Rogen and Goldberg dou- fell in love with her. Basically, he says, our characters,” says Franco, “just little ble over in laughter. “Ha!” says Rogen. she was trying to teach it English, but things that we were planning to shoot on “My butt is sucking the missile in!” it kept getting distracted by its physical our own. We never got it together enough Goldberg turns to the sound guy. urges, so she would masturbate it to give to shoot them, but in hindsight, it feels “What is that, actually?” The guy tells it some release so they could get back to like those were some of the seeds for the him it’s chicken guts, and plays it again. their work. The only problem was, the way we work now.” “I’m gonna throw up,” Goldberg says. dolphin ended up getting emotionally After Freaks and Geeks and another Hang around with Rogen and Gold- attached. short-lived Apatow series, Undeclared, berg long enough and they almost start to “But why?” Goldberg asks. there were a few years where Rogen blur – one exceedingly funny dude named “Because she was jacking it of all the “did pretty much nothing.” He and Segel Sethandevan. They laugh at the same ob- time!” Rogen says. “Same reason I’m at- wrote a pilot that HBO passed on. He scure references, their wives are friends, tached to you.” scrounged money doing punch-up work and they literally finish each other’s sen- on scripts like The Shaggy Dog and Big tences. Apatow describes them as soul- he first thing that appears Momma’s House 2. “I remember Amer- mates. “I’ve never seen them fight,” he says. onscreen in The Interview – be- ica invaded Iraq during that time, and I “They have a connection that I don’t know fore the machine-gun battle and smoked a lot of weed and sat on my ass if I’ve seen anywhere else in my life.” the Siberian-tiger attack – is a and watched the news for, like, five weeks “They’re each other’s support system,” title card bearing the name of straight,” he says. adds their friend Paul Rudd. “I mean, so T Rogen and Goldberg’s produc- Rogen, incidentally, was thoroughly un- are their wives – but it’s diferent when tion company, Point Grey. The name prepared for America’s marijuana laws. it’s guys, and it’s diferent when you work comes from their Vancouver high school, “I was genuinely shocked at how illegal together, and it’s diferent when you’ve where they famously started writing Su- it was here. I actually got arrested when known each other since junior high. I’ve perbad when they were just 13. Most of I first moved to L.A. – I was smoking a spent time with them together and apart, the characters in that movie – including joint at the beach, like I did my entire and they still love making each other Steven Glansberg, the kid who eats lunch childhood, and all of a sudden, it was, like,

laugh. You can see how creatively charged alone every day, and Sammy Fogell, a.k.a. whoop whoop whoop! Handcufed in the MORIGI/WIREIMAGE PAUL

56 ||| Rolling Stone December 18, 2014–January 1, 2015 back of a police car.” He ended up going to ago: You populate your movie with funny a late-night adventure through a grocery court (“It was mostly people fishing with- people, and you let them be as funny as store, which ends in the realization that, out a license – like, a hundred Mexican possible.” basically, there is no God. (Also, there’s an dudes and me”) and got of with a fine. “I One thing people overlook about Rogen orgy.) “Every time we watch it, we’re like, don’t think I have a record,” he says. “It’s is that beneath the stoner laugh and Lab- ‘I can’t believe this is a real movie,’ ” says never come up. . . .” rador-ish demeanor, he’s a little bit of an Rogen. When he saw a rough cut recent- Most of Rogen’s early roles were gruf operator. “He’s a lot savvier than peo- ly, their old boss Sacha Baron Cohen (for dudes with names like Ron and Bob and ple might think,” Rudd says. “He thinks whom Rogen and Goldberg used to write Ken. (“He’s one of those guys who looked things through.” He and Goldberg usual- on Da Ali G Show) congratulated them by 35 when he was 15,” says Rudd.) He audi- ly have three or four projects in develop- saying, “Just know, if nothing else, you’ve tioned for Dwight on The Ofce and Eli- ment at any given time – a supremely un- gotten successful enough to make the cra- jah Wood’s character in Eternal Sunshine wake-and-bake-friendly workload that ziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” of the Spotless Mind, but he and Gold- currently includes a comic-book adapta- Which may be the most admirable berg also had the script for Superbad and tion for AMC (Preacher) and a Christmas thing about Rogen: that he uses his pull to the idea for Pineapple Express, and they movie co-starring Caplan and Joseph make movies that, as he puts it, “are fuck- couldn’t understand why no one want- Gordon-Levitt. (“They’re not the type of ing weird.” “The fact that they let us make ed to make them. “We were pretty bitter people who spend seven months crying this movie is the coolest thing,” Rogen says about it at the time,” says Rogen. “We’d about where they should put the comma,” of The Interview. “They’re giving us in- written stuf we thought was really good, Apatow says.) Rogen has also accumu- sane amounts of money to do whatever the and it was really frustrating that it wasn’t lated enough juice to pull some power fuck we want. Jonah Hill was at the table getting made. We were probably kind of moves of his own: There aren’t many peo- read, and afterward he went up to Amy” – assholes about it.” ple in Hollywood who could call Harvey that’s Amy Pascal, the head of their studio Now that people actually do return his Weinstein “a well-documented psycho- – “and was like, ‘I can’t believe you’re let- calls, Rogen has thrived by making mov- path” and “a real motherfucker” and ever ting them make this fucking movie.’ And ies with these same buddies, the cast of hope to work again. But Rogen did. she was like, ‘I can’t either!’ ” “ARE WE GONNA JUST MAKE MOVIES ABOUT TRYING TO GET LAID OVER AND OVER AGAIN?” ROGEN SAYS. “OR FOCUS ON SOMETHING THAT’S MORE RELEVANT - WHILE STILL BEING FUNNY?” regulars he has jokingly referred to as In hindsight, Rogen’s two wisest ca- ne thing you hear a lot “the Jew-Tang Clan.” His movies with reer moves may have, paradoxically, been talking to people who know Franco in particular – Pineapple Ex- his biggest misfires: The Green Hornet, Rogen well is how little of a fil- press, This Is the End and now The Inter- a $110 million comic-book movie no one ter he has. “Seth is probably the view – “almost feel like postmodern Ab- really asked for, and The Guilt Trip, in least-afected famous person I’ve bott and Costello movies,” says Apatow, which he drives cross-country with a Oever met, in terms of his candor “just diferent variations of these friends post- menopausal . Nei- and his lack of bullshit,” says Rudd. “He’s on wild adventures.” One of the most ther movie is actually bad – just conven- just shockingly honest,” agrees Apatow. striking things about the films is how tional and studio-driven in a way Rogen’s “If you listen to him on The Howard Stern democratic they are: Even though Rogen best stuf is not. (He also likes to point Show, even Howard is shocked at his con- co-writes, produces and, increasingly, co- out that they’re also PG-13 instead of R, fidence and his willingness to say, ‘This is directs them, he’s often the straight man, which, following Apa tow’s formulation, is exactly who I am, and I don’t care what the rare comic superstar who’s content to like having LeBron on your team and not anybody thinks.’ ” Recently, Rogen has be the third- or fourth-funniest person in letting him shoot.) The silver lining was been especially outspoken on , his own movie. the realization that America didn’t want where in the past six months he’s tweeted “With some comic actors, they need him to be conventional – which in turn disparagingly about the Washington Red- to be the star, the funniest one – nobody freed him and Goldberg to pursue more skins, Hobby Lobby, Sean Hannity, Bur- can have better jokes,” says Lizzy Cap- bananas ideas, like their upcoming movie ger King, cable companies, Republicans, lan, who has known Rogen since Freaks Sausage Party. Roger Goodell and the cop in Ferguson – and Geeks and co-stars in The Interview “It’s fucking filthy – probably the most not difcult targets, but worthy ones. as a no-nonsense CIA agent (think Jes- R-rated thing we’ve ever done,” Rogen It’s hard to pinpoint the beginning of sica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, but says. “Which is fun, because it will look this heightened moral streak. Maybe it funny). “You see that a lot, and it’s a terri- like Toy Story 3.” A Pixar-style animat- came in May, when he defended him- ble way to work – their ego makes it im- ed movie directed by one of the guys who self against a Washington Post critic who possible for other people to be funny. But co-directed Shrek 2, it’s a religious alle- blamed movies like his for indirectly in- Seth and Evan figured it out a long time gory about a ragtag crew of food items on spiring the UC Santa Bar- [Cont. on 86]

December 18, 2014–January 1, 2015 Rolling Stone ||| 57

t’s 2:45 a.m. in allston, massachusetts, and char- Music’s most exciting li XCX is holding court at the kind of house party where punk rocker happens to every red cup has been repeatedly reused and the only mixer is a sad, depleted bottle of St-Germain. The 22-year- be a pop singer. A wild old pop star has already had a full night. She played a sold- night with Charli XCX out , sipped Champagne while sneaking a cigarette I in the venue’s bathroom, and got laid. (“Was the show all BY CARYN GANZ right?” she’d asked in the dressing room after the gig. “Be- cause I had sex right before.”) ✖ Now the U.K.’s hottest pop export PHOTOGRAPH BY TERRY RICHARDSON is high-stepping in a rhinestone tiara and four-inch white platform

58

CHARLI XCX

heels, nailing every line of ’s “Without Me,” as undergrads from the Berklee College of Music try not to gawk too obviously. “This song is legendary!” she exclaims. Charli was invited here by a local pro- ducer, and she’s relishing every moment. She goes on to recite every word of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” and takes pictures of her entourage – a mix of low-key childhood friends and a few glam music-biz types – pogo’ing around to the Killers’ “Mr. Bright- 2 side.” “You’ll never look this good again in your entire lives!” she says. At one point, after going outside to bum a smoke, she creeps up to the back win- LONDON QUEEN dows brandishing a rake, trying, and fail- ing, to spook people inside. She and her (1) Charli XCX at the European makeup artist – an amusingly tart sidekick Music Awards in November. (2) The 16-year-old Charli at an named Colby who’s carrying a Moschino early gig: “It was pretty raw.” bag shaped like a McDonald’s Happy Meal (3) With Jack Antonoff of – rhapsodize about , and Bleachers last May in Las Vegas. Charli sticks out her tongue for a Polaroid that’ll end up on her Instagram a day later (caption: “80s college party”). As the evening winds down, Char- li leans over to kiss a pal goodbye on the front stoop. A New York friend named Luce comes up behind her and shimmies Charli’s orange plaid skirt back down to a PG-13 level. “The other day my drummer was complaining about looking at my va- gina all night,” she says with a sigh. Then an Uber arrives, and she disappears into the night.

f today’s has a sound, 1 Charli XCX helped create it, between 2012’s “I Love It” – the pounding kiss- that meant to mean? Is that the holy grail of she co-wrote for the group Icona of compliments?’ ” I 3 Pop – and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” ar- Under the blasé front is a singer-song- guably 2014’s song of the summer. Those writer who has been working on her mu- hits, along with Charli’s own single “Boom sic-biz breakthrough since early adoles- Clap,” have made her one of the most in- cence. (Charli once lamented to her dad called the Peanut Factory in East London, demand of the moment. that her “career wasn’t going anywhere”; which turned into her fi rst proper gig. It Lorde grabbed her for the latest Hun- she was 14 at the time.) Born Charlotte was a far cry from the peaceful town where ger Games soundtrack, and Azalea put Aitchison, she grew up in the well-to- she attended a posh private high school her to work on a “Fancy” follow-up called do suburb of Bishop’s Stortford, a small with a graduating class of around 20 stu- “Beg for It”; Rihanna and Gwen Stefani town popular among workers commut- dents. “Everyone was just fucking high,” have also come calling. “She’s capable of ing into London’s fi nancial district. Her she remembers of the gig, noting that she so much,” says admirer Jack Antonof of Scottish father ran a screen-printing busi- was dressed like Lady Gaga in the “Pa- fun. and Bleachers. “It’s hard to fi nd peo- ness but had music-industry aspirations: parazzi” video three years before the clip ple that can speak to a large audience and He booked a club night in Stortford, once came out (“huge white sunglasses, blond are still interesting.” packing the venue by claiming that the Sex wig, yellow-and-black leotard”). “I stood Her new album, Sucker (out in Decem- Pistols were going to play, then saying that on a fucking crate and performed with an ber), could make her a bona fi de star: It’s a they canceled at the last minute. iPod,” she says with a laugh. “It was pret- brash blast of punky pop that’s equal parts Charli says she adored Britney Spears ty raw, and there were loads of people the Clash and Katy Perry. Charli says its and the Spice Girls, and movies such as dressed in these zebra cat suits.” Her moth- message is “pussy power – in your face, School of Rock (“When I saw it, I was like, er, a nurse from Uganda, brought her to don’t give a fuck, bright red and pink.” (She ‘I want to learn about that!’ ”). But she the show and waited patiently in the back. often says that she sees music in colors.) got serious about music when she joined (Her parents come out to see Charli play She acts unimpressed by the attention her MySpace and discovered Europe’s mid- whenever she’s in London and call to keep chart smashes have brought: “As soon as I 2000s electro-pop scene, particularly her updated on stats like how many views got successful, everyone was like, ‘Oh, my French label Ed Banger’s roster of acts like her videos have on YouTube. When I meet God, Dr. Luke loves your songs!’ ” she says Justice and Uf e. Her father took an inter- her father in London, he demands that with a fake squeal. “I was like, ‘What is est in his only child’s passion and of ered I turn on my recorder to take down one to bankroll an album, her self-made LP, 14. key detail: Wikipedia keeps reporting the Caryn Ganz is the editorial director of Charli linked up with a online name of her hometown incorrectly, and it

RollingStone.com. who invited her to play a rave at a venue makes him nuts.) ROSE PETALS ON OPENING PAGE AND THIS SPREAD BY SURRPHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK.FROM LEFT: JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC; THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE COURTESY OF CHARLI XCX; ISAAC BREKKEN/GETTY IMAGES

60 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 Charli regularly trekked into London pop, raucous punk and innovative electro so than in the Sixties and Seventies, when to perform, and in 2008 – when she was – often all on the same track. there was an overriding look and sound. 16 – an Atlantic A&R rep caught one Today, Charli tours with an all-women The Nineties to me is Spice Girls and Brit- of her late-night pub appearances and band that she outfi ts in matching cheer- ney. To you, it’s Nirvana and . To signed her. She recorded an EP and hit leader uniforms with sucker emblazoned other people, it’s MC Hammer. All of those the road with two backing musicians, on the chest – a nod to Sixties girl groups, things were so popular, and all of the looks playing events like SXSW in her sig- the snarling girl-gang mentality of her were so dif erent and so prominent.” nature get-up: plaid skirt, midrif -bar- favorite movies (Charlie’s Angels, Jaw- In a car creeping painfully slow through ing top, endlessly fl ipping hair. She says breaker) and high school, where feeling Saturday-night traffic in Camden, she the label didn’t mess with her music too disenfranchised, awkward and angsty launches into a screed about the dullifi ca- much, but she endured irritating critiques is the norm. Her latest video, for Suck- tion of pop culture. “In the past 10 years, about her appearance from middle-aged er’s bratty “Break the Rules,” takes the vi- why do people feel like musicians have execs. “Like, ‘You don’t look right, you sion one step further: She plays a teenage to be boring to succeed, and why do peo- don’t look like a pop star,’ ” she says, mim- rebel who shows up to a prom in a skimpy ple have to be likable? It’s just lame!” she icking their derisive tone with a full- slip dress and gets slimed, Carrie-style, says. Her voice climbs to a new octave and body eye roll. “And I was like, ‘Well, that’s by a nasty warden, played by Rose Mc- she sits forward in her seat. “It’s so boring. because I’m not and I don’t give a fuck Gowan. Charli fi lmed the clip at an L.A. You can’t like everything! You hate some about what you think a pop star should high school while class was in session, so stuf ! Say what you hate! Like, I hate Pit- look like.’ ” they had to mute the lyrics “getting high bull, and I don’t care! He’s shit! And that’s She says she tamped down some of her and getting wrecked” during playbacks. fi ne! He may hate my stuf , and I’m cool attitude on her fi rst album, 2013’s dreamy Charli lives by the motto “fi rst thought, with that!” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Char- True Romance, “because I was afraid of best thought.” She writes fast and doesn’t li’s label sent her to media training; after- what people would say.” Over her label’s belabor a lyric or a hook too long – there ward, her instructor told execs that, in all protests, she left “I Love are no Max Martin-style of her years, she had never encountered a It” off the LP because rewrites at her sessions. worse pupil. “I was like, ‘What the fuck did she thought it didn’t fit. “Charli doesn’t give a shit I do wrong?’ ” says Charli. “When I write my songs, about anything but what I see the videos fi rst,” she she’s feeling, and that’s the or all her radical self-as- says. “If I don’t see a music “WHY DO coolest you can get,” says surance, Charli for the past year has video, I know it’s not a Antonoff. She whipped been plagued by panic attacks that song I want for myself. ‘I PEOPLE HAVE TO up “Break the Rules” in seem to strike at the worst times. Love It’ was something BE LIKABLE TO the parking lot of Quincy F “I had a real bad one when I was in I couldn’t visualize, and Jones’ studio in L.A., on the studio with Benny Blanco and Cash- that’s why I gave it away.” SUCCEED?” SHE a breather from sessions. mere Cat,” she says. “I basically ran out She would watch as ASKS. “SAY “I went outside for a cig- through the window on the fi rst fl oor and Icona Pop, made up arette and then had this dragged out half the blinds with me.” Why of two Swedish-model WHAT YOU HATE. idea and sang it into my the unconventional exit? “It was either that types, rode the track into I HATE PITBULL, phone,” she says. “I took or walking past them and having to endure an international hit: The it back in and I was like, a really long conversation about why I was song went double plati- AND THAT’S FINE. ‘Hey, guys, what do you freaking out, so I was like, ‘Window it is!’ ” num in the U.S., reached HE MAY HATE think of this? It’s kind of Charli says she doesn’t get anxious when Number Three on the Hot so lame that it’s the best fans recognize her, which has started hap- 100 and accompanied a MY STUFF.” thing you’ve ever heard?’ ” pening with increasing frequency since her memorable coke binge She’s actually “over” turn in Azalea’s “Fancy” video (a takeof on on the HBO show Girls. Sucker already, since the Clueless that casts Charli as the Brittany Charli says that she and co-writer Patrik songs have been in her life for a year, and Murphy character). “The thing that trig- Berger “were made to feel like shit, and she’s far along on her next album: “It’s gered it, if I’m really honest, was I went not given enough credit for what we did.” super-hyper-real, like Care Bears, J-pop- to Brazil to do a festival and I just took so But “I Love It” earned her enough money inspired, but also more urban than any- many drugs,” she says. For 10 days she par- to buy a new pad she’s decorating like “a thing I’ve done before.” tied like a rock star, and returned to the porno palace,” and, more important, it U.K. to fi nd “Fancy” taking of into a new gave her creative freedom. “The ‘I Love It’ he inspiration for the stratosphere. Reality hit her hard. “I was thing defi nitely made my sit “Break the Rules” video came going crazy,” she says. “ ‘I Love It’ came on back and listen,” she says. “But I felt real- from Charli’s favorite source: the at my house, and I picked up the radio and ly pissed of about the be- Nineties, the decade when she was threw it at the wall. I felt like the Hulk.” cause I just kept on getting asked to re- T born. “There’s this photograph But she says that the awkward girl in write it.” that David LaChapelle took of Marilyn the fi rst album is still in there. She keeps By the time Charli and Berger sat down Manson where he’s the school warden and a tight inner circle – one childhood friend to work on Sucker, “we were just mad,” she he’s holding a stop sign,” Charli says, add- works as her assistant and another minds says, noshing on fried chicken in London ing that when McGowan agreed to star in the merch table on tour. “I’m not super- a few weeks before her U.S. tour. She took the clip, “I literally nearly wet myself.” easy to talk to a lot of the time,” she says. her frustration to Berger’s studio in Swe- Charli can lecture at length about any “I’m just kind of weird. Unless I’m fucking den and banged out a straight-up punk aspect of Nineties culture; she is an expert drunk, and then I’m great.” album. Then she tempered the mix via col- on the decade’s movies (The Craft), runway Sucker has helped set her free. “I used to laborations with Rivers Cuomo; Al- shows (Versace) and Brit-pop wars (“Who worry about being cool,” Charli says. She len’s secret weapon Greg Kurstin; Vam- did you choose? Oasis? No! Blur!”). “I love puts down a vodka-and-soda and looks pire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij; and the Nineties because more than any other me in the eyes, inadvertently paraphras- her longtime professional partner Justin period of time, there was such an eclec- ing her most famous lyric. “Now I realize Raisen. The result sounds like gooey girl tic mix of styles going on,” she says. “More that I genuinely don’t care.”

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 61 s chris rock would be the first to tell you, stand-up- comedy brilliance doesn’t A necessarily translate to movie stardom. Onstage, Rock is a virtuoso whose biggest challenge is living up to his own legend; onscreen, he’s third banana to or, at best, a well-liked cartoon zebra. “Richard Pryor has two good movies out of 30 or 40,” Rock says. “Rodney Dangerfield had one. So it’s easy to look at history and go, ‘Maybe I’m not going to get one.’ ” He pauses. “But I guess you’ve got to make your own history.” The Rolling Stone Rock, who always idolized , is taking one last shot at the writer- Interview director-star thing with December 12th’s Top Five, a loose, flashback-laden, oft- uproarious chronicle of a day in the life of a very famous, very bummed-out comedi- an who’s not quite Chris Rock. He directed two previous movies, 2003’s Head of State (its improbable premise: a community or- ganizer becomes the first black president), Chris and 2007’s unjustly reviled I Think I Love My Wife, but, Rock says, watching Louie and Curb Your Enthusiasm helped inspire him to make a film closer to his life. “This movie is the closest I’ve gotten to captur- ing the tone of my stand-up,” he says. Rock made Top Five independently, with the Rock support of producer Scott Rudin, and a One of the all-time greats on studio bidding war broke out after an ec- statically received screening at the Toron- Kanye, Louis C.K., and how to Film Festival in September. he finally conquered the movies Rock arrives alone – no assistant, no publicist – for lunch one early- November By Brian Hiatt afternoon in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, pulling out earbuds that had been PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER HAPAK blasting LCD Soundsystem; he still uses an actual iPod. “Music takes away some of your phone battery,” he says. “God forbid someone’s trying to kill me and I can’t call for help because I was listening to Ja Rule.” Rock struggles with normal human inter- action a lot less than some of his comedic peers: In conversation, he’s instantly warm and engaging, as funny as you’d hope him to be without being manically “on.” Still, as he rifs on life, work, politics and the love for hip-hop that sufuses Top Five, he occasionally slips into the faux-aggrieved preacher-man shout of his onstage perso- na – a sound familiar and loud enough to turn heads at every nearby table.

People seemed freaked by your “Satur- day Night Live” jokes about the Freedom Tower and the Boston Marathon attacks. I work my jokes out the same way they do polls for the president. I go into clubs ran-

domly – nothing to advertise that I’m going CREDITGUTTER PHOTO

62 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com Month xx, 2014

Chris Rock to be there – and try out the jokes. If they And look how you’ve repaid them in in this one. I’m more George Clinton and work, they stay in the act, and if they your stand-up. less Prince. don’t, they don’t stay. And those jokes I know, you’d think I would treat them Your love for hip-hop is all over it. Did seemed fine. Anyway, it wasn’t any edgi­ better! you ever seriously try ? er than when did the jokes You grew up being bussed to a white Yeah, I did. I got a deal at, like, Atlantic about Jesus’ last words – and I was with school in Brooklyn, where you were sub- or an Atlantic subsidiary. There’s demos of him that night, his guest at Saturday jected to constant racial bullying. Was it me rapping out there. It was before I was a Night Live. I was at Catch a Rising Star, hard to trust white people after that? comedian! [Laughs.] Way before. joking about crack at this white club on You know what? Even in all the mis­ Who’d you sound like? the Upper East Side, with no one laugh­ ery, there was always that , 12 Kind of like [deep voice, slow delivery] ing except one guy in the back row, who Years a Slave white person that was nice “Clap your hands, everybody!” [Laughs.] turned out to be Sam. He’s like, “Hey, [laughs]. Yeah. Davey Moskowitz was nice “I’m Chris Rock, and I want you to know what are you doing tomorrow? I’m host­ to me. But it’s weird. In my family, the older that these are the breaks!” I grew up at ing . You want to brother was a Five­Percenter, a couple of a time where somebody gives you a flier, come?” I saw him do Jesus’ last words my younger brothers, for a time – they’re Grandmaster Flash is playing at some ar­ – like, he was doing the hammer thing, not now – were Black Israelites. So there’s a mory, some place that’s really dangerous if banging on the stage. I watched him snort cloud of rage around me, but being an art­ you’re not from there. We’d go up and see coke right before he went on! I was Pat ist kind of changes that. No matter what Flash or Grand Wizard Theodore or Cold Boone compared to that night. you thought coming in, what ignorant Crush Brothers. And, “Oh, Flash scratched But it’s kind of good that you can still thing you believed, you’re in show busi­ last night!” OK, your mother’s got a turn­ freak people out, isn’t it? ness for two years, you’re like, “OK, I was table, my mother’s got a turntable, let’s go I’m just thinking about making people wrong.” It’s hard to be mad at any partic­ down to and price mixers. laugh. I hate when guys talk about “I’m ular group of people when you’re an artist. And when did you give that up? edgy.” The worst comics think that way. It’s You seem unlikely to have ever been It just fell to the wayside. You get jobs not edgy if you’re talking about it! You just anything like a Five-Percenter, anyway. and shit. Honestly, if I had any idea that live it. Tupac didn’t talk about it. He just Yeah, you just got to be really logical DJs would make as much as they make lived it. It sneaks into your work. Richard when you’re a comedian – to a fault. Like now! I still spin sometimes – when I’m in Pryor wasn’t edgy. Richard Pryor was just a lawyer’s got to believe in the law. some other country, I’ll just get up there. Richard Pryor. I’m not . You said that losing your father when Someone like Chuck D will say that I’m not trying to shock people. you were 23 turned you cold. there needs to be more historical aware- Was being writer-director-star a key I don’t know if cold is the right word. ness among hip-hop fans, that it’s not ambition for you? It’s just that when you know people die, right that the Stones can play arenas and It’s not a key ambition. But who’s it’s hard to really get that emotional about stadiums and Public Enemy can’t. making those movies? If someone was anything. Like that scene in Annie Hall, The Stones can play arenas because going to hand me something like Top where Woody is at the psychiatrist talking the Stones have songs that are not pure­ Five, I’d be more than happy to act in it about how the universe is expanding and ly based on references that you had to be [laughs]. And, you know, live a life. But we’re all going to die – so what’s the fuck­ there for. I love Public Enemy. But they if you’re a black comic, it’s “What ver­ ing point? And there is something about don’t have “You Can’t Always Get What sion of can you do?” your dad dying that makes you go, “What’s You Want.” Kanye will be able to play are­ And by the way, if someone wants to cast the point? What’s the point of any of this nas maybe more than Jay Z honestly, be­ me in one of those movies, I’d do those, shit? What’s the point of taking this test cause there’s a vulnerability and an emo­ too. But I’ve got arty taste, which is great in school?” tional thing that happens in his music that and not great at the same time. I’d rather He didn’t get to see your success. doesn’t happen in most rap. I love rap, but work with Wes Anderson, but I don’t look He met – I guess that’s rap is like comedy: It rots. Comedy rots. like Owen Wilson. I’d love some of my success. Yeah, is a perfect movie, just un­ to work with Alexander when your dad dies, you believably good. But there are other com­ Payne and Richard Link­ “I hate when know you’re alone. It’s edies, not nearly as old as Trading Plac- later. But they don’t real­ guys talk just like, your dad is Suge es, that just have references and things in ly do those movies with Knight. Suge allows you them that aren’t funny five years later. And black people that much. about ‘I’m to act like a fool and make rap’s got a lot of that. So you gotta make your edgy.’ The mistakes. But Suge also Was your only contact with Kanye re- own. And the black mov­ worst comics allows you to make The cording that bit on his album, or do you ies of substance tend to be Chronic! When you got know him at all? civil rights. think that this big bully behind you, I know him very well. Have you turned down way. It’s not you feel like, “I’m gonna try Is there an element of in the way roles in those movies? all sorts of shit, I’ll do any­ the culture responds to him? Yes. Put it this way: I edgy if you’re thing.” And when you lose To me, this is the way the culture re­ don’t want to be in any­ talking about your bully, you tend to get sponds to anybody who says they’re great. thing that happened be­ it! Tupac a little safer. They’re not going to respond to him any fore the Jackson 5. Any­ It feels like you loosened diferent than they responded to Muham­ thing before them is just didn’t talk up on this movie. mad Ali. Ali turned out to be right, but black misery. Everything about it. He There was a lot more re­ let’s not act like people just agreed with before the Jackson 5 is es­ just lived it.” hearsal in this movie, a lot him [laughs]. History will tell us if Kanye sentially slavery, or close more ad­libbing. I totally is right. But I don’t know, man. I’m glad he to it. So as far as I’m con­ let people change their dia­ exists. He’s the most interesting artist in cerned, Michael, Marlon, logue. I’m not like, “You’ve Tito, Jermaine and Jackie gotta play it like this!” I’m Senior writer Brian Hiatt wrote the ended slavery. just welcoming the funk U2 cover story in November.

64 | Rolling Stone December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 1 Partying, girls, drink- ing, getting high, whatev- er. Not paying attention. Bought a red Corvette. I’m driving a red Corvette con- vertible. I have a big-titty- blond girlfriend. That was 1991, it was still gangster to date a white girl. That shit 2 was like, “Who the fuck are you? Rick James?” I dated white girls and had eggs and Classic Rock shit thrown at me – mother- (1) Rock as a young fuckers throwing beer cans at me in my stand-up. He got his first convertible. And those were real white gig at a comedy club after girls! These white girls now . . . white men seeing an ad in the paper. don’t even get mad when you’re with them (2) With his family in the ’cause they’re not real white girls. Back in Eighties. (3) His breakout ’89, ’91, you get killed for Loni Anderson. role, as a crackhead in New Today, nobody’s killing you for fucking Jack City: “Every black Gwyneth Paltrow. person saw me in Jack City.” (4) During his tenure While you were on “SNL,” you broke at SNL. “I could’ve worked out playing the crackhead harder,” he says. Pookie in “New Jack City,” a really serious dramatic role. How did that af ect things for you? It’s hard to even equate 3 it – like every black per- son saw me in Jack City. I couldn’t move to Manhat- tan because I couldn’t get a fucking cab, and as soon as New Jack City came out, I couldn’t take the train ei- ther. Michael J. Fox hosted one week, and New Jack was the number-one movie and his was number two. They literally made three movies like that: There’s New Jack 4 City, Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society, and that’s the history of hip-hop. I can’t really fuck Was it Eddie who taught you that you pretty much it. And the other two are with nobody that don’t like Kanye. needed to study this stuf ? coming-of-age movies. New Jack’s like its The story of how you started in stand- As soon as I became a professional, I own thing – it’s a fucking black gangster up is crazy – you saw listings in the paper knew I had to study a little bit. I used to movie. So it stands alone, in its own genre. for comedy clubs, walked over, went hang out with – every night, Given that early success, did you imag- on that night, and killed with jokes you man, for seven years at the same clubs, ine more of a two-track career, with more had written on the spot. How was that talking about our sets and comparing our- dramatic roles? possible? selves to Richard, , Murphy, I had no level of sophistication. I had I had seen Richard Pryor, Eddie Mur- Cosby. Eddie turned me on to Cosby. As a dropped out of high school. My friends in phy, and Rodney Dangerfi eld. kid, you might think he’s corny. Eddie was Brooklyn had regular jobs . . . very blue-col- My fi rst 15 times onstage I killed – like, like, “No, you cannot take this lightly. This lar. I was just going from thing to thing. really big laughs. Then I got a little cocky, is some of the best shit ever done.” After New Jack, there was talk of me play- and I proceeded to not get laughs for the Do you think you didn’t work hard ing Basquiat, with Julian Schnabel direct- next four years. You see it in baseball a lot, enough as an “SNL” cast member? ing. But here’s the problem: I didn’t know where a guy’s really good the fi rst month I could’ve worked harder. And I think who Schnabel was, and I didn’t know who and then basically there’s a combination of I’m dyslexic, slightly – I notice it when I’m Basquiat was. I could name everybody cockiness and the league adjusting to him. reading my kids certain books. I’m like, in the Furious Five, though. There was What kind of jokes were you telling at “Goddamn, this is hard!” a little bit of talk about me playing the that early stage? So you’re saying a cue-card-driven Chris O’Donnell part in Scent of a Woman, Bunch of dumb shit. Like, “ show was a challenge? which actually would’ve been a better is so black, lightning bugs follow him in [Nods.] What I also learned is that movie. Not ’cause of me – it just would’ve the daytime”-dumb shit. there’s only a certain amount of hanging been a better movie with a black kid play- Whoa, mocking Miles Davis. out you can do per your talent, and I hung ing that part. But that’s the only time I re- Exactly. Like, who am I? Who the fuck out a little much for the talent I had. member anyone thinking of anything even

OPENING PHOTOGRAPH: GROOMING BY RASHIDA COLLECTION GRANT/EVERETT BROS./RONALD CARBO. EVANS/WARNER MARY BANK/GETTY IMAGES; CLOCKWISE SINGER/NBC/NBCUALAN PHOTO FROM TOP LEFT: © MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/CORBIS; SPLASH NEWS; am I? You mean partying? remotely dramatic around New Jack time.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 65 Chris Rock

Was it hard to get culturally black ma- put in ’cause they made the movie too silly. years now and there hasn’t been one racial terial on “SNL” back then? That was the main thing: making sure the incident in my mostly white neighborhood It wasn’t that it was difcult to get any- drama worked. And it worked – there’s – not even a tiny one. thing black on the show – it was difcult more than enough comedy in the movie. A good portion of their lives has been to get anything black on it that didn’t deal How closely do you follow politics? spent in the Obama era. specifically with race. You know? That’s I always had, like, a dumb-guy’s view And not just Obama. Before him, the the thing. It’s just like how there’s not a lot of current events. Always kind of know secretary of state was black. Even if you’re of race stuf in Top Five, but it’s as black a little bit of what’s going on. If I knew not seeing it intellectually, visually you see as any movie you’ll see in the next 15 years any more about current events, I proba- these things. – it’s blacker than The Butler or the Jack- bly wouldn’t talk about it. Do I really want How does having daughters afect the ie Robinson movie, it’s blacker at its core. to talk about Tim Geithner? No, I’d shoot way you think about women’s issues? But it’s not about race. It’s really black, the myself in the head. I had to stop going on How does it afect the way I think about way George Clinton’s really black, like the the Bill Maher show. Too smart. I’m on, women? People always want to know what – “Fire,” “Sweet Sticky Thing” like, the barbershop level. That mother- the world would be like if the country was – is just some black shit. That shit is black. fucker’s really talking about politics. run by women – just ask a black person. Like a white man has nothing to do with Today’s Election Day – are you voting? We live in a matriarchal society. You’ll this shit. Here’s the weird thing: My dad died on go to a black church. They’ll say bad shit Post-“SNL,” you kind of went into the Election Day. The day George Bush Sr. about men all the time. But you never Rocky training camp and made yourself was elected president. Me, my uncle and hear, “Women need to step up.” No, it’s all, into the kind of stand-up we know, right? my brother were leaving the hospital the “You’re the greatest thing that ever walked Here’s what happened: I bought a house, next day. We’d been up all night, basically the Earth.” had a mortgage to pay, and I was just like, trying to keep my father alive, so we didn’t So women’s equality was always a given “Fuck trying to be famous. Let me just pay know who won. It’s like a movie. Literally, for you? my bills and immerse myself in stand-up.” on the ground there’s a paper with bush. I’m from Bed-Stuy. In Bed-Stuy, the My goal was to be like George Wallace – or I’ll never forget my uncle was like, “Aw, women do better than the men. My father Richard Jeni or Bobby Slayton. shit, Bush won too.” Like his brother died, drove a truck, my mother taught school. know these guys. They’re not household and to add insult to injury, Bush won, too. My mother had an easier life than my fa- names, but they’re amazing comedians. I’m always sad on Election Day, and then ther. Any girl I dated had an easier life than That was my goal. Not to be famous, but to Obama gets elected and I’m like, “OK, let me. They weren’t getting picked up by cops be a working stand-up. Make a great living, me give up this fucking thing of being sad and thrown in lineups and shit like that. get a couple of houses, put the kids through on Election Day – gonna let that go.” I don’t recall the girls being called college. It got way bigger, but I just wanted Do you have an assessment of Obama at or any of that shit. Their stories aren’t my to be one of those guys. this point in his term? stories, and they were in the same school And now, it sounds like your big chal- I think he’s done well – but it’s like, as me. I’m not saying shit doesn’t exist. lenge is trying to make your stand-up I don’t know who ’s second I mean, I think it’s shitty that there’s no more personal. husband was, but he was better than Ike. woman talk-show host on late-night TV – As you get older, you got to find top- Right? Maybe he had faults, maybe he how Chelsea Handler does not get one of ics that aren’t reference-dependent. Did lost his job or whatever, but he was - these jobs is beyond me. But when you’re you ever watch Bill Cosby Himself? Rich- ter than Ike. talking to a black man – black women are ard Pryor’s Live in Concert is the best What could Obama have done difer- over you, white women are over you. stand-up movie ever, but Cosby Himself – ently? To be fair, it doesn’t seem like there’s a sometimes it’s even better. There’s not one As bad as George W. Bush was, he revo- black woman in line for the presidency at reference in that thing that doesn’t play. lutionized the presidency. He was the first the moment. People deal with emotions in music all president who only served the people that Michelle Obama could be the next pres- the time, but comedians voted for him. He ran the ident if she wanted to be. You ever seen her are always talking about country like a cable net- speak? She could be married to her hus- what they see. But we sel- “A comedian work; he only catered to band and denounce him at the same time dom talk about what we has to live in his subscribers. Obama’s – she’s that good: “My husband was good, feel. That’s the next thing main fault is not realizing but we’re going to do things a little difer- for me. It’s not taking it his head. All that’s kind of what people ently this time.” up a notch, but how do I this comedy want. That whole trying- The director of the Broadway play you move forward artistical- comes from a to-make-everybody-happy did a few years back said she thought you ly and not level out? Like thing is done. People who were sleepwalking through your life. What we said earlier, what’s my lonely place. voted for him want him did you make of that? “Can’t Always Get What When you’re to do what Bush did. And The play taught me that I could work You Want”? I just want to whoever’s the next presi- harder and that there was something to figure out more universal, surrounded dent will do what Bush did. get out of working harder. I remember in deeper things. by an You once said even Nos- school, once you realize you’re not going Like the way Louis C.K. entourage, tradamus couldn’t see the to be an A student, you realize that the digs in? end of American racism. A’s get treated diferently, but B and D are Louie digs in, and I got you’re not We’re never going to see all the same. There is no diference in the to dig in a little more. living in your the end of racism per se. treatment of a B student and a D student. Louie co-wrote your last head.” But Obama is like the polio Nothing! So there might’ve been a little movie – did he have advice vaccine of racism – peo- bit of that in my career – I’m OK, I’ll get on this one? ple still get polio and die, work. When I got in the play, I was literally “Make it more dramat- but there is a vaccine. They working with the best people in the world, ic.” There’s a lot of jokes don’t have to get it. And my and then with this movie, too, I was just that we shot that we didn’t kids, you know, it’s been 12 like, “Oh, I can work at this speed. I can be

66 | Rolling Stone December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 with the black guys. There’s no shortcut. You got to go in the club and be uncom- fortable. You got to go alone. The problem with most comedians, why they get so un- usually bad by my age – not bad, but most guys by my age are doing kid movies and they’re doing family acts, even the edgi- est motherfuckers. I think a lot of it has to do with the entourage. I got nobody. A comedian has to live in his head. You got to be alone. When you’re surrounded by people, you’re not living in your head. You’re just not. You are surrounded by family, though. Yeah, but that’s diferent – I can go to the comedy club by myself. The average quote-unquote big star has a bodyguard and goes with four people. That’s not how you do it. All this comedy comes from a lonely place – you can’t hear what’s going on in your head if you’ve always got a lot of people. Especially people who aren’t co- HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE Rock wrote and directed Top Five. “If you’re a black comic, it’s, medians. ‘What version of Beverly Hills Cop can you do?’ ” he says. “So you gotta make your own.” Eddie Murphy always talks about going back on the road – do you think he an A student. There’s some good shit here You make the money in America, but you will? in this A club.” are an artist when you leave America. I wish he would. Nothing would make How did the actual idea for “Top Five” Two of your biggest heroes – Bill Cosby me happier, but I don’t think he’s going come to you? and Woody Allen – have had heavy al- back out. I watch Louie, Seinfeld, Curb Your En- legations made against them. How do you You can’t pep-talk him back into that? thusiasm. I thought, “Let’s do a movie process that? Everybody’s tried. I’m just not even like that, but about the whole idea of black It’s hard, man. You separate the work going to have the conversation anymore. fame.” I wanted to make a nuanced black from the thing, and you go, “I really don’t Just talk music or boxing. movie. In all black movies, the rich peo- know what happened.” With Woody, I lit- Who do you like out there? ple are always evil. And anybody that’s ed- erally don’t know. I mean, I got daughters ’s new stuf is funny. Hanni- ucated is evil, which is honestly the worst – I don’t want anyone calling my daughter bal Burris’ new stuf is really funny. This stereotype that you can have. Vanessa Wil- a liar or anything like that. The only thing is the golden age of stand-up. There hasn’t liams in Soul Food – you went to college! I can say is, I’ve never seen anyone accused been this many good stand-up comedi- Oh, my God, she must be horrible. Most of anything like that just once. ans since, like, the Fifties. Jim Gafgan’s Tyler Perry movies, that’s what it is. You You’re turning 50 in, like, three months. a monster, he’s fucking funny. Ron White know, white entertainers do not have a re- You look good. is unbelievably funny. Amy Schumer’s sponsibility to a community. Nobody’s tell- Rich 50 is like 36. fucking great, man. A lot of funny people. ing to keep it real. Harry But does that birthday have signifi- Aziz Ansari just played the Garden. Bill Belafonte is mad at Jay Z and Beyoncé, cance for you? Burr is hysterical. Louis. The Nineties, says they don’t do enough. But nobody’s I mean, the only significance is that my that was just a boom of clubs, that was mad at, uh, who’s my man from Maroon 5? dad died at 55 of natural causes, so I get a like disco. Artistically, it ain’t never been Adam Levine. little scared that way. It just makes me go, this good. Yeah, no one’s mad at Adam Levine – “Oh shit, my mother’s going to turn 70.” I’m One of my favorite points you’ve made “What are you doing for people with great more concerned with my mother’s birthday is that life isn’t short – it’s long. Especially haircuts?” than mine. ’Cause it’s them, then us. if you make the wrong decisions. Your character wants to be taken seri- But here you are at 49, and you have It’s long, dude! People cry when they ously. Is that what you want? this renewed heat around you in movies. get five years of jail. Cry! Grown men. Cry. I want to be taken seriously for com- What do you do with it? Don’t waste it Five years is a long time. edy. How’s that? America kind of treats on convertibles. So have you made the right decisions? comedians as second-class entertainers. When you go back on tour, how do you I think I’ve fucked up as much as any- Bill Cosby as a writer is every fucking bit deal with the idea that people are expect- body. But I’ve been lucky enough not to re- as good as Bob Dylan. But no one thinks ing that you live up to everything you’ve peat bad decisions – that’s the key. Like, of him in that way – they just think, “Oh, done before? let’s not make the same mistakes as my he’s funny.” Demetri Martin is probably You just got to put in the work. That’s other movies. “Hey, what would happen more of an artist than Rihanna – she’s a all it is. If you watch enough Rocky mov- if I worked with a really good producer?” great singer and entertainer, but Demetri ies – and there are six of them, three of A lot of people when they have stuf that Martin puts that shit on paper. He’s writ- them are really fucking good – anytime flops – like a movie that gets a 10 on Rot- ing and creating. It’d be nice if that existed Rocky tried to take a shortcut in training, ten Tomatoes – they just seek out the peo- in America. When I’m in, you know, New he got his ass whooped. And, you know, ple that liked it and listen to nobody else. Zealand, they treat me like I’m Theloni- Rocky III, he’s in a nice gym and the girls They put themselves in a world where their ous Monk. Like I’m John Coltrane. When are there kissing his muscles and all that failure is not a failure. I never want to be is in London, that moth- bullshit, and Mr. T beats the shit out of that guy. Life gets long ’cause you keep

ALI PAIGE GOLDSTEIN/PARAMOUNT PICTURES GOLDSTEIN/PARAMOUNT PAIGE ALI erfucker is Miles Davis. That’s some shit. him and then he has to go in the dirty gym doing the same shit.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 67

AFTER 13 YEARS OF WAR, WE HAVEN’T DEFEATED THE TALIBAN, BUT WE HAVE MANAGED TO CREATE A NATION RULED BY DRUG LORDS BY MATTHIEU AIKINS

POISON HARVEST Afghanistan produced 6,400 tons of opium in 2014, about 90 percent of the world’s supply.

68 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State

RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 69 NARCO STATE

traps amid the mud-walled com- pounds and orchards. Today, the area is peaceful, the kind of green, elmand province in southern afghan- flat farmland where you can watch a tree scroll slowly across the hori- istan is named for the wide river that runs zon as you drive, or a faraway thun- through its provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, a derhead mount. The weather is hot, and the air has the nectary scent of low-slung city of shrubby roundabouts and glass- early summer. Marjah is criss- crossed by irrigation canals; their H fronted market blocks. When I visited in April, banks, bushy with vegetation, there was an expectant atmosphere, like that of sprout pump hoses that shoot down like drinking straws. Half-naked a whaling town waiting for the big ships to come kids plunge from the mud embank- ment into the cool brown water. in. In the bazaars, the shops were filled with dry goods, farming machin- “This area was all controlled by the Taliban until the Marines ery and motorcycles. The teahouses, where a man could spend the night on came,” says Hekmat. He smiles the carpet for the price of his dinner, were packed with migrant laborers, fondly. “It was great when the Ma- rines were here.” The Americans or nishtgar, drawn from across the southern provinces, some coming from spent freely, showering the locals with cash-for-work projects and as far afield as Iran and Pakistan. The schools were empty; in war-torn dis- construction contracts, and out- tricts, police and Taliban alike had put aside their arms. It was harvest time. fitting a local, anti-Taliban mili- tia that employs child soldiers and ¶ Across the province, hundreds of thousands of people were taking part in imposes a levy on opium fields. We pass a wide scar of cleared ground the largest opium harvest in Afghanistan’s history. With a record 224,000 that had once held a Marine out- post. “But now they’re all gone.” hectares under cultivation this year, the same people who turned the country into Originally an empty stretch of desert country produced an estimated 6,400 the world’s biggest source of heroin. west of the Helmand River, Marjah was tons of opium, or around 90 percent of Nowhere is this more apparent than developed into farmland by a massive irri- the world’s supply. The drug is entwined here in Helmand, where nearly a thou- gation project that began in 1946 and drew with the highest levels of the Afghan gov- sand U.S. and coalition soldiers lost their support from USAID, as part of the Cold ernment and the economy in a way that lives during the war, the highest toll of any War competition for influence against the makes the business in Escobar- province. Helmand alone accounts for al- Soviets. Nomadic tribes from around the era Colombia look like a sideshow. The most half of Afghanistan’s opium produc- country were resettled here, and its fields share of cocaine trafcking and produc- tion, and police and government ofcials became fertile with wheat, melons, pome- tion in Colombia’s GDP peaked at six per- are alleged to be deeply involved in the granates – and, with the arrival of the wars cent in the late 1980s; in Afghanistan drug trade. But the Afghan government’s four decades ago, opium poppies. today, according to U.N. estimates, the line is that poppy cultivation only takes Pulling of onto a dirt road, we thread opium industry accounts for 15 percent of place in areas controlled by the Taliban. our way between the high mud walls that the economy, a figure that is set to rise as “There’s no opium in the nearby districts,” enclose each family compound here and the West withdraws. “Whatever the term Maj. Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoi, who was come to a stop. Hekmat’s paternal uncle, narco state means, if there is a country to the provincial police chief at the time, tells Mirza Khan, wearing a robe and a neatly which it applies, it is Afghanistan,” says me. “The opium is in the faraway areas, trimmed beard, greets us warmly. Behind Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at and they’re not safe for you to visit.” him is a field of dull-green poppies, the end the Brookings Institution who studies il- However, on my second day in town, I result of the tiny black seeds he and his licit economies in conflict zones. “It is un- meet a 28-year-old soft-spoken teacher family sowed back in November. “I’ve been precedented in history.” named Hekmat. He says that he can take planting this since the time of the Commu- Even more shocking is the fact that the me to relatively secure areas in Marjah, nist revolution,” he says. Afghan narcotics trade has gotten undeni- just outside Lashkar Gah, where poppy Mirza Khan’s son is standing amid the ably worse since the U.S.-led invasion: The is being grown. His family is involved in chest-high stalks, in his hand a lancing country produces twice as much opium as the business, he says. And anyhow, he’s tool, a curved piece of wood with four shal- it did in 2000. How did all those poppy free – the students have gone to work on low blades on its tip. Lancing is laborious fields flower under the nose of one of the the harvest. and delicate work; he moves one by one to biggest international military and develop- each bulb, cradling it with his left hand ment missions of our time? The answer lies he next day, hekmat and drawing the blades across it in a diag- partly in the deeply cynical bargains struck and I cross the broad tor- onal stroke with his right. “You can’t press by former Afghan President Hamid Karzai rent of the Helmand River too deeply, or otherwise the bulb dries up in his bid to consolidate power, and part- T and head west, along a after just one lancing,” he explains, his ly in the way the U.S. military ignored the smooth stretch of paved hands flicking deftly among the poppy corruption of its allies in taking on the Tal- road that was once a dirt heads. “We’re able to come back and lance iban. It’s the story of how, in pursuit of the track studded with roadside bombs. It’s each of them four or five times.” War on Terror, we lost the War on Drugs hard to imagine now, but Marjah was once The bulbs are lanced in the afternoon, in Afghanistan by allying with many of the the site of one of the fiercest battles of the and the milky sap seeps out through the war, when, in 2010, the Marines air-as- night, thickening and oxidizing into a Matthieu Aikins is the Schell Fellow at saulted into the Taliban-controlled area, dark-brown hue. In the mornings, the

the Nation Institute. He lives in Kabul. braving gun battles and tangles of IED nishtgar go from bulb to bulb scraping of OPENING SPREAD: VICTOR J. BLUE

70 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 1 “Do you know how much this is worth on the streets of London?” I ask him. He shrugs, and I make a quick calculation. Ten pounds of opium can be refi ned into a pound of pure heroin. Cut it to 30 percent purity and sell it by the gram – that’s 1,500 grams at a hundred bucks a pop. “This is worth over $150,000.” That’s a 25,000 percent markup. We stare at each other for a moment, and Mirza Khan gives a chuckle. He shakes his head in amazement. A future hundred grand sitting in the living room of a guy who doesn’t have plumbing, electricity or furniture. Someone between him and that junkie is clearly making a killing.

from the farmers’ fi elds at harvest time, Afghanistan’s opium was beginning a journey that would span vast global webs of traf ckers, corrupt of cials and power- 2 ful militant groups. Back in the provin- cial capital of Lashkar Gah, I ar- 3 range an interview with a drug smuggler, who insists on meet- ing in a neutral location; the city is calm, but threats lie close be- neath the surface, both from in- ternecine drug-mafi a disputes and the Taliban. At a little teahouse on a quiet street, I’m ushered into a small back room whose walls and car- pets vie in griminess, and I am introduced to a stocky middle- aged man with a skullcap and beard. I’ll call him Sami. He tells me that he’s from the district of Garmsir, near the Pakistani bor- der. When war with the Soviets Losing the Drug War idential contest. “And anyhow, they’re cor- broke out, he fl ed the country, along with rupt.” He and the other farmers I speak millions of other Afghan refugees. He grew (1) In 2010, the Marines took back to say that they were paying around $40 up in a camp near the border town of Cha- Marjah from the Taliban, but today per acre in bribes to the local police. “Next gai, in Pakistan. After fi nishing 11th grade, the area is used to plant poppy. (2) In 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Omar year, I’ll plant twice as much,” he says, re- he got work as a driver and began to ply the banned opium; (3) two years later, garding the fi eld with satisfaction. route from Garmsir to Chagai, smuggling the U.S. installed Hamid Karzai (right) Marjah had been largely poppy-free opium through the desert wastes. “There as president, whose half-brother was since the arrival of the Marines, due to are more than a hundred ways through later implicated in the drug trade. eradication campaigns and the of the desert,” he tells me. “The police check- cash the Americans pumped into the econ- points are in one, and the rest of the desert omy. Now that foreign aid has dried up is free for smugglers.” the sticky resin with a fl at blade, which and the government’s interest in punish- Afghanistan is landlocked, and its bor- they wipe into a tin can hanging around ing farmers has waned, people like Mirza ders leak opium like sieves into fi ve neigh- their necks. Fifteen workers can harvest a Khan and Abdullah Jan followed simple boring countries. In recent years, the productive hectare within a week. When economic logic: Wheat prices were too low northern route to Russia and Europe via you consider that Helmand alone has at to be profi table, so this year, all over Mar- Tajikistan has gained importance, but the least 100,000 hectares under cultivation, jah, poppy was being planted. southern route through Balochistan still you get a sense of the vast amount of man- Back at Hekmat’s house, I ask his uncle accounts for the largest portion of opium power that must be mobilized. Mirza Khan if he’ll show me the results that leaves the country. From there, it is Over the next two days, Hekmat drives of his harvest thus far. He returns with a smuggled into Iran, and then onward to me around, visiting the poppy fi elds. On polyurethane bag the size of a soccer ball the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Africa. one three-acre plot, we fi nd half a dozen and hefts it onto the carpet. He unwinds Most of it is destined for Western Europe. men at work, overseen by a bent, white- a thick rubber strap, and a sour, vegeta- The Balochistan border area between bearded old farmer named Hajji Abdullah ble odor fi lls the room. Inside is a mass of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran is one of Jan. I ask him why he’s not worried about raw opium, with a rich brown color and a the most remote and lawless places on getting caught in a secure, government- moist texture, like pulped fi gs. It’s about 10 Earth. Two hundred thousand square controlled area like Marjah. “The govern- pounds, a half-acre’s yield. “If I’m lucky, I miles of desert and dune seas are broken ment has been distracted by the elections,” might get 60,000 kaldar for this,” he says. only by spindly granitic eruptions; the eth-

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MAX BECHERER/POLARIS; ALLAUDDIN KHAN/AP IMAGES; AP IMAGES AP IMAGES; KHAN/AP BECHERER/POLARIS; ALLAUDDIN MAX TOP: FROM CLOCKWISE he says, referring to this past spring’s pres- That’s about $600. nic Baloch and Pashtun tribes that con-

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 71 NARCO STATE trol the area are heavily armed and have Americans left. “The drug smugglers and administration, seeking a “light foot- been involved in various kinds of smug- the ISI are tight together,” he says, referring print,” partnered with anti-Taliban war- gling for centuries. Some are nominal- to Pakistan’s intelligence service. Sami lords, including the Northern Alliance, ly cooperative with the state, while others makes similar claims about Baramcha’s to take control of the country. In its quest are engaged with a bewildering mix of in- leadership. “They have houses on the Paki- for vengeance, the U.S. allowed figures surgent groups: secular Baloch rebels who stani side,” he says. (The ISI denies any con- accused of being involved in grave civil- seek independence from Pakistan, Sunni nection to smugglers or the Taliban.) war-era human rights abuses to come to anti- Iranian groups and a wide array of Is- The U.N. has estimated that the Tali- power; these included people like Mo- lamist militants, including the Taliban. It’s ban makes hundreds of millions of dollars hammad Qasim Fahim and Abdul Rab a natural haven for illicit activities. from taxing opium and other illicit activ- Rassoul Sayyaf, whose rival mujahedeen At the center of this world is Baramcha, ities. But that’s only a fraction of the $3 factions shelled Kabul to rubble and who a smuggling hub on the Afghan side of the billion that Afghanistan earns from the would later become the country’s vice border in the Chagai Hills, 150 miles to drug trade. To find the biggest beneficia- president and a leading member of Parlia- the south and free of government control ries of opium, you need to ment, respectively. since 2001. It functions as a kind of switch- go from the poppy palaces These were the first in ing station for much of the opium trade. in Baramcha to the ones a series of decisions that The harvest by farmers like Mirza Khan in Kabul. helped revive the Af- is consolidated by local traders into larg- “Narco ghan opium economy in er shipments – ranging from a few hun- the united states’ corruption a drastically expanded dred pounds to several tons – and sent to alliances with opium traf- went to the top form. Within six months Baramcha, where it is purchased by Paki- fickers in Afghanistan go of the Afghan of the U.S. invasion, the stani and Iranian smugglers who carry it back to the 1980s, when warlords we backed were abroad. The big deals are conducted be- the CIA waged a dirty war government,” running the opium trade, tween trusted parties, with money sent to undermine the Soviet wrote a and the spring of 2002 via the informal money-trading system occupation of the country. U.S. ofcial. saw a bumper harvest of known as hawala, which is also a linch- Though opium had been “President 3,400 tons. Meanwhile, pin in global money-laundering circuits. grown for centuries in Af- Karzai was the international commu- One side pays the hawaladar, who gives ghanistan’s highlands, nity and the Afghan gov- you a phone number and a code that, used large-scale cultivation was playing us ernment paid lip service at a corresponding hawaladar a country introduced in Helmand by like a fiddle.” to counternarcotics, with or continent away, lets the recipient claim Mullah Nasim Akhund- the latter adopting an of- the money. The accounts are settled later. zada, a mujahedeen com- ficial strategy that fanta- Baramcha is jointly controlled by the mander who was receiv- sized about opium pro- Taliban and a handful of powerful smug- ing support from the ISI and the CIA. duction being reduced by 75 percent in five gling families, pre-eminent among them USAID’s irrigated farmlands were perfect years and eliminated entirely within 10. that of Hajji Juma Khan, a drug baron for cash-crop production, and as Akhun- Hamid Karzai, who had been plucked who was arrested by the DEA in Jakarta dzada wrested control of territory from from obscurity to serve as president, was in 2008. Today, his relative Hajji Shara- the Communist government, he intro- busy cementing, with U.S. acquiescence, a fuddin presides over the smugglers of the duced production quotas and ofered cash political order deeply linked to the opium town, while the Taliban enforces securi- advances to farmers who planted opium. trade. In the north, he wooed the North- ty. “The Taliban has a court there to re- When Afghanistan descended into a ern Alliance commanders as partners; in solve people’s problems,” says Sami. “The civil war in the Nineties, the Akhundzadas his southern homeland, he appointed Sher security situation is good for the people rose as the province’s dominant warlords, Mohammad Akhundzada as governor of living there.” only to be forced out in 1995 by the rise of Helmand, the nephew of the now-deceased Baramcha was once just a collection of the Taliban. Though the fundamentalist Mullah Nasim, the same guy who had first mud-walled compounds, but these days movement strictly prohibited drug con- introduced large-scale poppy cultivation you can find late-model Land Cruisers sumption, the support of wealthy opium in Afghanistan. “Narco corruption went to driving past concrete mansions – this de- traders was crucial to its early success. the top of the Afghan government,” wrote spite sporadic raids and airstrikes by U.S. In the summer of 2000, the country’s Thomas Schweich, who served as a senior and Afghan forces. The area is so remote fundamentalist leaders announced a total U.S. counternarcotics ofcial in Afghani- that raiding teams would have to refu- ban on opium cultivation, “a decision by stan from 2006 to 2008. “Sure, Karzai had el their American helicopters in the des- the Taliban that we welcome,” as former Taliban enemies who profited from drugs, ert using fuel bladders parachuted out the Secretary of State Colin Powell said. It re- but he had even more supporters who did.” back of a cargo plane. “There’s an area of mains a mystery why the Taliban’s reclu- (Spokesmen for both Karzai and current town that we used to call Hajji JMK Vil- sive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, President Ashraf Ghani declined to com- lage,” says a member of Afghanistan’s elite made the call. But the Taliban enforced ment for this story.) commando units who has hit the area a his decision with their customary harsh- These were boom times for Helmand’s number of times with Marines and Brit- ness. In Helmand, those caught plant- drug smugglers. In Lashkar Gah, I meet ish special forces. “It’s like a Sherpur in ing poppy were beaten and then paraded a man I’ll call Saleem, a former smuggler the desert,” he says, referring to a neigh- through the village with their faces black- who started his first heroin lab in 2002, borhood in Kabul notorious for its gaudy ened with motor oil. The following spring, as a way of moving up the value chain and “poppy palaces” built by the country’s war- the only significant opium harvest was expanding his margins. With his pendu- lords. “They had everything out there: gen- in the corner of the northeast that was lous gut and cherubic, rosy-cheeked face, erators, appliances, fancy cars. We used to still controlled by the Taliban’s rivals, the Saleem looks like Santa’s drug-dealing lit- take ice cream out of their freezers.” Northern Alliance. Opium production fell tle brother. “Opium takes up a lot of space, During the raids, he tells me, Baram- from an estimated 3,276 tons in 2000 to and there’s less profit,” he says, explaining cha’s inhabitants would flee across the bor- 185 tons in 2001. his decision to go into the manufactur- der to Pakistan, where Pakistani forces Then history intervened. After the at- ing business. He and others in the opium would line up and stand guard until the tacks of September 11th, 2001, the Bush trade seemed to inhabit a separate world

72 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

from the war, one where money was all A Nation’s Deadly Habit his own half-brother, Ahmed Wali Kar- that counted. “I have worked in the gov- zai, to run the crucial province of Kanda- In Afghanistan, heroin addiction rates have ernment-controlled areas, as well as the more than doubled. Eight percent of Afghans har. Wali, who was dogged for years by al- Taliban-controlled areas,” he says, laugh- are drug addicts, twice the global average. legations that he played a central role in ing. “In some places, we could see the Tal- the south’s drug trade – and who was as- iban’s checkpoints from the factory. When sassinated in 2011 – insisted on his in- we were in the government’s areas, we paid Akhundzada, be removed, after a British- nocence and, in public at least, U.S. of- money to the local ofcials.” led team raided his compound and discov- cials claimed there was no hard evidence. Saleem sold his heroin to Iranian traf- ered nine tons of opium and heroin. (Ak- But on trips to Helmand and Kandahar, fickers in Nimroz, a large, mostly desert hundzada claimed he had seized it from I am told by U.S. and Afghan sources, province to the west of Helmand whose smugglers and was going to destroy it.) A along with individuals involved in the economy rests almost entirely on opium. confrontation was brewing between the drug trade, that Wali presided over a sys- Like other smugglers and Afghan law- drug- enforcement community on one side, tem where corrupt ofcials were appoint- enforcement sources that I spoke to, he de- and Karzai and the Afghan government ed to key positions in return for protection scribes a system where the police and local on the other. But a third force would soon payments. “It’s the way organized crime government ofcials were an integral part enter the debate: the Pentagon’s generals, works,” says a former Justice Department of the chain, to the point where the police who weren’t going to let concerns over drug ofcial with extensive experience in Af- would often transport drugs on his behalf, trafcking derail their troop surge. ghanistan. “I don’t want to know as long especially over the final, most dangerous as I’m getting my cut.” stretches, where the Iranian border forc- telling characteris- “The main police checkpoints in the es were waging a bitter war against smug- tic of the Afghan narco south on Highway 1 were controlled by glers. “We would talk to someone in the state – and of narco states Ahmed Wali,” an Afghan police offi- government, and that person would take A in general – is how often cial tells me, referring to the road that the drugs to the border, where the Irani- the fox is selected to guard connects the country’s provinces. “Say an smugglers had their own person wait- the henhouse. One drug 20 partners get together to buy a ton of ing,” Saleem says. courier from Helmand was caught with a opium in Jalalabad. Between them, they For the first five years, there was little letter of safe passage signed by the head of all have connections to the chiefs of police risk involved. Business was good. But inter- Afghanistan’s counternarcotics police, Lt. and governors in each of these districts. national embarrassment was growing over Gen. Mohammad Daud Daud. A convict- They send an agent to the checkpoint Afghanistan’s booming opium production. ed heroin trafcker, Izzatullah Wasifi, was who pays of the commander and lets him Law enforcement agencies like the DEA appointed by Karzai as the head of an an- know which truck to allow to pass.” were starting to build up their activities in ti-corruption agency. “Karzai was playing But even as the scale of the Afghan Kabul. The British, who were set to take us like a fiddle,” wrote Schweich, the U.S. narco state was becoming apparent, Pres- over Helmand as part of NATO’s expand- counternarcotics ofcial. ident Obama’s surge in 2010 brought a ing mission, insisted in 2005 that Kar- In the opium-rich south, in addition to new set of rules. The arrival of tens of

© LARRY TOWELL/MAGNUM PHOTOS zai’s pick for governor, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada in Helmand, Karzai relied on thousands of troops and billions in spend-

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 73 NARCO STATE ing might have been a golden opportuni- Jan, whom ofcials describe as one of the over his fate. “It took quite a conversation ty to address the opium problem. Instead, south’s biggest drug trafckers. Original- with Karzai to persuade him to allow the the opposite occurred. The irony of the ly from Helmand, Lal Jan allegedly made prosecution to go forward,” says the senior surge was that the military repeated the payments to Afghan officials and Tali- Western counternarcotics ofcial. “Kan- same collaborations with the warlords as ban commanders alike as he transported dahar Gov. Wesa and a slew of elders pled it had done under the Bush-era light foot- vast shipments of opium out of the coun- Lal Jan’s case.” (Wesa says that Lal Jan’s print. Whereas the excuse before was that try. “He was a well-respected business- case was handled entirely by the courts there were too few troops, now it was that man, very close to prominent families in and declines to comment further.) there were too many. Afghanistan, but at the same time, in bed Lal Jan was taken to the Criminal Jus- Obama had given the military just four with the Taliban and providing them large tice Task Force, a U.S.-and-coalition- years to get 100,000 troops in and out of amounts of money,” says a senior Western funded unit that consists of a special the country, defeat the Taliban and build a counternarcotics ofcial. “There are a lot prosecutorial team, judges, a court and lasting Afghan army and police force. On more Hajji Lal Jans here.” a prison. Located in a fortified stretch the ground, American commanders’ short- Lal Jan was notorious enough to be for- of terrain near Kabul’s airport, it is sup- term imperatives of combat operations mally sanctioned as a “foreign narcotics posed to be insulated from political pres- and logistics trumped other sure and security threats, but advisers’ long-term concerns Lal Jan’s influence was felt over corruption, narcotics and nonetheless. According to of- human rights abuses, every ficials familiar with the in- time. Notorious figures like cident, a group of men was the president’s brother Ahmed able to get inside, confront a Wali were thought to be too prosecutor and ofer to bal- crucial to the war efort to be ance him on a scale with his held accountable or replaced. own weight in stacks of $100 “Drug control wasn’t a pri- bills. He had them thrown of ority,” says Jean-Luc Lema- the compound. The prosecu- hieu, who was head of the tors, who often face retalia- U.N.’s Office on Drugs and tion from the powerful men Crime in Afghanistan from they arrest, were shaken. “I 2009 to 2013. “Limiting casu- don’t know if I’ll make it home alties was, and if that meant alive to my family each day,” engaging in unholy alliances one of them tells me. with actors of diverse plum- After a trial, Lal Jan was age, such was the case.” convicted of narcotics traf- According to U.S. ofcials, ficking and sentenced to 20 a sort of informal bargain years in prison. His arrest was struck at the interagency was held up as an example of level: The DEA, the FBI and the U.S.’s successful counter- the Justice and Treasury de- narcotics program, and ev- partments would not pursue idence that the Afghan gov- top Afghan allies who were in- ernment was willing to take volved in the drug trade. Instead, the focus Drug Overload steps to curb narco trafcking. “That case would be on Taliban-linked trafckers. In- was briefed at the White House when With poppy production entrenched in every vestigations and prosecutions were to be level of society, there is little incentive to crack Karzai went to visit in January 2013, as put on the back burner for now. “They’re down. Eradication is a “joke,” says one ofcial. one of the major accomplishments of the DEA agents – they want to go out and cap- counter narcotics efort,” says the former ture people,” says the former Justice of- Justice Department ofcial. He laughs at ficial. “The people who got that message kingpin” by Obama in June 2011, but he how premature their optimism was. “We took it smartly. There’s time – you can wait. had been living openly in Kandahar city, expect that if it’s going to be corrupt, it’s The evidence doesn’t go away.” allegedly under the protection of Karzai’s going to be corrupt right now. But they’re In the meantime, the DEA and the FBI brother. “Wali’s death freed space to take patient.” would try to work through the Afghan him down,” the ofcial says. According to Instead, what happened next, accord- system by establishing several special- U.S. and Afghan ofcials, as well as court ing to Afghan and U.S. ofcials, shows ized units within the Ministry of Interior’s documents obtained by Rolling Stone, how deeply drug money has penetrat- counternarcotics police. The Afghan per- in the fall of 2012 several drug trafckers ed the highest levels of the executive and sonnel were handpicked by their American fingered Lal Jan as their boss. On Decem- judicial branches of the Afghan govern- mentors. They answered directly to Daud’s ber 26th, 2012, Lal Jan’s home was raided ment. On appeal at the Supreme Court, replacement, Gen. Baz Mohammad Ah- by an Afghan police commando unit. Lal Lal Jan’s sentence was reduced to 15 years. madi, a canny political operator who some Jan escaped, however, and was on the run After an order from the Presidential Pal- nicknamed the “Teflon Chameleon” for his when he allegedly made a call to the gov- ace, Lal Jan was transferred to Kandahar, ability to sense just how far up the chain of ernor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa. “Wesa where, on June 4th, a local court ordered command his teams could target. “I call it said he would call Karzai and find out what him set free, using a provision in Afghan- the Icarus phenomenon: They know how was happening, and that he should wait,” istan’s old criminal code, which provides high they can fly before the sun melts their says an Afghan ofcial involved in the in- release for “good behavior” for sentenc- wings,” says the former Justice ofcial. vestigation. “The surveillance team was es less than 15 years. Lal Jan immediate- Initially, that meant busting midlevel monitoring Lal Jan’s phone and was able ly fled to Pakistan. “The president issued ofcials who had pissed of their political to pinpoint his location and arrest him.” an order to re-arrest him,” says the ex-Jus- patron. But last year, Ahmadi and his U.S. Lal Jan was flown back to Kabul, where tice ofcial. He shakes his head. “That was

advisers trumpeted the arrest of Hajji Lal a behind-the-scenes struggle occurred pretty cynical.” PHOTOS PELLEGRIN/MAGNUM PAOLO ©

74 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 f you understand the The U.S. government, for its part, ac- institutional pillar, there is a whif of drug Afghan government as a knowledged that there are no quick so- money. Two recent construction projects – narco state, then the fact lutions at hand. “The U.S. interagency is a university and a cottonseed-oil plant – al- I that opium production developing an updated counternarcotics legedly have connections to drug kingpins. has actually increased – strategy for Afghanistan,” says Jen Psaki, Indeed, during my time there, I get the while the U.S. spent bil- the State Department’s spokeswoman. impression that Helmand is not so much lions on counternarcotics eforts and troop “These are long-term efforts that build a province with an opium problem as it is numbers surged – starts to make sense. A the foundation for eventual reductions in an opium problem with a province. “This completely failed state – Afghanistan in opium harvests.” year, they wanted 10,000 hectares eradi- 2001 – can’t really thrive in the drug trade. Brookings Institution’s Velbab-Brown, cated in Helmand,” says Lt. Col. Moham- Traffickers have no reason to pay off a who has studied Afghanistan’s opium mad Abdali, head of the province’s coun- toothless government or a nonexistent po- economy, cautions that it will take decades ternarcotics police. “Do you know how lice force. In such a libertarian paradise, to reduce cultivation, short of using dra- many we eradicated? Six-hundred nine- freelance actors – like Saleem, the heroin conian eradication campaigns that would ty-seven. It’s a joke.” cook – flourish. further immiserate the rural poor. “That’s On my last day in Helmand, I decide But as the government builds capaci- both physically impossible and moral- to pay a visit to the dasht, the vast des- ty, ofcials can start to demand a cut. It’s ly reprehensible,” she says. “The human ert areas that border the province’s fertile not that there’s a grand conspiracy at the security of large segments of the Afghan zones and extend out into Pakistan and center of government, but population is dependent Iran. If you fly over these areas, you’ll see rather that, in the absence on poppy.” enormous swaths of land that, once bar- of accountability and the Moreover, illicit econ- ren, are patched with green fields of poppy. rule of law, ofcials start to omies have a way of en- They are now largely controlled and taxed orient themselves around “Drugs weren’t during. In Myanmar, by the Taliban, who, with the Marines a powerful political econ- a priority,” while opium cultiva- gone, are getting increasingly bold in their omy. Big drug barons with says the head tion was successfully re- confrontations with the Afghan army. links to the government duced in the Golden Tri- Accompanied by the police, we drive take over the trade. Peo- of the U.N.’s angle (thanks in part to out from the town of Gereshk, until we ple who don’t pay, or who Ofce of Drugs rising competition from stop amid the poppy fields and compounds fall out with government and Crime. Afghanistan), the area that have sprung up in the past few years. ofcials, might find them- “Limiting has since become a hub We can see the faint smudge of mountains selves killed or arrested. casualties of methamphetamine to the north, the start of a band of rug- In this light, U.S. coun- was, and that production. Indeed, both ged terrain that goes up into remote dis- ternarcotics programs, meth production and con- tricts that the Taliban have governed for which have cost near- meant unholy sumption, which have es- the past dec ade. If the Afghan government ly $8 billion to date, and alliances.” tablished footholds in starts to lose its grip, Helmand will be one the Afghan state-build- Iran and Pakistan, are be- of the first places to fall. “This is the Tali- ing project in general, are ginning to show up in Af- ban’s area, they can plant as much as they perversely part of the ex- ghanistan. “Crystal meth want,” says a young, sandy-haired lieuten- planation for the growing government is the last thing this country needs,” says ant named Lalai, waving into the distance. involvement in the drug trade. Even the one Western counternarcotics ofcial. An aged farmer comes out of the near- newly rebuilt Afghan Air Force has been “The illicit economy poses a greater dan- est compound, walking hand in hand with investigated by the U.S. military for al- ger for Afghanistan than the Taliban,” says a small boy, as if the presence of a child leged trafcking. In many places, the surge the U.N.’s Jean-Luc Lemahieu. Ultimately, might placate the armed strangers who had the efect of wresting opium revenue though, opium is the world’s problem. Af- have come to his field. He has a lean face from the Taliban and handing it to gov- ghan farmers earn less than one percent and his skin has been darkened by the sun, ernment officials. For example, in Hel- of the value of the global opium economy. in contrast with his snow-white beard. It mand’s Garmsir District, which sits on key Opiate use is rising worldwide, and the U.S. takes me a minute to notice that his right trafcking routes between the rest of the in particular has experienced a sharp jump eye socket is empty. province and Baramcha, a big Marine of- in consumption. An estimated half a mil- Why has he come to farm in the desert? fensive in 2011 finally pushed out the Tali- lion Americans are addicted to heroin, and They were landless and destitute before, he ban and handed the district back to the Af- though most of it comes from Mexico, there says. He borrowed a couple thousand dol- ghan government. The result? The police are fears that Afghan opium could feed the lars from a local notable, the gas-station began taking a cut from those drug routes. growing demand. “We aren’t seeing much owner down the road, in order to aford “There are families, as in Mafia- style, that in America yet,” says the former Justice De- fuel and fertilizer. But he says he’ll be lucky have the trade carved up between them, partment ofcial. “But it won’t be long be- to break even and repay the loan. There and when some outsider tries to get in on fore the Mexicans get hooked in with them. is an unspoken plea in his voice, but we it, they serve him up as a success for drug These people are entrepreneurs.” haven’t come to destroy his crop. “I prob- interdiction,” one Western official who ably won’t plant poppy next year,” the old worked in Garmsir told me. ike the coal and cot- man says, glancing anxiously from face to Of course, ordinary Afghans also suf- ton towns of the Ameri- face. “I have definitely learned my lesson.” fer from the country being the world’s big- can frontier, Helmand’s Between the impoverished farmer on gest opium producer. Heroin addiction L capital, Lashkar Gah, was one end and the desperate junkie on the rates – which had historically been low – built on poppy. Today, the other lies a tangled chain of criminals, pol- have more than doubled in recent years. In opium barons who’ve iticians and drug warriors – the product of Lashkar Gah, you can buy a hit of heroin made their fortunes over the past decade a world where drugs are illegal and addicts for the equivalent of a dollar. The U.N. es- are trying to consolidate their positions in are plentiful. And with all the corruption timates that around 1 million Afghans are society, investing in more legitimate ven- and greed that have created the Afghan addicted to drugs, which, at 8 percent of tures while handing of their trafcking ac- narco state, it’s hard to imagine the coun- the population, is twice the global average. tivities to younger relatives. Behind every try any other way.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 75

CHARLI XCX ...... Pg. 78

WU-TANG CLAN ...... Pg. 79

PITBULL ...... Pg. 80

SMASHING PUMPKINS ...... Pg. 80 Lorde Fires Up a Pop Revolution The teen star’s eclectic ‘Hunger Games’ album makes living in dystopia sound pretty fun

Various Artists The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Republic HHH½ BY JON DOLAN It’s hard to think of a better person than Lorde to pick songs for the soundtrack to a Hunger Games movie – and not just because everything about her suggests she’d be dy- namite with a crossbow. Be- fore the 18-year-old singer’s tough, witchy musings from the dark end of teenage wasteland made her a star, she had more in common with the kids in the multiplexes than the celebri- ties on the screen. Like a good fan, she’s thrown herself into the role of musical curator for the third installment of the YA sci-fi series, putting together a wide-ranging album that fi ts the movie while giving us a cohesive image of her own rule- breaking pop ideal. As with most good , this is a pretty great mixtape, too. The first Hunger Games soundtrack, in 2012, leaned heavily on alt-folk and country; the 2013 sequel, Catching Fire, got an Eighties power-ballad vibe. Mockingjay, unsurpris- ingly, sounds a lot like Lorde: ef ortlessly eclectic, dreamily hard-hitting, owing as much to goth and indie as to dance mu- sic and hip-hop. This is a world where street-rap titan Pusha T of Clipse and spooky, art-dam- aged artist Bat for Lashes both

Illustration by Tomer Hanuka RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 77 To start REVIEWSMUSIC feel at home. It can mean any- thing from Swedish singer Tove a revolution Lo’s truth-attack introspect to ’s hauntingly spaced- you need a out club jams to Chvrches’ synth-pop heart storms. What ties it all together is a brooding intensity that fi ts per- fectly with The Hunger Games’ dystopic mood. Many of the King. artists on the album write lyr- ics that mirror the trilogy’s story of teenage rebels caught up in a violent insurrection against their oppres- sive overlords. “This Is Not a Game” sees arty R&B loverman Miguel dropping There’s one some gladiatorial revolution- born every ary jive over a block-rocking minute: assault from dance godfathers Charli. the Chemical Brothers. On “Meltdown,” Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip and Haim team up for a thick, agitated groove that Welcome to sounds like an all-night dance party in war-torn District 13. Lorde gets three solo tracks, Charli XCX’s the best of which is “Yellow Flicker Beat” – a forlorn rager with girl-on-fire lyrics that Paradise could apply to Hunger Games [ heroine Katniss Everdeen or “ No account of high any outcast following her ad- The U.K. singer reinvents pop punk on school] has made me ventures along at home. (Kanye her loud, fun, ridiculously catchy new LP West’s remix of the song is even Charli XCX Sucker Atlantic/Neon Gold HHHH laugh more.” more bracing, an ambient- — noise hellscape that could give You’ve gotta hand it to a 22-year- Trent Reznor nightmares.) old who, on the brink of pop mega- Lorde’s other arresting mo- stardom, opens her latest LP with “B est Punk Rock ment is “Ladder Song,” a soft a chant of “Fuck you, sucker!” But lullaby with lyrics written by allow Charlotte Aitchison some Book Ever.” Conor Oberst about “fall[ing] cockiness. The writer and singer behind one of —The Village Voice asleep reading science fi ction.” the decade’s most irresistible pop jams (Icona The artists on Mockingjay Pop’s “I Love It”) as well as one of its biggest are mostly in their twenties or (Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”), she clearly patterned her “Loaded with younger, which makes sense second LP on the Debbie Harry and CBGB-scene sharp and given their target audience. But pinups on her Instagram – see “London Queen,” two of the best songs come from a song about tripping on America that channels offbeat humor.” heroes with ancient New Wave Joey Ramone’s fake British accent through a real —USA Today heydays. Duran Duran’s Simon one and even swings a baseball bat. Le Bon plays the posh hook boy But Sucker is no retro gesture: Charli runs the alongside U.K. troublemaker album’s rock & roll guitars and attitude through Charli XCX on the Victorian- enough distressed digital production and thumb- cut “Kingdom.” And the type vernacular to make this the fi rst fully up- album’s most intense track by dated iteration of punk pop far is the pummeling dub sei- in ages. It’s also a fi tting cap KEY TRACKS: “London Queen,” zure “Original Beast,” by eter- to a music year often defi ned “Break the Rules” nal disco mutant Grace Jones. by powerful young women. It’s a perfect example of how Aitchison understands that the dif erence be- Lorde reaches into the wild- tween a big dumb song and an awesome big style past to push pop into a dumb song is often just a tiny bit more groove bold new future. and musk. A clever guitar rif and synth hiccup work alchemy on the boilerplate bling-worship of LISTEN NOW! “Gold Coins,” and “Break the Rules” gets incred- Hear key tracks from ible mileage from rhyming the title with “I don’t these albums at want to go to school.” Like so many of the pop RollingStone.com/albums. pleasures here, it’s a sentiment that just never KingDorkBooks.com gets old. WILL HERMES BELLA HOWARD 78 An Underwhelming ‘Tomorrow’ The fi rst Wu-Tang album since 2007 is a mishmosh of ill-fi tting styles Give My Love to London Wu-Tang Clan A Better Tomorrow Easy Sound Warner Bros. HH½ HHH½ The veteran chanteuse makes All nine members of the Wu- her strongest album in decades Tang Clan have finally joined forces for their first album in On perhaps her most potent seven years – but it sounds more record since 1979’s raw Broken like one of RZA’s soundtrack English, rock survivor Mari- projects gone haywire. Glutted with live in- anne Faithfull declaims like a struments and tricky structures, the produc- dystopian queen of England, tion is heavy on grind-house twists – Ennio surveying a damaged empire Morricone gone electro (“Felt”), Bollywood with a cold eye and a magnifi - groove (“Ron O’Neal”), spy-flick tension cently wracked but indomita- (“Necklace”) and even the strummy drama ble voice. She draws excellence of a good Godfather rip (“Ruckus in B Mi- On a swarm: from star collaborators: Steve nor”). But all those live drums and orchestral The Clan with Earle co-wrote the withering embellishments rob the Wu DJ-producer KEY TRACKS: Mathematics title track; sup- of their trademark claustro- “Felt,” “Ruckus (far left) plied the anthemic “Sparrows phobic, gritty, sample- based in B Minor” Will Sing”; contrib- style. Take “Miracle,” a Shao- uted a dazzling junkie reverie, lin power ballad that gets so overblown it Rhymes in the class of rap veterans who only “Late Victorian Holocaust.” The sounds more like John Legend on a slow train get more knotty and technical with age. And standard “I Get Along Without to Linkin Park. the margins can barely hold GZA’s fl ow as the You Very Well” sounds delivered Those production flaws are too bad, be- science-buf MC raps about the dust and ice in from the afterworld by a wom- cause the crew’s rapping can still be some of Saturn’s rings. This is the sound of a team of an who’s seen too much but will the most masterful and unique on the planet. great fi ghters competing in an uncomfortable

JONATHAN WEINER JONATHAN not look away. WILL HERMES Method Man, 43, joins Eminem and Busta new arena. CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN

HHHHH Classic | HHHH Excellent | HHH Good | HH Fair | H Poor Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE.

© 2014 Callard & Bowser. All rights reserved. Altoids, Smalls, The Curiously Strong Mints, Curiously Cool and all affi liated designs are trademarks of Callard & Bowser or its affi liates. REVIEWSMUSIC

Pitbull Deerhoof The Smashing Mitski Globalization RCA La Isla Bonita Polyvinyl Pumpkins Bury Me at Makeout Creek HHH HHH Monuments to an Elegy Double Double Whammy Everyone’s crazy about a Defi antly weird noise crew chills Martha’s/BMG HHH½ sharp-dressed Miami rapper out, throws an of beat party HHH A folk singer with a taste for Billy Corgan cheers up (sort of) sharp wit and noisy distortion Pitbull’s latest opens on the Deerhoof have been making and turns up the synths streets of Brazil, flipping a outrageously inventive ADD Singer-songwriter Mitski local dance hit into an EDM noise rock since the Nineties For all his world-is-a-vampire Miya waki’s breakthrough LP banger that could work any- – songs that zip between musi- nihilism of years past, Billy Cor- bubbles with poignant black where on the planet. Taking his cal styles, melodic ideas and gan has been sounding shock- humor. “I will retire to the own advice, the Miami rapper time signatures while Japa- ingly well-adjusted lately. Still, Salton Sea/At the age of 23/ never stops the party, pulling nese bassist Satomi Matsuzaki the Great Pumpkin’s deep dive For I’m starting to learn I may together a set of inspirational sings in a giddy whirl. Nam- into synth pop on Monuments never be free,” she confesses in hip-hop, wedding-ready pop ing their 13th album after a to an Elegy – the latest install- “Drunk Walk Home,” before and even Florida Georgia Line- Madonna hit single is pretty ment in his band’s multi-album screaming into a void of dis- style country . By the funny, since radio pop is about cycle Teargarden by Kaleidy- torted guitars. A folk record at time he returns to Rio for “We the only thing they’ve never scope – is a surprise. Corgan’s its core, Bury Me is edged with Are One,” this year’s World Cup tried. But their frenetic music characteristically acidic vocals heavy rif s that at various times anthem, he seems like a real- does cool out and breathe a make sure that songs like the recall and even life Atlas, carrying the globe on little here, from the gleeful Ra- New Wave-y “Dorian,” the Kill- Liz Phair. But it’s Mitski’s tal- his shoulders without getting a mones trounce of “Exit Only” ers-ish “Run2Me” and the cloy- ent for penning deep-cutting speck of dust on his fi ne linen to the kinky kraut rock funki- ing “Anti-Hero” are as much lyrics that makes this album suit. Disagree? Take it up with ness of “Paradise Girls.” What Pumpkins as they are pop. And soar: “If your hands need to Pit. “I know you think it’s just emerges is a basement-punk the record’s sole grunge grind- break more than trinkets in rap,” he challenges on the DJ groove band where you’re never er, “One and All (We Are),” your room/You can lean on my Mustard-goes-disco jam “Fun.” quite sure where the groove sounds hopeful without losing arm as you break my heart.” “Nah, baby.” NICK MURRAY will take you. JON DOLAN its bite. KORY GROW PAULA MEJIA 80

Our EV

Back Again for the First Time Wear it ER Lowest today for only Dress on Our modern take on a 1929 classic, yours for the a Pr $29 Wa Classicice unbelievably nostalgic price of ONLY $29! t ch! ou have a secret hidden up your The Stauer Metropolitan retains all Ysleeve. Strapped to your wrist is a the hallmarks of a well-bred wristwatch miniature masterpiece, composed of including a gold-finished case, antique hundreds of tiny moving parts that ivory guilloche face, blued Breguet-style measure the steady heartbeat of the hands, an easy-to-read date window at universe. You love this watch. And you the 3 o’clock position, and a crown of still smile every time you check it, sapphire blue. It secures with a crocodile- because you remember that you almost patterned, genuine black leather strap didn’t buy it. You almost turned the and is water resistant to 3 ATM. page without a second thought, figuring Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. that the Stauer Metropolitan Watch We are so sure that you will be stunned by for only $29 was just too good to be the magnificent Stauer Metropolitan true. But now you know how right it Watch that we offer a 60-day money back feels to be wrong. guarantee. If you’re not impressed after Our lowest price EVER for a classic wearing it for a few weeks, return it for a men’s dress watch. How can we offer full refund of the purchase price. But once Luxurious gold-finished case with sapphire-colored crown the Metropolitan for less than $30? the first compliments roll in, we’re sure Crocodile-embossed leather strap - Band fits wrists 6 ¼"–8 ¾" The answer is simple. Stauer has sold that you’ll see the value of time well spent! Water-resistant to 3 ATM over one million watches in the last Stauer Metropolitan Timepiece $199 TAKE 85% OFF INSTANTLY! decade and many of our clients buy When you use your INSIDER OFFER CODE more than one. Our goal isn’t to sell you Offer Code Price $29+ S&P Save $170 a single watch, our goal is to help you ¨ fall in love with Stauer’s entire line of You must use the offer code to get our special price. Stauer Rating of A+ vintage-inspired luxury timepieces and 1-888-870-9149 14101 Southcross Drive W., Dept. MTW312-02 jewelry. And every great relationship has Your Offer Code: MTW312-02 Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.com to start somewhere... Please use this code when you order to receive your discount. Smart Luxuries—Surprising Prices™

READY AIM Cooper prepares to make the call of life or death for his target.

Big Guns for the Holidays Too many fi lm options? Here are fi ve crowd- (and Oscar-) pleasers not to miss By Peter Travers

American Sniper in Fallujah, where Kyle must Unbroken ticed him). During World War Bradley Cooper make the call to take down an Jack O’Connell, Miyavi II, he enlisted in the Army Air Directed by Iraqi woman and her young Directed by Angelina Jolie Corps. When his B-24 went son, who may or may not be down in the Pacifi c, Louis sur- HHH½ HHH ½ hiding a grenade. Eastwood vived on a life raft for a scarify- as the movie year rushes lays on the tension, especially this passion project for ing 47 days until he and others to redeem itself, it’s a kick to when Kyle is tasked with blow- Angelina Jolie shines in every were captured by the Japanese, see director Clint Eastwood ing away the Butcher (Mido frame with her abiding love then starved and tortured for back on his game. Jersey Boys Hamada), an Al Qaeda terror- for Louis Zamperini and his two years in a POW camp. tripped him up bad in 2014, ist with a specialty in power courage under fi re. Zamperini I could go on, as the book but Eastwood, 84, is fired up tools as weapons. Your nerves died of pneumonia in July, at does, describing Louis’ PTSD and flaring with provocation will be fried, no letup. 97, but not before Jolie showed and alcoholism until Billy Gra- in American Sniper. By delin- Well, except between tours, him a rough cut of the fi lm on ham helped him find God. But eating the tumultuous, tragi- when Kyle returns home to his her laptop. In case you never Jolie wisely ends her film with cally short life of Navy SEAL wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), and read Unbroken, Seabiscuit the war, still enough material Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), their two kids. These scenes author Lauren Hillenbrand’s to fill a miniseries or two. the most lethal sniper in U.S. have a perfunctory feel, meant 2010 bestseller about Louis’ Hillenbrand’s critics ac- military history (160 con- to show the emotional fortress life, here’s a quick rundown: cuse her of riding the sur- firmed kills over four tours in Kyle has built around himself. Raised in Torrance, California, face of Louis’ blatantly inspi- Iraq), Eastwood lobs one into No need. All the pain is visi- the son of Italian immigrants, rational tale. Jolie, working the war zone where conscience ble in Cooper’s eyes, in a pos- Louis was a bad boy destined from a script polished by no does battle with killer instinct. ture ever on danger alert. Coo- for jail or worse until his old- less than the , This is Hurt Locker territory. per and Eastwood salute Kyle’s er brother turned him on to needed to dig deeper, meaning But Eastwood, working from a patriotism best by not denying running. He was good at it, she had to find the right actor script that Jason Hall adapted its toll. Their targets are clear- competing in track at the 1936 to play Louis. Her choice, Jack from Kyle’s 2012 memoir, fuses ly in sight, and their aim is true. Olympics in Berlin (Hitler no- O’Connell, justifies her faith. the explosive and the sorrow- O’Connell (Starred Up) is a ful as only he can. That’s why British dynamo with a true ac- his film takes a piece out of you. tor’s instinct for getting inside That and Cooper, who gives a character’s head. On the raft everything and then some in with fellow airmen Phil (Dom- an astonishing, all-out per- hnall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn formance. Cooper put on 40 Wittrock), it’s Louis who mus- pounds of muscle to play Kyle, a ters a glimmer of hope while fl ag-waving, good ol’ Texas boy sharks circle as relentlessly as who sees evil in the world and despair. O’Connell makes us aims to do something about it. see how hard-won that hope is. For Eastwood, ever since Un- Miyavi In only her second feature (left), forgiven, no way is that easy. as director, following 2011’s O’Connell

The film opens on a rooftop Bosnian drama In the Land of FROM TOP: WARNER BROS. PICTURES; UNIVERSAL PICTURES

82 HHHH Classic | HHH½ Excellent | HHH Good | HH Fair | H Poor December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 Blood and Honey, Jolie shows and let their fi ngers brush the Wild lée (Dallas Buyers Club), Wild remarkable confidence and bottles treats temptation with Reese Witherspoon emerges as an exciting, elemen- compassion. She excels in the raw honesty. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée tal adventure that takes you vicious camp scenes (PG-13 Don’t get me wrong. Rock de- HHH places you don’t see coming. pushed to the limit), in which livers the laughs, big ones, laced Louis meets Watanabe, a.k.a. with razor-sharp observations producer-star reese Exodus: Gods and Kings the Bird, a sadist guard whose on everything from pop culture Witherspoon kicks out the jams Christian Bale love/hate for the Olympic ath- to racial politics. A fl ashback to in Wild. She’s a live wire as Directed by Ridley Scott lete is chillingly pervy. Japa- Andre’s past involving an orgy, Cheryl Strayed, a sleep-around HHH nese rock star Miyavi (born hookers and Cedric the Enter- heroin dabbler who, in 1995, Takamasa Ishihara) plays his tainer is fall-on-the-fl oor funny. found a unique way to deal with banish all memories of first screen role with mesmer- A trip to the housing projects her painful lack of self-esteem a hambone, harrumphing Old ic brilliance, making the Bird’s that shaped Andre deepens the and the death of her mother (a Testament Charlton Heston physical elegance a striking humor and lets Chelsea meet wonderfully funny and touch- as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s contrast to the savagery of his The Ten Commandments, the inhuman punishment. 1 1956 campfest that TV shoves Unbroken is beautifully at us during religious holidays. crafted even in its brutality. A DeMille’s once-thrilling part- sequence near war’s end, when ing of the Red Sea plays today Louis and the POWs are herded like CG primitivism. to a river expecting to be mur- Director Ridley Scott (Glad- dered en masse, is memory- iator) is determined not to scarring. Jolie has an army of make his Exodus: Gods and craftsmen in her corner, nota- Kings old-hat. But he’s after bly camera poet Roger Deakins way more than FX pow – al- (No Country for Old Men). But though wait until you see that it’s her vision that gives Unbro- Red Sea heave in 3D and the ken a spirit that soars. In hon- damage done by those 10 dead- oring Louis’ endurance, she ly plagues, from crocodiles, does herself proud. frogs and locusts to the death of every first-born in Egypt. Top Five Shooting on location, most- 2 Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson (1) Dawson and Rock make ly in Spain, with thousands Directed by Chris Rock it in Manhattan in Top Five. of nondigital extras, the fero- HHH½ (2) Bale plays a new kind of ciously cinematic Scott aims Moses in Exodus: Gods and to keep things real and raw. He things went splat for Kings. (3) Witherspoon lugs gets that and more from Chris- Chris Rock in his first two tries a monster backpack into the tian Bale, in rousing form, as as a director (Head of State, I woods to find herself in Wild. a hot-blooded warrior Moses Think I Love My Wife). In Top ready to question all comers, Five, Rock finds himself at last. including the gods and kings He plays Andre Allen, a for- of the title. After learning of his mer stand-up comic who hit Hebrew identity, Moses rises it big as a gun-toting bear in up against a childhood pal, the the Hammy series. Now Andre pharaoh Ramses (Joel Edger- doesn’t want to be funny any- ton), and builds the mettle he more. His dead-serious new needs to lead 600,000 - movie, Uprize!, about the 1791 ite slaves out of Egypt. Haitian revolution, is DOA. Like Darren Aronofsky Screenwriter Rock sets the in Noah, Scott, who crafted film in Manhattan on a day 3 the script with four other writ- when Andre is being inter- ers, departs from Scripture viewed by Chelsea Brown (the his homeys, including Sher- ing Laura Dern): hike the Pa- enough to raise hackles. For glorious Rosario Dawson, in her ri Shepherd, Michael Che and cific Crest Trail by herself for example, this Moses sees God best screen role to date), a re- . Top Five refers 1,100 miles. It’s a showstopping in the person of an insolent porter for . to their game of picking favorite performance from an actress schoolboy (Isaac Andrews), They’re wary of each other at hip-hop artists. But the search who keeps springing surpris- who takes guff from Moses first. She’s a working single here is for authenticity. There es. Mercifully, Witherspoon for waiting 400 years to get mom, appalled by his privilege. are star cameos galore, from sucks at selling candy-assed around to freeing the slaves. In He’s engaged to Erica (Gabrielle rappers to comedians, all too platitudes about the triumph the large cast, including Aaron Union), who has turned their good to give away. The sweet- of the human spirit. With the Paul, Ben Kingsley and John lives into reality TV. est surprise in this raunchy help of a scrappy script by Nick Turturro, Sigourney Weaver It’s a shitload of plot. What comic ride is how artfully Rock Hornby (About a Boy) that al- stands out as the mother of lifts it is the odd sense of trust lets down his guard. His confi - lows bursts of humor to break Ramses. “I don’t want Moses that develops between Andre dent, prowling wit as a stand- through the darkness, Wither- exiled,” she snaps. “I want him and Chelsea – they’re both re- up has fi nally found its way to spoon cuts to the bruised core dead.” You get the picture. Exo- covering alcoholics. Rock and the screen, enhanced by a brac- of Cheryl’s heart, rattling be- dus is a biblical epic that comes Dawson strike sexy-silly vital ing vulnerability. Top Five is tween desperation and deter- at you at maximum velocity sparks. A scene in which they Rock’s best movie by a mile. It’s mination. Under the keen-eyed but stays stirringly, inspiring-

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ALI PAIGE GOLDSTEIN/ PARAMOUNT PICTURES; ANNE MARIE FOX/FOX SEARCHLIGHT; /TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX visit a liquor store just to stare authentically hilarious. direction of Jean-Marc Val- ly human.

December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015 RollingStone.com | Rolling Stone | 83 SETH ROGEN “I think in some ways I relate to this us to this limo van and starts playing his character more than any other character album – except there’s no lyrics, only beats. [Cont. from 57] bara shooting. Or maybe I’ve ever played,” Rogen continues. “Be- So he raps the whole album, and after it was in February, when he went to Cap- cause he has a real job! It’s not until you get each song, he stops it, like, ‘So what do you itol Hill to address a Senate subcommit- your shit together that you can step back think?’ We were in the van for two hours! tee about Alzheimer’s funding – a cause and say, ‘I have a career; what am I going to “Now I realize the next person he sees that’s heartbreakingly close to home, since do with it? Are you the kind of person that he knows is getting pulled into that his mother-in-law was diagnosed with the that’s happy just being a famous person, van,” Rogen says, laughing. “But I learned disease. (“The situation is so dire that it or are you the kind of person that thinks a lesson from it – which is that even Kanye caused me – a lazy, self-involved, gener- maybe I should try to contribute?’ I think is seeking input at all times. Processwise, ally self-medicating man-child – to start the answer for us right now is somewhere it showed an openness and a fearlessness. an entire charity,” he told the two sena- in the middle. We’ll make a movie that We started screening our movies more tors who bothered to show up.) Or maybe maybe for two seconds will make some and in rougher versions for our friends be- it was in January, when he got 200,000 18-year-old think about North Korea in a cause of that.” retweets by calling Justin Bieber a piece way he never would have otherwise. Rogen and his wife, the writer and ac- of shit. (“All jokes aside, Justin Bieber is a “Or who knows?” he says. “We were told tress Lauren Miller Rogen, met at a mu- piece of shit.”) one of the reasons they’re so against the tual friend’s birthday party in 2005. On One of the meta-jokes in The Interview movie is that they’re afraid it’ll actually get their first date, they played mini-golf and is about the utter inanity of most celebri- into North Korea. They do have bootlegs were en route to get a brownie-wafe sun- ty journalism. “I do a lot of press with en- and stuf. Maybe the tapes will make their dae in Hollywood when they were hit by a tertainment journalists, and a lot of them way to North Korea and cause a fucking joy-riding teenager and spun across four are the stupidest motherfuckers on the en- revolution.” Which would of course be the lanes of trafc, totaling Rogen’s car – an tire planet,” Rogen says. “Like, ‘Literal- biggest joke of all: if the guys who made extreme first-date experience that partial- ly, you’re the best person to have this job? Pineapple Express actually end up inspir- ly inspired Knocked Up. “It was superin- That seems insane.’ ” (He laughs. “No of- ing a regime change. tense,” Rogen says. “I think it was a bond- fense.”) In the movie, part of the reason “At best, it will cause a country to be ing experience between us.” Previously, they go to North Korea to interview Kim free,” Rogen says, “and at worst, it will his longest relationship had lasted just a Jong-un is that Rogen’s character, Aaron few months, but he and Lauren “hit a peak Rapoport – a Columbia journalism-school pretty early and stayed there.” They were grad who aspires to work at 60 Minutes married in Sonoma in 2011, and now live – wants to do more with his life than just “At best, the movie in “a totally normal neighborhood in West produce pre-packaged segments about will cause a Hollywood” with a Cavalier King Charles Matthew McConaughey getting caught spaniel named Zelda. “It’s hard to crack having sex with a goat. (This actually hap- country to be free,” her up sometimes,” Rogen says of his wife. pens.) In some ways – just as Superbad was “Bathroom humor works for both of us.” the story of a teenage Rogen and Goldberg Rogen says. “At Neighbors, released earlier this year, trying to get laid, and Pineapple Express was a first for him, in that it portrayed a was the story of them being 25 and direc- worst, it will cause relationship where his partner – in this tionless and stoned, and This Is the End case played by Rose Byrne – was truly a was the story of them coming to grips with a nuclear war.” partner, as funny and irresponsible and the terror and awesomeness of Hollywood important to the plot as Rogen was. “It – this movie is the story of them in their cause a nuclear war.” He laughs his motor- was very gratifying,” he says. “There were early thirties, grappling with the question cycle laugh. “Big margin with this movie.” so many discussions with the studio where of what they want to contribute to society. they were like, ‘Can’t you, like, sneak out, “Yeah, we talked about that a lot,” t the beginning of novem- and then she gets mad?’ And it’s like, ‘No! Rogen says. “The movie itself is kind of ber, Rogen is in New York, enjoy- That’s the whole fucking point! It can’t our attempt to do what Aaron is doing in Aing a cup of chicken-vegetable soup be that.’ ” the movie. And it was born out of a very at a cafe downtown. He and his wife are After lunch, we take a meandering walk similar thought: Are we gonna just make going to a wedding on Long Island – a through downtown. It’s a nice autumn movies about guys trying to get laid over friend of hers from kindergarten – so they day, and Rogen is in no hurry to be any- and over again? Or, now that we have peo- decided to make a week out of it and do where. (“He’s so sincerely easygoing,” says ple’s attention, maybe we can focus it on some preview screenings of The Inter- Gordon-Levitt. “And it’s not just because something slightly more relevant – while view. The studio got him a private plane to of the weed.” At home in L.A., he likes to still doing shit we think is funny. Which, take to D.C. for another screening tonight, garden and trim bonsai trees. He smokes for better or for worse, is sticking missiles and they’re staying at a fancy hotel where brisket in his backyard every now and up people’s asses.” Kanye West likes to hang out. Rogen ac- then, he drives a $24,000 Toyota High- Rogen’s mother was a social worker and tually bumped into Kanye the last time he lander Hybrid. As his character in Neigh- his sister still is one, and this has no doubt was here, doing press for Neighbors this bors puts it: “I think I like old-people shit inspired some latent sense of responsi- past summer. It was right after the “Bound better than young-people shit now.” bility. It was actually a conversation with 3” video came out – a shot-for-shot remake We walk around for an hour or so, and his dad that got him thinking about this of Kanye’s “Bound 2,” starring Franco as no one so much as asks him for a picture. A stuf. “They’re always so supportive, my Kanye and Rogen as a topless Kim Kar- few people do double takes, but otherwise parents,” he says, “but after one interview dashian – and he worried Kanye might be he’s just a guy out for a stroll. We’re almost I did with Letterman, my dad was like, upset. But it turned out Kanye just want- back to the hotel when a tourist-looking ‘Do you have to talk about marijuana so ed to hang. girl, maybe 17 or so, spots him coming much?’ I was like, ‘Wow, even my dad’s “Me and my wife had gotten some des- down the sidewalk and breaks into a grin. getting sick of this shit.’ ” In The Interview, sert and were in the lobby getting plates to She doesn’t say anything – just reaches her Rogen notes proudly, he doesn’t smoke bring back to our room,” Rogen says. “And hand out. Rogen reaches his out, and they weed once. (He does get drunk and take Kanye was like, ‘What are you guys doing? exchange a wordless high-five and keep on Ecstasy, but that’s another story.) Want to hear my new album?’ So he takes walking. “Fame at its best,” Rogen says.

86 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com December 18, 2014-January 1, 2015

Get your Career Diploma at Home TRAIN FOR TODAY’S HOTTEST CAREERS!

Send for your FREE Information kit today!

Mail this coupon, or call now, at: 1-800-363-0058 ext. 4543 Call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. o3 PLEASE CHECK ONE PROGRAM ONLY I am under no obligation and no salesperson will ever call. o High School o Drafting with AutoCAD® o Motorcycle/ATV Repair o Accounting o Drug & Alcohol Treatment o Natural Health Consultant o Art Specialist o PC Repair o Auto Mechanics o Electrician o Pharmacy Assistant o Bookkeeping o Forensic Science o Photography o Business Management o Funeral Service Education o Plumbing o Child Psychology o Gardening & Landscaping o Private Investigator o Computer Programming o Health Care Aide o Psychology/Social Work o Conservation/ Environmental o Home Inspector o Real Estate Appraiser Sciences o Hotel & Restaurant o Relaxation Therapist o Contractor/Construction Management o Small Engine Repair Management o Legal Assistant/Paralegal o Veterinary Assistant o Cooking & Catering o Locksmith o Video Game Design o Creative Writing o Medical Billing Specialist o Writing Stories For Children o Criminal Justice o Medical Office Assistant SRSC4A Stratford Career Institute Name______Age______Shipping/Mailing Address 1 Champlain Commons, Unit 3, Address______Apt.______PO Box 1560, St. Albans, VT 05478-5560 City/State______Zip______www.scitraining.com Email______enter id. SrSC4A

Campus & Online Degrees Available

Music Business

Music Production

Recording Arts

Show Production

The sounds, the shows, the songwriting, and the business deals that make it all come together – Full Sail University’s music programs are designed for the many diverse paths within the industry. If you’ve got something to bring to the music world, a Full Sail degree can help you get there.

800.226.7625 fullsail.edu

3300 University Boulevard •Winter Park, FL © 2013 Full Sail, LLC Financial aid available for those who qualify Career development assistance • Accredited University, ACCSC

To view detailed information regarding tuition, student outcomes, and related statistics, please visit fullsail.edu/outcomes-and-statistics.

ADVERTISEMENT

VIAGRA, CIALIS, Create Amazing Shirts! Sing like a rock star LEVITRA, PROPECIA, Make custom shirts for your event or group Get the Singtrix ® Party Bundle with our fun & easy Design Lab. Choose karaoke system from Crutchfield, and VALTREX ONLINE! from name-brand apparel and 60,000+ belt out songs like a pro at your All FDA images or upload your own art. next party. The natural, real-time pitch approved Always FREE Shipping & FREE design correction of Singtrix brand name help 7 days a week. makes you sound amazing, medications. www.customink.com/rstone no matter your singing ability. USA Pharmacies 855-411-0682 Get free shipping and and Doctors award-winning service since 1998. from Crutchfield. Order Online, Go to by Phone (800-314-2829) www.Crutchfi eld.com/roll or Mobile Device! 1-800-316-1376 • Safe • Secure • Discreet www.viamedic.com/rs/

T-shirt Quilts Dive Bar T-Shirts Interactive Jewelry for Campus Quilt Company turns your t-shirts Join the club and receive a new Men & Women into an awesome new quilt. Get those T-shirt every month from the Spin in style with the Kinekt Gear Ring hard-earned shirts out of your closet and best bars you’ve never heard of. & Gear Necklace. Sold separately. off your back! We do all of the work and DiveBarShirtClub.com Both feature micro-precision gears that make it easy for you to have a t-shirt quilt turn in unison when the outer rims are in as few as two weeks. As featured on spun or by pulling on the ball chain. the Today Show, Rachael Ray Show, and Lifetime Warranty. Free Shipping. Real Simple. Mention you saw us in Rolling Watch our Video. Order online or call: Stone for $10 off. 502-968-2850 888-600-8494 www.CampusQuilt.com kinektdesign.com

Vigor Labs #1 Selling Male Health Pills Spill Protection Ball Refill ($19.95) is #1 for increasing male volume. Black Antler ($39.99 is your #1 WeatherTech® FloorLiners™ are product featuring real deer antler velvet (banned in pro sports). Chainsaw ($19.95) is for custom fit to protect your vehicles’s carpet male hardness. Wrecking Balls ($19.95) increases testosterone. Black Snake ($39.99) from dirt, liquids and everyday spills. increases male size. Users report fantastic results with Vigor Labs products. Order at: Available for cars, trucks, minivans and http://www.vigorlabs.com/ SUVs in Black, Tan and Grey. 1 (888) 698-6603 Always Open 24/7 Se Habla Español WeatherTech.com 800 441 6287 TO ADVERTISE CALL 212-484-4256 CHELSEA ADVERTISE KAUFMAN TO T breakout star. (He also stole ’s 2002 for roast 2002 Central’s Comedy stole (He also star. breakout its as Colbert with program, news TV ca’s hard-hitting most over took Stewart Jon After myself.” Itouch truth, about Ithink “When he put it, As truth. for the passion uncompromising for his attention al joining after Address.” “Gettysburg to name middle his changed he legally you to.” 1983, In want elites media the that game play the to you’ve got you know “Bill, O’Reilly. told on my side,” he elites cultural the get to just name, French “It’s a media. left-wing the of gatekeepers the past sneak to plan his of part all it was he explained, As “Coal-bear.” tion, pronuncia- French the he adopted that life in later only was savior.” personal your as Christ Jesus accepting to paths nite infi are there Ibelieve or Muslim. - Jewish you Hindu, be religion, own their to right the has everyone that “Ibelieve open-minded. remained settlement.”sexual-abuse But he af could that a$660ord million denomination Protestant one Name me? believe Don’t superior. clearly is show, “Catholicism his on explained once he As Catholic. devout lifelong a he remained –and anybody” with table apotato at toe-to-toe sit could –“I Irish was heritage family His Reagan. Nancy become up to ing grow- of dream his of spoke he once and Rivera, Geraldo and Nixon ard show.”your fi don’t who –people watch fties their in people sixties, their ple in Peo- audience. ayounger to peace love of and message your bring to “Iwant on Fox News. appearance apoignant in O’Reilly told you,” he once “Iemulate Papa Bear. he whom called O’Reilly, Bill mentor and hero his with along years, Bush the of alism ide- and optimism up the sums Colbert us, of For many so era. to “Ipromise 2005. in when you,” to he announced news the read “Anyone can discourse. political national our hole in atruth-shaped is there a week, nights four on TV him Without His rise in the media world was swift and ruthless. Soon Soon ruthless. and swift world was media the in rise His it “Coal-bert”; name family his he pronounced achild, As Rich- idolized aboy, Colbert As defi to how he came is which promise, ne our He that kept The Daily Show Daily The Stephen he revolutionized and the culture he altered. he altered. culture the and he revolutionized media for the legacy uncertain an leaves Colbert all, by watched some, by many, by hated Feared 50. He was Colbert. Stephen of demise timely un- the with characters towering one its of lost has scene political american he The Daily Show Daily The feel the news in 1997, Colbert attracted nation- attracted 1997, in Colbert REMEMBERING The Colbert Report in 1999, it became Ameri- it became 1999, in at you.” debuted debuted 1997-2014

| 94

| ing directly to President George W. Bush, who sat with him on- him W. with sat who George Bush, President to directly ing speak- Dinner, Association Correspondents’ House White 2006 the he hosted night the it was thinker, political ica’s leading verifi be not will revolution ed.” “The predicting, correctly it is, claims someone or if true, it feels if true is ty,” anything where “Wikiali- and “Truthiness” of principles twin the to America He introduced facts. by uninhibited tidbits, common-sense to issues complex reduce to –able years post-9/11 the in thrived it touches.”) out joy everything of the ing suck- just lamprey, a“comedy as he hailed whom Chase, Chevy in the Colbert era, with no end in sight. sight. no end in with era, Colbert the in living still all we’re Colbert, or without With him. survive will truthiness of Yet culture months. the coming the in airwaves the to returns him much like very someone if – even missed be He will circumstances. mysterious such under and maturely It’s fi somehow Colbert. pre- us Stephen as hely left that tting terrifying- as honestly, as brilliantly, as mind American the of state current up the summed Nobody for truth. remembered be he will all, of But most bears. against crusade tireless his for remembered be He will painkillers.) to addicted get to him inspired (It also bracelets. WristStrong his with violence” “wrist against campaign to him inspired which injury, wrist 2007 his Texas.) from senator junior it’s the Colbert, not –that’s Internet” for the Obamacare is ty neutrali- (“Net verbatim. transcripts his reciting be to seems We ‘factinista.’ We’re the of patrol. nerd members not on the acs braini- some not we’re us, like Guys it. get “We both announced. he president,” this celebrate to my privilege “Tonight it is stage.

If there was amoment he of when was there If Amer- as over took cially who pundit Last” America “Blame of kind the He was Colbert will be remembered for his personal courage after after courage personal for his remembered be will Colbert like, to the point where Congress Congress where point the to like, Colbert- more far got America era, Colbert the In further. or two a step went –he just pundits media fellow no difwas his of most from erent thing because that’s –yet on TV Report. was achievement est You!). Can So (And ca bestselling manifesto the 2010, wrote in and Alive Fear Keep to March the He hosted Party. Democratic Carolina South the by manipulations behind-the-scenes due to ballot on the spot his nied de- be to only 2008, in for president He along. ran followed America and gut.” the in here down –right lies truth the where That’s sir? Right, gut. the from straight go Colbert kept following that gut, gut, that following kept Colbert on TV was like it. Colbert Colbert it. like was on TV There was nothing like it like nothing was There But his great- But his I Am Ameri- I Am The Colbert Colbert The ROB SHEFFIELD every-

SCOTT GRIES/PICTUREGROUP/COMEDY CENTRAL Wouldn’t it be wonderful to

Come in and use your Starbucks® gift card now through January 5th for a chance to win every day.*

starbucks.com/win

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. OPEN TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE 50 UNITED STATES (AND D.C.) 18 AND OLDER. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. Participating stores only. Promotion ends 1/5/15. For Official Rules, how to enter without purchase, prizes, and odds, visit www.starbucks.com/win. Sponsor: Starbucks Corporation, 2401 Utah Ave. S, Seattle, WA 98134. Winner will receive a daily credit for 30 years for one (1) free food or beverage item redeemable at participating Starbucks® stores in the U.S. Starbucks Evenings menu items excluded. Winner must present a registered Starbucks Card. Credits are nontransferable and expire within 24 hours. Limit one (1) instant-win prize per person per day. © 2014 Starbucks Coffee Company. All rights reserved. ’Tis better to give than receive. In theory.

Patrón Tequila is made in small batches using only the finest Weber Blue Agave. The final product is an extremely refined tequila  a gift Simply Perfect. you can feel good about giving. Or receiving. patrontequila.com

The perfect way to enjoy Patrón is responsibly. ©2014 Handcrafted and Imported exclusively from Mexico by the Patrón Spirits Company, Las Vegas, NV. 40% abv.