ROCKTUNE by Kimberly Gutiérrez

ROCKTUNE Mick Jagger

DISCUSSED ABOUT HIS RETIREMENT

ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME BEST MOMENTS

BLINK-182 GETS A NEW GUITARIST

y e l y a H ms a i l l i W

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14. 16. 6.

The unheard song of Kurt Cobain

19.

David Fricke dives into the making of Brett Morgen’s documentary ‘Montage of Heck’

Green Day Return to the Stage With Raucous, CareerSpanning Cleveland Gig

Panic! At the Disco Playing 2015 Shorty Awards; Brendon Urie on Being ‘Last Man Standing’ New Blink-182 Guitarist Matt Skiba: “A Lot of Things Have to Happen Before We Can Make Any Solid Plans”

BEST MOMENTS OF THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME

30. 22. Fingers: 12.Sticky LIVES AGAIN!

Jagger called up Rolling Stone to discuss plans

May, 2015

INTERVIEWS SPECIAL OF

Hayley Williams

32.

Fall Out Boy’s Loving Green Day Tribute at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

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F I R S T

EDITION

Welcome to the world of rock Dear readers:

Here is the first volume of “MagazineName” That a quarterly magazine offers the latest in the world of alternative rock. Interviews, latest events, stories, music tops and Everything You Want to Know About your favorite bands and singers. Importantly, all this could be done through the efforts of an entire team dedicated to the production of the magazine, including sections Design and Printing, editing and proofreading distribution and administration and, in particular, with the support of hundreds of collaborators involved in the preparation of articles and information. We must also thank and acknowledge the support of all the people, companies and agencies that their ads have helped finance the magazine, which thus can no cost to all our readers. And finally, we owe special thanks to all our readers, who are the raison d’etre of this publication. Your comments are always an incentive to continue on this path and always help us improve. Let This time we offer our best and hopefully entertain much you enjoy this first edition of “MagazineName”

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REVIVALS

Listen to a Previously Unheard Kurt Cobain Song: Inside the New Issue David Fricke dives into the making of Brett Morgen’s documentary ‘Montage of Heck’ in our new cover story

urt Cobain has been studied and dissected obsessively in the years since his death in April 1994. Could there be anything left to learn about one of the greatest musicians of our time? The answer is yes, and it’s in the new issue of Rolling Stone (on sale Friday), where Frances Bean Cobain speaks out for the first time about her father’s legacy, life after his death, her stormy relationship with Courtney Love and the HBO documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck that brought them all back together again. Above, in an exclusive clip from the film — which airs May 4th on HBO and in select theaters on April 24th — the Nirvana leader strums and sings along to a beautiful, haunting melody that the film’s director Brett Morgen tells us is a previously unheard Cobain original song that he discovered in Kurt’s storage facility in 2013. “What really surprised me was watching my parents’ love story,” Frances, now 22 years old, says of the film, which started to come together in 2007 at Love’s request. “Because they were so close to my age now. It was like friends falling in love — I did not expect that.” Frances welcomed Rolling Stone’s David Fricke into her Los Angeles home, where she spoke for three hours about growing up in the shadow of a father she can’t even remember. People are often stunned when they meet her and see the striking resemblance, an effect she calls the “K.C. jeebies.” “They look at me,” she explains, “and you can see they’re looking at a fucking ghost.”

May, 2015

Throughout Fricke’s cover story, Frances speaks candidly about her father, who she refers to as “Kurt,” and Morgen explains how she ultimately shaped the entire Montage project. “She said, ‘For 20 years, my dad has been like Santa Claus, this mythical figure. People come up to me and say, “Your dad’s so cool.” And I don’t know him. I want to present Kurt the man.’” (Read David Fricke’s exclusive Q&A with Frances in full here.)

Watch Fricke and photographer Mark Seliger talk about defining moments with Kurt — photographing the famous “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” cover shot and Fricke’s first and last conversations with Cobain — in our full Frances Q&A, and find out more about Love’s reactions to the film and Frances’ own artwork in the issue. Plus, listen to our 102-song Nirvana playlist — all the band’s songs, ranked — here.

Frances and her mother, Courtney Love, have had a volatile relationship over the years, though recently they’ve become close again. In our story, Fricke describes how before the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, they watched Montage of Heck at a private screening room in Burbank, California. It was Love’s first time seeing the documentary, and Frances sat in her lap to help her through the film. In a particularly devastating scene in Montage, a clearly intoxicated Cobain struggles to sit upright as his infant daughter sits in his lap getting a haircut. “My mother held me, cried on me and just said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Frances tells us, recalling watching that scene with her mother. “Just kept saying it over and over. But then she said, ‘Do you realize how much your father loved you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’” Morgen remembers that Frances revealed more to him about that moment: “Frances said it was the first time her mom and apologized for anything relating to her youth.”

REVIVALS

“I’M NOT THINKING ABOUT RETIREMENT.”

ick Jagger may be a great-grandfather just three months away from his 72nd birthday, but slowing down doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind. He’s spent the past two and a half years on the road with the Rolling Stones and he’s gearing up for a 15-date North American stadium tour this summer. Hours after the tour was announced, Jagger called up Rolling Stone to discuss plans for the show, the new Sticky Fingers box set and the possibility of a new Stones album. What made you guys decide to go with stadiums this summer? I enjoy playing stadiums in a way, and I had a good time last summer playing them in Europe. The stages are so much bigger than arenas, so that must make them more physically demanding for you. Yeah, a little bit. [Laughs] Well, you could make it a smaller stage. It’s my own fault, really, if it’s big. It is quite large, maybe 150 feet wide and then the runway is quite large, too. Are you building a new stage for this tour? Let me think…It’s different, I think. Some of it is the same and some is different. It hasn’t been seen in North

America, but it’s somewhat similar to some of the European gigs. How involved do you get in the stage design and other technical aspects of a tour? I pretty much go through the design and run through different options. It’s a video-based stage with lots of screens, so it’s important what goes on them. We’ve got some new pieces for the video. I’m pretty involved in all that. The actual playing surface is more or less standard and we worked it out a while ago; how much room you need for this and that. How do you prepare for a tour like this? Do you have a personal trainer? I just up the whole fitness thing, and I do have a trainer that I’ve had for

years. I’m always working out. I don’t really stop between tours, but then I do have to take it up to another level about three months before one begins. You have to prepare for what you’re going to do. You don’t prepare for running a marathon. You do start and stop stuff. You train for the quick burst. It’s really hard to do the singing at the same time. I’ll be doing cross-training and my trainer is going, “Try and sing during this!” That’s not really possible in a gym in front of other people. [Laughs] Are you going to play more Sticky Fingers songs than usual because the album is being re-released? Maybe, yeah, or at least playing the ones we don’t normally play. But I haven’t really gotten to that yet. We’re floating the idea of doing the whole album. I played it - and it’s a really great album - but it’s got a lot of slow

songs. I’m just worried that’s a bit problematic for a stadium. So, I don’t know. I’m sure we’ll think about it. I’m just working on that now, but I’m sure we’ll feature some of the more unusual ones. I think that’ll be good. I would love to hear “Moonlight Mile” or “Sister Morphine.” Yeah, exactly, and we haven’t played those for a bit. I think that’s a good idea, and we definitely will feature those. Do you think you might play the whole album straight through at least once? Maybe. [Laughs.] Maybe in the same running order, but normally in a whole show, we might do one ballad. Maybe Keith might do a ballad, but maximum two. Sticky Fingers has, like, five slow songs. But they’re really good slow songs. I know they’re good. I think the album is all good. I just don’t know how it would work. Maybe we’d play it and everyone would say, “Great.” But maybe they’ll get restless and start going to get drinks. [Laughs] Are you bringing Mick Taylor on this tour? I don’t think so. We’re not. Not on this tour. So you’ll figure this out at rehearsals?

Are you thinking about making another solo album? I haven’t, really. I’d love to record a Stones album. If that doesn’t happen, then yes. That’s a truthful answer. I’ve got songs that would be great for the Stones, and I’ve got songs that wouldn’t be perfect for the Stones.

You train for the quick burst. I’ll be doing cross-training and my trainer is going, ‘Try and sing during this! Do you see this as the final leg or just another one? It’s the beginning of another one. As I said, when we finished Australia we’d done everything. We did England, North America… We haven’t done South America for a bit. We were gonna do it, but it’s kind of difficult to put together. We did Europe, Asia and then we’re about to do North America again. Right.

There was nothing that was unreleased left, unfortunately. I think that’s really the truth of the story. Do you think the Stones are going to record a new album at some point? I knew you were going to ask me that! [Laughs] But I don’t know. It would be very nice and I’ve got a lot of new songs and songs I’ve written over the last couple of years. I’ve done really good demos for all of them, which I would love to record. So, let’s hope so. Do you envision an end date for this tour? Well, after the U.S. tour, there’s nothing booked. But there are plans for what we’ll do in the autumn for gigs, maybe. I don’t know about the early autumn, but in the late autumn there’s a lot of talk. I haven’t booked it yet, but… Does retirement ever cross your mind? Nah, not in the moment. I’m thinking about what the next tour is. I’m not thinking about retirement. I’m planning the next set of tours, so the answer is really, “No, not really.”

So then, in the Exile period, we used quite a few tracks that were recorded in the Sticky Fingers sessions. When we re-released Exile on Main Street, we found others that were not released and we put them on the new package, which was a bit stupid, really. I should’ve really kept some back, but I didn’t really think about it at the time.

Yeah. We play a lot of the tunes in there and know them pretty well. But the ones you mentioned we don’t play as much. I mean, we’ve played all of them I think once before. It’s not like doing Their Satanic Majesties Request. So, I’m sure we’ll have a go at playing the whole thing. I mean, [laughs], I’m not sure it’s gonna work. There used to be long gaps between tours. You’d go out for two years, and then disappear for the next four or so. But you’ve been on tour since 2012, though doing far fewer shows with long gaps between legs. What’s changed? As you say, we do less shows. It’s still the same in that we go around the world and then start again. [Laughs] We ended in Australia in December and then we’re back where we started. The 50th anniversary tour started in England. But now we did the whole shebang and we’re starting again. I’ve really worked out the philosophy for it. People seem to be enjoying touring every year.

May, 2015

REVIVALS

ticky Fingers, one of the most revered albums in the storied catalogue of the legendary Rolling Stones, is set to enthral a new generation of admirers. The 1971 classic — which captured the band at the absolute peak of their powers, on timeless tracks such as ‘Brown Sugar,’ ‘Wild Horses,’ ‘Bitch,’ ‘Sister Morphine’ and ‘Dead Flowers’ — will be reissued by Universal Music in a variety of formats worldwide on 8 June 2015, and on 9 June 2015 for fans in North America.

with real zip, featuring new liner notes and many rare and unseen photographs from the era plus a print, postcard set and more.

The reissue arrives as the Rolling Stones continue to captivate audiences around the world with their stunning live performances. Last year’s 14 On Fire tour saw the band play for over a million fans and in 2015 the Stones will set out on a North American tour of stadiums and festivals. The Rolling Stones newly branded ZIP CODE tour will kick off in late May, see rollingstones.com/tickets/ for details.

On April 23, 1971, 504 days after that first session in Alabama, Sticky Fingers was released, cheered on by media and public alike. “It is the latest beautiful chapter in the continuing story of the greatest rock group in the world,” wrote Rolling Stone.

Sticky Fingers was recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Stargroves, Mick’s country home and Olympic Studios in London, and produced by regular confidant Jimmy Miller, Sticky Fingers was released shortly after the Stones became exiled in the south of France, leaving Britain after a sensational farewell tour. It also featured some of the most ground breaking artwork in rock history by Andy Warhol, with its famous working zip on the front cover. Recreated in the Super Deluxe and Double Vinyl Deluxe Editions of the new package. Sticky Fingers has been repeatedly hailed as one of the Stones’ all-time great albums, capturing their trademark combination of swagger and tenderness in a superb collection. It continued the incredible outpouring of creative energy that had produced 1968’s Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed in 1969. After Sticky Fingers, the Stones’ relocation to the south of France led to the double album masterpiece Exile On Main St. The highly acclaimed Sticky Fingers showcased the ever more inventive song writing of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and formidable guitar licks from Mick Taylor. The new editions of Sticky Fingers follow the worldwide critical and commercial

The first sessions that led to Sticky Fingers took place as far back as December 1969, in the remote location of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, Alabama. The band then reconvened, back home in the UK both at Olympic and with the Rolling Stones Mobile parked up at Mick Jagger’s Stargroves home.

success of the Stones’ two previous deluxe reissues, for Exile itself (which took the album back to No. 1 in the UK in 2010, 38 years after it first topped the chart) and the 1978 classic Some Girls, repackaged in 2011. As with those expanded releases, millions of Stones devotees will be hugely excited by not only the original album but the generous selection of previously unavailable material contained within the Deluxe and Super Deluxe formats. These include the alternative version of the charttopping single ‘Brown Sugar’ featuring Eric Clapton; unreleased interpretations of ‘Bitch,’ ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Dead Flowers’; an acoustic take on the anthemic ‘Wild Horses’, and five tracks recorded live at The Roundhouse in 1971 including ‘Honky Tonk Women’ and ‘Midnight Rambler.’ The Super Deluxe edition will also house Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out!, the 13-track audio recording of the Stones’ gig in Leeds in March 1971, shortly before their ‘exile’ in France began. The set included versions of the justcompleted ‘Brown Sugar,’ ‘Bitch’ and ‘Dead Flowers,’ one of their many authentic forays into country music territory. There’s also a chance to see two numbers from the band’s famous Marquee Club show of March 26, 1971. Other features of the Super Deluxe Edition include a beautiful 120 page hardback book complete

Learn more on: http://www.rollingstones. com/

ACTUAL

Green Day Return to the Stage With Raucous, Career-Spanning Cleveland Gig

feel like we’ve been through puberty together,” said Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong toward the close of the band’s joyous, marathon show at Cleveland’s House of Blues last night. It was their first U.S. show in two years and much of the adoring throng was middle-aged guys and girls reveling in the soundtrack of their teenage years, many of whom came to the all-ages show with their kids. In town for Saturday’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony — they’re being inducted into the Ohio institution alongside Joan Jett, Lou Reed, Ringo Starr, among others — the band tore through a three-hour show which included a surprise warm-up set with the band’s original drummer, John Kiffmeyer, who played on the band’s early EPs in 1989-’90 before giving way to Green Day’s current drummer, Tré Cool. The band has been on a lengthy, self-imposed hiatus, devoting time to their

families as well as tackling medical issues (that includes second guitarist Jason White – now a full-fledged member of the band – who beat back throat cancer last year). The band seemed genuinely humbled by the RRHOF induction, with Armstrong repeatedly thanking the audience, a far cry from their snotty, East Bay punk beginnings. The House of Blues was a stinky hot mess when the trio hit the stage just after 10 p.m., launching into “99 Revolutions” from 2012’s Tre, before dialing it back to the one-two punch of “Holiday” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” from 2004’s epic American Idiot. Armstrong worked the stage like a punk rock carnival barker, engaging the crowd in a call and response in nearly every song, climaxing with a medley of that included snippets of the Isley Brothers’ “Shout,” the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”

And Kiffmeyer wasn’t the only surprise guest of the night: Rancid lead singer Tim Armstrong joined the band for a rip through Rancid’s “Radio” as well as “Knowledge,” a cut from Tim Armstrong’s first band, Operation Ivy. Other highlights included the epic “Jesus of Suburbia” and the gem “Private Ale,” a cut last played in 1992. The pre-Green Day set with Kiffmeyer as Sweet Children featured a handful of tracks that hadn’t seen the light of day live since the early Nineties, including “Sweet Children,” I Was There” and “Dry Ice.” A raucous aftershow party went until 3 a.m., with many family members and close friends joining the band in an emotional celebration of their 25year career. “It’s still hard to process,” said Armstrong before scooping a handful of a giant white cake. “But all I know is that I don’t want to be anywhere else but here.”

ACTUAL

Panic! At the Disco Playing 2015 Shorty Awards; Brendon Urie on Being ‘Last Man Standing’

n April 20, the 7th Annual Shorty Awards -- hosted by Rachel Dratch, and featuring Wyclef Jean and Kevin Jonas as presenters -- will hit New York City’s TimesCenter to honor the best in social media. Today, Billboard can exclusively reveal that Panic! At the Disco will perform at this year’s Shorty Awards. It will be one of the band’s first performances since drummer Spencer Smith officially left the band after 10 years. Billboard chatted with frontman Brendon Urie about what it’s like being the “last man standing” in PATD, writing songs based on melodies he sings to his dog, and possibly hitting the studio with Every Time I Die’s Keith Buckley.

What do you have planned for your Shortys performance? This is our first time playing at the Shortys and I think it’s gonna be great. Obviously it’s gonna be very, very loud. I’m curious to see what kind of reaction we’ll get. Because playing awards shows is always different from playing your own shows, festivals, club shows. Awards shows are always very unique. Is it more difficult, since you’re playing to people who aren’t necessarily Panic fans? I wouldn’t say difficult but different. When you’re playing your own show you’ve got your own fans who are accustomed to your

own show and songs. Awards shows are how we treat a festival. I go in knowing not many people will know a song we’re going to play, or even our band, so it’s a chance to showcase what we are and give them a taste of what our band is about. The Shortys are all about social media. Who do you think has the funniest Twitter accounts? I follow a couple. I think Joe Mande is pretty great, Rob Delaney makes a huge impression on everybody. I like Patton Oswalt, when he goes off on rants and will just post a million different things. I really enjoyed Norm MacDonald’s background

stories on Twitter after the SNL 40th anniversary. I follow a lot of comedians. This will be one of your first shows since Spencer Smith officially left. I know you’ve been playing without him for some time, but is it going to feel different now that it’s really over? Yeah, it is. I love him so much, even as a friend, but having him make that decision for himself… I’m really proud of him. To come out and be so confident telling people, “Hey, this is what I need to do.” We’ve played without him for a while, but this will be one of the first since he officially left. I think it will be fun.

Were you surprised by the decision, or were you expecting it at this point? It didn’t take me by surprise. It wasn’t talked about a lot. We had minimal conversations about what he wanted to do. Any time we’d hang out we were just hanging out as friends. There was never any business or band meeting. We still hang out all the time. It’s nice to have a friend instead of worrying about band and business stuff. I knew shortly before [the announcement]. We had a few discussions and he told me what he wanted to do and I backed that 100 percent. Obviously I’m going to miss him in the band, but I’m proud of him. I love him to death.

Or little melodies that we’ll sing to our dog. One of the songs that we sang to our dog turned into a song on the last album. It was just so catchy. You’re working on an Every Time I Die tattoo now. You’re a huge fan of them -- what is it about them that you love so much?

Always. I’ve really never stopped writing. I’m picking through demos that I’d been working on for the last couple of years. Every day I’m writing something. I write an idea a day. Even if it’s 10 seconds of a melody or a lyric. I love it too much to not work. It would drive me crazy to not do anything.

Apart from just the music, they’re all really good guys. I love hanging out with them, every time we get together it’s a fun hang. They’re really funny. I love [guitarist] Jordan Buckley’s artwork. I was watching his stuff and was like, “I’d love to get this tattooed at some point.” I love so many things about the band. I grew up in the hardcore scene a little bit, the punk scene, and I love that kind of music. I think they’re so original and so clever with their lyrics. We went to an Every Time I Die show a couple nights ago and some girl got on the shoulders of her dude. Keith [Buckley] was on the barricade, she grabbed Keith and was bearhugging him. He was like, “Oh shit” into the mic and got pulled into the crowd. And he just kept going. He’s a pro.

So that makes you the sole original member. How does that feel?

Would you ever work with them in the studio?

Thinking about where I started -- I joined as the last member of the band before we started touring and got signed. Now I’m last man standing. But to me I love it so much. I love this band. I love everything about it -- touring, songwriting. So for me it’s never been a question of stopping or letting go of it all because I love it too much.

Definitely. I’ve talked with Keith a little bit about a couple projects. Nothing set in stone yet but we’ve talked about it over a couple of drinks. You get in that mindset, “Oh man, we should start a band, we should do this thing,” and all that kind of talk. But seriously, we’ve talked about it and I’d like to get together with him, probably soon, to just work on whatever. Whether it gets used for Panic or something else. It’s always fun to collaborate with people you’re a fan of.

Speaking of which, are you working on new stuff?

Do you think we’ll see new Panic music within this year or next? If you had to guess. If I had to guess, I’d say this year. That’s hilarious. Which one? Melodically, “This is Gospel.” Before I had anything written to it yet, it was about little pet names for my dog. And I was like, “I actually like this melody, it’s been stuck in my head for a week, so I might as well try to make it a real idea.” Unlike when you started out, you’re married now. Do you ever work on stuff with your wife or do you go off into your separate place?

What other music is getting you excited these days? I usually go on Spotify and listen to new releases on Tuesdays, that’s my thing. The new Action Bronson is awesome, the first song [“Brand New Car”] is incredible. He’s such a funny guy. The new Kendrick Lamar album blew my mind. It’s so original and so cool. And everything is so tastefully done. And there are times you can laugh, he’s playing a character, like, [affects Kendrick voice] “This - dick – ain’t - free.” God, it’s so good! I love it.

Normally, yeah. I go and write and do whatever. But I’m around, so a lot of songs start from inside jokes we have.

May, 2015

ACTUAL

New Blink-182 Guitarist Matt Skiba: “A Lot of Things Have to Happen Before We Can Make Any Solid Plans”

att Skiba has a tour coming up with Alkaline Trio and a second album, Kuts, on its way from his other band, the Sekrets. But the guitarist acknowledges that his new role playing in Blink-182 means there’s yet another consideration when it comes to putting together his calendar these days. Mark Hoppus: Blink-182 Was Never Going To Part with Travis Barker “There’s a lot of things that have to happen before we can make any solid plans or any solid statements,” Skiba tells Billboard. “I don’t really know what the status is, but we are hopeful to do more stuff in the future. How soon that’s going to be, I don’t know.” Skiba was tapped by bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker early this year to fill in after parting ways with guitarist Tom DeLonge. Skiba played with Blink for a pair of club shows and at the Musink festival, and he reports that, “the experience was really great. We clicked. We had a really great

May, 2015

time together. I’ve know the Blink guys for 15 some odd years, so we were already friends but we’d never played music together. But it went really well and the shows went really well. The fans are really happy. I’m sure there’s some disgruntled fans, but it seems the majority of people were really impressed with what we put together.” Skiba says he learned 27 Blink songs during two months of rehearsals, which he said were “laborintensive, but really fun. When you’re playing with such great guys and such great musicians, it’s a lot of work but fun work.” And like fans, Skiba too was “shocked” at the news DeLonge was out of the group. “I knew I was meeting Mark and Travis for lunch, but I didn’t know why,” Skiba recalls. “It took me a good week to kind of wrap my head around what they had just asked me to do.” He is, however, adamant that he intends no disrespect towards DeLonge.

have always been friends. I’d like to think that we still are. I haven’t spoken to him since this whole thing went down, but it’s in no way personal. Tom’s been nothing but cool to me over the years. His band took my band out on tour and that helped us tremendously, so I don’t have a negative thing in the world to say about the guy. The story I got is he left the band and I was asked to fill in, so that’s what I did. I hope there aren’t any hard feelings. I didn’t go up there and try and do what Tom did; they billed it as Blink-182 with Matt Skiba, so I went up there and did Matt Skiba.”

Skiba acknowledges that the Blink association has brought some welcome additional attention to his other groups. Alkaline Trio starts a nearly seven-week North American run on April 22 in Denver and will play U.K. dates during late June and early July with NOFX. The Kuts album, produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, the Vines, “Tom and I have always Beck), comes out June 2, been very friendly,” Skiba and Skiba hopes to take the says. “We’ve toured with Sekrets on the road penBlink several times over ding Blink-182 plans. the years, and Tom and I

categoria INTERVIEWS ACTUAL

“I Absolutely Feel Vindicated”

our years ago, when Paramore lost founding members Zac and Josh Farro in a bitter public split, singer Hayley Williams was sure the band was over. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s like the end of Stand by Me,’” says Williams, 25. “Not everything lasts forever. I’ll find something else that I’m good at.” Instead, the group went on to make last year’s Paramore as a trio – and scored one of this year’s biggest rock hits with the sharp, hooky single “ ” “I absolutely feel vindicated,” Williams says. “For all the people who believed in us, we’re saying, ‘You haven’t gotten tattoos of our lyrics for nothing. We’re going to keep going.’’

categoria Your bassist, Jeremy Davis, recently gave himself a hernia on your summer tour with Fall Out Boy. Are you concerned that you might actually be rocking too hard? I’m starting to accept that 25 is not 16. Seven or eight years ago, we would go to Taco Bell, grab a bean burrito and run onstage. Now, getting ready for a show takes two hours – Jeremy and Taylor [York, Paramore’s guitarist] have to wrap their ankles, and I have to do stretches so I don’t hurt my neck from headbanging. I’m loving it, but I definitely might collapse at one of these shows. The tour is called the Monumentour, but you don’t have any monuments onstage. Which one would you pick if you did? Oh, man. Well, I’m wearing boxing shorts and a sports bra, so maybe I’d take the Liberty Bell and be Rocky. I saw on Twitter that you used to be a member of ‘NSync’s fan club. Is that true? Yeah, it’s true. I’ll never forget the day that the package came in the mail. I was so pumped that I taped it to the wall, with my little card and signed poster – it probably wasn’t actually signed, but I still cared about it. Joey [Fatone] was my favorite. I thought it was hilarious that his last name spelled “fat one.” Before Paramore, you and Jeremy were in a funk cover band. Is there any existing footage of that band performing, or has it all been destroyed? Oh, there’s footage. We would never des-

May, 2015

troy it. I’ve asked my mom, and she doesn’t seem to have anything – I’m like, “Did you even love me?” But Jeremy’s family has it all on VHS. Our favorite song to do was “Tell Me Something Good,” by Rufus and Chaka Khan. That bass line is so sick. I read that you’ve been watching Game of Thrones on the road. How long do you think you’d survive in Westeros? I hope I wouldn’t survive very long, because the women in that show, God bless ‘em, are living the worst life possible. The way they’re treated is sickening. I’m like, “I can’t believe I’m watching this – and I’m actually really into it.” But if I could come back as another person, I’d be Tyrion. He’s a badass. You’ve spoken about sexism you experienced when Paramore were playing small clubs. Has that gotten better with time? I don’t know, honestly. I’m not faced with it directly the way I was when I was 16 and we could see every single person in the crowd and hear everything they were saying. I think some of them didn’t know how to handle a girl being in a position of authority. Now, I just don’t want to hear my friends in bands saying, “I got asked again if I was a merch girl.” What about in the wider world? Did you follow the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case that some businesses don’t have to cover birth control for their employees? That’s a conversation that I’m having al-

most daily with friends, because my mom and I, and a lot of the women in my family, have had to take birth control for many more reasons besides baby-blocking. I think it’s a woman’s right. A woman’s body is her body, and her body is connected to her brain, which should be making the decisions for her body. That’s all I’ll say about that. You’ll notice I haven’t asked you to explain your new hair color, unlike a lot of people this year. [Laughs] I appreciate that. What’s the dumbest hair-related question you’ve heard? Man, if we’re going to talk about my hair, I like to talk about the reasons why, you know? For me it’s just self-expression. And it hurts a lot less than getting tattoos. I’ve got a lot of those already. I’ve noticed that Paramore songs go over well at karaoke. Have you ever done Paramore karaoke? I have. It was a terrible experience. I used to go to this laser-tag spot in Nashville with a big group of friends – this was right after [2007’s] “Misery Business” had gotten really popular. They thought it was hilarious to put me on the spot. Finally, I was just like, “Whatever,” and I just did it. I don’t know how this is possible, but I think I sounded worse than anyone has ever sounded singing that song. It was pitiful. Learn more on: http://www.rollingstones. com/

ACTUAL

Paramore Tour Will “Light a Fire Under Our Asses” 24 24

INTERVIEWS

hen Paramore announced dates for their Writing the Future Tour in January, they made it clear this run of shows wasn’t just a tour, but “a celebration” of the success they found with their Grammy-winning self-titled album. But that doesn’t mean they’re slacking on the pre-show preparations. Still, the sentiment behind the “Future” trek – which kicks off April 27th in Augusta, Georgia – is clear. This is both a thank you to the fans that stuck with Paramore through the dramatic departure of two founding members and a victory lap for everything that came after: a Number One debut for their 2013 self-titled album, two platinum-selling singles and the band’s first-ever Grammy Award, for Best Rock Song. “Hell yeah, it does feel like [a victory lap],” says Williams. “We never in a million years thought we would win a Grammy, or any of the other crazy things that happened along the way. So we’re thinking of each show as an event, as a way to celebrate our relationship with fans, to celebrate the album and to celebrate the past two years of this band.” Hence the rehearsals. Williams also says these shows will focus as much on the past as the present, relying on older songs to close the book on Paramore’s most successful period. “When we were making the album, we had that song ‘Future,’ the last track on the record – it brought in some of our earliest influences, made us feel like we were back in Jeremy’s living room,” she says. “It brought us full circle. Then fast-forward two years, and we did the Parahoy! cruise, and night number two was like the most intimate that a Paramore show has felt in years. The first night we purposely put a lot of singles in the set, and we wanted to second night to feel like we were weaving in and out of all the albums, playing songs that fans haven’t heard in a long time. “So we always wanted to bring that vibe to a theater setting,” she continues. “No matter all the amazing things that happened with this album, we’re still a band; we still have the same influences and there’s still a feeling that we never want to go away. So it’s sort of our way of digging back into that, hoping that our fans new and old will want to go back with us.”

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And while Paramore won’t be using the “Future” shows to test new material – “We haven’t even discussed covers yet,” Williams says. “I was just thinking this morning, ‘I wonder what we should do?’” – they are hoping the momentum will carry them into their next chapter: writing the follow-up to their self-titled album.

“We needed some time off after Monumentour, to process everything that we were able to do, but also a lot of amazing personal things happened as well,” Williams says. “Now we’re so ready to get on the road, to be with our fans. That’s going to light a fire under our asses to get into what we’re going to do next. I can just feel it. And that’s exciting.”

INTERVIEWS ACTUAL

“AIN’T IT FUN” AND PARAMORE’S NEXT LP

t’s been more than a year since Paramore released their self-titled fourth album, a longplaying, sonically ambitious effort that was as much a reboot (their first LP as a threepiece) as it was a risk: There weren’t many major-label rock bands releasing four-sided, 17-track, hour-plus records (complete with “interludes,” strings and choirs) in 2013. Yet, Paramore has become a slow-burning success, the band’s first album to produce two platinum-selling singles, “Still Into You” and “Ain’t It Fun,” the latter of which has become a crossover smash, a staple on Billboard’s Rock Songs chart, the Adult Top 40 and the all-encompassing Hot 100. Six months after it was released as a single, “Fun” is not only Paramore’s set-closing standard, it may very well be the song of the summer. And its success has reinvigorated a band that, less than four years ago, was on the brink of collapse. In fact, a decade into their career, Paramore appear to be operating at both their commercial and critical peaks.In between dates on their co-headlining trek with Fall Out Boy (the apropriately named “Monumentour”) Hayley Williams spoke to Rolling Stone about defying the odds, barfing out the band’s biggest hit and why she hates questions about her hair.

Over the past decade, this band has experienced success, but nothing on par with what’s happened this year. Is this the best time to be in Paramore? For sure. On every level. We keep learning what it means to be a band, both professionally and as friends in a band. It’s a constant learning process. We made a record that we were so proud of, and its success is so far beyond anything that we expected when we were writing it. So that’s incredibly satisfying, obviously, but on a personal level, I feel like our friendships are just constantly deepening, and becoming really important and vital. “Ain’t It Fun” has become an anthem. When you first wrote it, did you have any idea it would become this massive? We took so long making this album that we couldn’t help but be disconnected with what was going on with music at the time. It was about how we felt in the moment, what was inspiring us and what made us excited to be in a band again, and it’s so weird that those same songs are the ones that gave us the most success. Some of them are the poppiest things we’ve ever written...”Ain’t It Fun” was like word vomit; it just came out, and now everybody’s singing it, it’s on the radio, it’s really cool. I don’t know if you get that twice in your career. This is the first time we’ve experienced it, and I’m just really thankful. Paramore has never been bigger, yet, in a lot of ways, all of the success seems very organic. Has it been a struggle to do things on your terms? We know when things don’t feel right. We’re all very close-knit on the road, and we are able to be honest with each other when something doesn’t feel true to the cause. Doing things like that fashion video that involved our crew guys, that keeps us enjoying every little moment, so it doesn’t become this big factory. That’s the stuff that’s important. Just like back in 2005, when we were writing back [to fans] on

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MySpace, if it feels real to us, then that’s how we gauge every step that we make. Have you personally turned down offers that didn’t feel right? In the beginning, I turned down tons of stuff; as soon as I turned 18, FHM magazine came to me. There’s been countless ridiculous things since then, and probably some cool opportunities that we just didn’t feel right about at the time. We sort of let ourselves bloom as people at the same time that we’ve let our band expand its territory. I think some of that has been in us, to know what feels right, a sense of what Paramore really is, but some of it, you grow into it. I’m not so sensitive about going out and doing certain things by myself these days, and the guys aren’t so sensitive about it either. And there’s something like the Teen Choice Awards, where we would have been like, “Oh, we don’t want to do a teen show” when we were actual teenagers and it probably would have made more sense. [Laughs] In the past, you’ve been wary of being the focal point of the band. Is that still an issue? You know, it depends. [Sometimes] we do TV spots, interviews, and we spend tons of time talking and you think that it feels very evenly spread out, you think that it feels deep and the questions are nice, and then it gets edited and then it’s just you, and it’s just asking about your hair. That’s the stuff that I get uncomfortable with. There was a recent Nightline interview that certainly made mention of your hair... Oh, well, that’s kind of what I’m referring to. At the same time, you did “Stay the Night” with Zedd, and it went platinum. So what’s next, another Paramore album, or more solo stuff from you? We want to make another record. Taylor’s writing all the time, and Jeremy writes quite a lot, too. I’m in that phase where I spend

a lot of time journaling, and it’s usually a month or two of that before I start liking what I’m writing. It happens every album. So I think an album will happen as soon as we start writing things together that we’re like, “Yes, this feels awesome.” We’ve never finished a song we don’t like, so we have started songs, then been like, “You know what? Nah.” So we’re just waiting for that one to click, and then it will be really on. But the wheels are already turning. As far as the little solo appearance things, I always judge based on how I feel about something in my gut. If a song like “Stay the Night” comes to me, it’s undeniable, but it has to feel right. So have you had a chance to actually enjoy any of this? We all have. This year has been surprisingly calm, especially considering the song has been going wild. We did one tour at the beginning of the year, we did a cruise and now we’re on Monumentour. That’s kind of all we’ve done. We spent a lot of time at home, and it was really nice; real life is so different from the life you spend in a bus. Now I much prefer sitting on the back porch, being with family. I can tell, now more than ever, how much older I’ve gotten since we first started. You’ve been fronting this band for a decade now. Has the job gotten easier or more difficult? I’m still surprised when I feel uncomfortable with it after 10 years. It’s funny when I feel left out, or in the cold, and everyone’s focusing on me. Onstage, it’s so much about the music that I feel comfortable. But being the frontwoman is not an easy job, it’s something I’m really proud to be getting better at; performing really well, singing really well and speaking to the crowd – that’s the part I’m most nervous about, like “What do I say that makes me sound cool?” – but also trying to keep it the same way that it felt when we were in clubs. I want to connect, and so do Taylor and Jeremy. That’s our mission every night.

EVENTS

& Hall of Fame 2015

ACTUAL

Rock Roll

5.Best Help From Famous Friends: The Superjam

6. Best Random Collision of Rock Royalty: The Scene Backstage

7.Steve Cropper Honors The “5” Royales

8. Best Badass Speech: Miley Cyrus Inducts Joan Jett

9. Best Bathroom Anecdote: Patti Smith Inducts Lou

10.Laurie Anderson Accepts for Lou Reed

12. Green Dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speeches and Performance

4. Best Surprise Comedian: Bill Withers

11.Best Returned Favor: Dave Grohl Joins Joan

13. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Tribute 14.Paul and Ringo, Together Again

12.Fall Out Boy Deifies Green Day

6.Best Return to the Mic: Bill Withers May, 2015

15.Jimmie Vaughan Pays Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan 31

EVENTS ACTUAL

Fall Out Boy’s induction bat was how musical it was. It was all the things that you’d expect from punk Let me ask you a question: What is rock: it was angry, it was loud, it was punk rock? That seems like that should fast, but there were these subtle hints be an easy enough question to answer of an awareness of music theory and but kids and critics argue about it with music history that was wise beyond its the fervent and furious devotion of opwyears. Now, other kids had Guns N’ posing religious sects, political parties, Roses and Nirvana and all those things or Star Wars fans. So I guarantee that later. 1994, none of that was good. This, someone somewhere will be pissed off this one I was like, “This is mine.” (and come on, what’s more punk than pissing people off?) when I say that one After that, I was all over it. I tried to of my all time favorite punk bands is dress like them, I tried to play my dad’s Green Day. music real low like Billie Joe did. I followed every interview, I watched every So, I remember the first time I heard TV performance. And the more imGreen Day. Give you a little backmersed into the world I got, the more ground: I was a little bit of a music I thought that this band was one of the snob when I was a kid. My dad was a greatest. You have to think to yourself, Chicago folk singer and he was very “Wow, how’d they get all these guys in psyched to see all the punk bands of one band together?” The thing that kills the day. And he played a lot of fusion me is how in so many bands, you feel jazz when I was younger, so you can like maybe there’s some dead weight... imagine I was pretty out of step with You want to see them in the Hall of my friends who were punk fans. So Fame but maybe they had that one guy one day some friends got me to sneak who was just along for the ride...maybe out of class, and mostly we just went that one guy who wasn’t so great at plahome and listened to this cassette tape ying but he always volunteered to drive that one of them had. It was Dookie. So the van or whatever. But with Green the thing that struck me right off the

Patrick Stump:

Day, every player, every sound that came out of these three guys was as important to the entire thing, including the one guy. Billie Joe’s signature snarl and strong, sarcastic lyrics, that eternally youthful voice, those bright, open chord structures. The way a silhouette of him playing guitar would be as recognizable a posture to any punk rock kid as Michael Jordan’s mid-air dunk is to sports fans. Mike Dirnt! And those bass lines…up there with the likes of James Jamerson and Jaco Pastorius as one of the most identifiable bass players since the invention of the instrument. Tré Cool…you have a drummer named Tré fucking Cool. That is the coolest thing ever. And there’s not a drummer under the age of 30 who didn’t spend their entire summer trying to learn…to play that rapid-fire fill in the beginning of”Basket Case” just like Tré. And guess what? No one can. The passion, he makes it look easy. It’s incredible.

Read Fall Out Boy’s Loving Green Day Tribute at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

all Out Boy have never been shy about acknowledging their debt to Green Day, whether covering “Basket Case” during their 2007 tour, or citing the band as a major influence on both their initial formation and their subsequent desire to expand beyond punk rock’s four-chord template. “If I hadn’t ever had a chance to hear an album like [1994’s] Dookie, I don’t know where I would have ended up,” Pete Wentz told Time in 2013. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday

night, the Midwestern pop-punk idols once again waxed effusive in praise of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool. The two bands have shared stages before — including the 2009 Video Music Awards, when Wentz spontaneously jumped onstage (along with dozens of other audience members) during Green Day’s performance of “East Jesus Nowhere” — but there was something undeniably special about seeing the two biggest pop-punk bands of their respective generations

gathered around the same podium at Cleveland’s Public Hall. Green Day joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, alongside Lou Reed, Bill Withers, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The “5” Royales were inducted in the Early Influence category, while Ringo Starr was given the Hall’s Award for Musical Excellence.

speech for Green Day: Pete Wentz:

Now, no one else can do anything the way Green Day does. I have this distinct memory of Billie Joe. He was interviewing at MTV somewhere around the album Nimrod, where he said something along the lines of, “I don’t want to be making punk rock the rest of my life.” Sorry man, you still are. When you followed up Dookie with a single about methamphetamine, and another in two movements, that was pretty punk rock. When conventional wisdom demanded another fast rock punk song and instead you put out a stripped down ballad single that became the go-to prom song for a decade, that was pretty punk rock. When you put out a three-companion album in a year — in an era of digital singles — that was pretty punk rock. When, in an era of basically no socially conscious discourse in pop music, you put out a scathingly political rock opera and somehow managed

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to make that career-redefining, that was insanely fucking punk rock. Not to mention your alleged involvement in side projects like the Network and Foxboro Hot Tubs. Everything you guys do is punk rock in the sense that you’ve never gone the easy route, the obvious route, the safe route. You’ve never repeated yourselves, you’ve never done anything to please the suits. Suits aren’t really pleased by changed, but when a great band plays a set of their hits, there should be a lot of change. Like Queen, the Who or the Clash, the best bands go on to defy and define the labels they get saddled with…the best bands are legend on record and onstage. Now I have to say, the impact that Green Day has had on pop culture… when we walk through an airport, about 80 percent of the time when someone takes a picture with us, we hear them walk off like, “Holy shit, I just got a picture with fucking Green Day!” That’s totally true. Now Fall Out Boy has never had the honor of playing a show with Green Day, and honestly

part of us kind of likes it that way. Because Green Day is honestly one of the best live bands on the planet right now. If you’ve ever opened for them, they put on a show that’s so epic and engaging, that the audience absolutely forgot about you halfway through their first legendary singalong chorus and an assault of confetti cannons. If you’ve ever played after them…sorry. This is a band that’s so in tune with their audience that let a random kid onstage and play in the band. In arenas. They literally fulfill that improbable daydream every kid has playing onstage with their favorite band. That’s not image consultants, clever A&R, or media training, but by cutting your teeth in community halls and basements and crust punk squats. So let some Reddit feed argue the definition of punk rock. Me? I already have my answer. It is our great honor to induct Green Day into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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