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50th ANNIVERSARY YEAR

Issue 1298 >> October 19, 2017

Sam Smith’s Broken Heart Marilyn Manson’s Life Advice THE RS INTERVIEW

Jerry Brown’s

The Liberation of

Kesha Her Near-Death Journey and Her Triumph

California Dream 50 Years of Rock Style

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ICONIC DENIM • THEN & NOW Socially charged, grass-stained anthems dreamed up on a quad with lyrics to change the world.

Threadbare jeans getting a fresh rip under piercing screams and searing vibrations of an electric guitar. Angst-infused, torn up grunge oozing into suburbia from underneath a garage door.

Music genres are products of their environment – each one a result of the unique setting in which it was created.

For 50 years, Levi’s® and Rolling Stone have been at the center of it all.

Join us as we celebrate the timeless intersection of music and style.

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Shop the collection on Levi.com and at select Levi’s stores.

Free Love on the Quad Whether on a college campus or in a city park, the quad has been – and continues to be – the breeding ground for creativity built on youthful optimism.

Students, protestors, musicians gather in their stone-washed Trucker Jackets and grass-stained jeans to compose rebellious lyrics set to acoustic chords – with hopes of sparking a movement, and a better tomorrow.

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Chasing Sunrise Beneath hot sidewalks and closed storefronts, the underground scene thumps with the freedom of losing yourself in the music. Bass blasts from blaring speakers, radiating energy onto the sweaty mosh pit where a rule-breaking, deďŹ ant scene was born. At the center of it all are the punk rockers — shredded jeans, bleached hair, bare skin and a dangerous, unapologetic attitude.

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Behind the Velvet Rope Strobe lights and synth-y pop sounds bounce off the walls as the it-kids make their way to the club to see and be seen – their androgynous looks redefining glam. Breezy beats and vibrant lyrics epitomize the carefree vibe of a partier who’s always at the center of the dance floor – jeans slashed and paint-splattered as they move to the music.

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Youth in Revolt Emerging from deep in the suburbs, grunge brings introspective emotions to the masses. A genre full of searing, honest lyrics, angst-drenched vocals and melancholy chords.

Thrown-together looks, torn up shirts and jeans worn down to shreds mirror those creating and rebelling against the establishment.

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In the Studio Behind hip-hop’s echoey digital beats and powerful lyrics are vocalists, songwriters and producers who gather for late-night sessions to dream up the tracks that will dominate pop culture. They don’t come to impress – they come to collaborate and create. Their laidback, inherently cool style mimics their music and the dimly lit, intimate ambiance of the studio.

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Wheels Up For all the world’s biggest acts, it’s about remastering, remixing and redefining – constantly evolving their personal brand.

They draw from endless inspirations, far and wide, old and new, to create a style all their own. An ever-changing, always-on, jet-setting lifestyle demands off-duty glam – the world is their runway.

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FEATURES

Keystone Pipeline Fight Heats Up Can a group of Midwestern farmers stop the controversial Big Oil project?

By Saul Elbein .................... 24

The Liberation of Kesha Before she could make one of the year’s best albums, she had to save her own life.

By Brian Hiatt ....................26

Jerry Brown’s California Dream Has the governor created a blueprint for a more progressive America?

By Tim Dickinson ................32

Six Decades of Rock Style From mod to grunge to hiphop street fashion.

Photos by Mark Seliger..... 40

ROCK & ROLL

Sam Smith The singer drank too much, suffered from writer’s block and went through a breakup – then poured it all into a “gritty” new album ............... 13 SWEET CREATURE In mid-September, Harry Styles kicked off his first-ever solo tour. Backed by a four-piece band, the singer – seen here at L.A.’s Greek Theatre – has been playing intimate, classicrock-steeped sets, highlighted by an intense version of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”

DEPA R T MEN TS Letters.........8 Playlist .......10

Records..... 49 Movies.......53

CAMERON AZOFF

ON THE COVER Kesha photographed in Topanga, California, on August 31st, 2017, by Peggy Sirota.

Hair and makeup by Vittorio Masecchia at Opus Beauty. Styling by Samantha Burkhart and Mecca Coz at TheOnly.Agency. Buck Owens personal suit by Nathan Turk from the Buck Owens Private Foundation. Shirt from Palace Costume. Necktie from Lucky Dry Goods. Bolo tie and bracelet from the Way We Wore. Ring by Bow & Arrow.

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MOVIES

‘BLADE RUNNER 2049’

Thirty-five years after Ridley Scott’s opus perfected the dystopian sci-fi odyssey, the Blade Runner sequel is finally here. We recap how the original became one of the most influential films of all time.

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PUERTO RICO AFTER MARIA

MADONNA’S ‘SEX’ TURNS 25

‘THIS IS US’ IS A SURPRISE HIT

In the hurricane’s aftermath, the U.S. territory faces a level of federal neglect on par with the worst failures of Katrina.

An examination of why the provocative book and the LP Erotica are still some of the icon’s most transgressive work.

As the second season starts, we explore how an underdog drama became an Emmywinning generational hit.

MAKE AMERICA RAGE AGAIN The supergroup Prophets of Rage, who recently released their first full-length album, join Brian Hiatt in the studio to explain how Rage Against the Machine met with Public Enemy and Cypress Hill to become a genre-splitting powerhouse. Rolling Stone Music Now airs Fridays at 1 p.m. ET on the Sirius XM Volume channel. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

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Correspondence

Love Letters & Advice Save Me, Nathan!

America’s Secret War In RS 1296, Seth Harp reported from ISIS’ stronghold in Syria, the most violent place on Earth, on the secretive role of U.S. forces in another escalating war in the Middle East [“The Siege of Raqqa”]. Readers responded. a v ery i n for m at i v e piece of journalism. Thanks for revealing much about a nameless and perhaps endless battle that we are involved in, and for your obvious courage to do reporting in such a perilous environment.

Following the Foos

Mickster99, via the Internet

gr e a t a r t ic l e on dav e Grohl [“The Foos Fight On,” RS 1296]. He is an expert at dynamic song construction, understands the importance of lyrics and knows how to end a song with a proper exclamation point. Onstage, his incredible energy keeps the audience in the palm of his hand.

this is a wa r th at everyone wants kept out of the news because of its degree of brutality. No one is taking prisoners. To see how this is going to end, simply review what happened in Russia between 1942 and 1945.

The casualties here are going to be nothing short of horrendous.

John Hanson, Denver

groh l’s dow n- t o -e a rt h persona has always seemed so genuine, as confirmed by Josh Eells’ bestowal of the “Everydude” title. I especially appreciate how Grohl will unabashedly “geek out” over so many other artists. I hope the Foo Fighters keep doing what they’re doing.

There are legions of us who continue to appreciate their style.

Wendy White Bradenton, FL

imagining grohl weaving through Lana Del Rey fans at Amoeba Music made me laugh.

Thanks for that!

Karen Pillot Sherman Oaks, CA

Houston’s Problem jeff goodell hit the nail on the head with his article on the Houston f loods [“Houston: A Global Warning,” RS 1296]. As a 20-year resident of the area, I and countless others

8 | R ol l i n g S t o n e |

Clayton Donoghue Via the Internet

so we armed isis and we kill ISIS. There is money to be made in war! I am glad we are supporting the Kurds.

When I was fighting in Iraq, they were always helpful and civilized, and they got screwed over by everybody.

Mac-01 Via the Internet

u nfortu nately, isis is our mess to clean up, thanks to our interventionist foreign policy, perpetuated by presidential administrations going back at least a centu-

my small business needs Nathan for You [“The Outer Limits of Awkward,” RS 1296].

My partner and I are running a little record store down the road from the old “Dumb Starbucks” called Paw Paw Records.

If you’re reading this, Nathan, we could really use your help!

Ezra Horne Via the Internet

Bucks for Bruce i read the piece on bruce Springsteen and scalpers with mild incredulity [“Bruce Beats the Bots,” RS 1296]. I have been a fan for 40 years and have often resorted to scalpers to get $300 tickets. Now, with the middleman gone, I have to pay more than $600 directly to Bruce to see the Broadway show?

Jack Bonamo Florham Park, NJ

Newman Knows ry. When you’re a hammer that runs on nonrenewable resources, every problem looks like a nail begging for a Tomahawk missile.

Chad Pyle Via the Internet

gr e at to check i n w ith Randy Newman, one of the most underappreciated songwriters of all time [“My Life in 12 Songs,” RS 1296]. His wry sense of humor and practical approach come across in his comments on each of the songs.

Paul Greenwood Pickering, Ontario

have been dismayed by the unbridled mentality of developers unrestricted by heavily lobbied officials. These “greedheads,” as we call them, should be held accountable for what happened.

Scott Schmucker The Woodlands, TX

we are staring dow n the single most important event in human history and are incapable of large-scale change due to greed, corruption and fanaticism. If ever there was a time to be proactive and not reactive, it is now. The human race may not get a second chance.

RollingStone.com

Ed Rapacki, Ahwatukee, AZ

Race Against Cruz i first met beto o’rourke when he came to my door as a candidate for city council 13 years ago [“Ted Cruz’s PunkRock Problem,” RS 1296]. I looked through the peephole at a tall dude in jeans and a blue oxford shirt and said, “There’s a Kennedy on my porch.”

Christopher B. Goldsmith El Paso, TX

i d on’ t k now a n y t h i ng about Beto O’Rourke, but Stanley’s is some of the best BBQ I’ve ever had.

Brian van Conklin, via the Internet

i wa s i n e l e m e n t a r y school when “Short People” came out, and I can tell you my classmates delighted in singing the lyrics of that song at me all day, every day.

Melissa Endo, San Francisco

Contact Us LETTERS to ROLLING STONE , 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104-0298. Letters become the property of ROLLING STONE and may be edited for publication.

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MY LIST OUR FAVORITE SONGS, ALBUMS AND VIDEOS RIGHT NOW

2. Thomas Rhett

1. Björk “The Gate”

“Kiss Me Like a Stranger”

“I care for you,” Björk sings on the first single from her upcoming LP. It’s one of pop’s great experimenters at her most expansive – fluttering through glistening electronics into new shades of openhearted elation.

Rhett’s a Nashville hitmaker with a love for many styles of R&B. Here, he shows off his chops as a Seventies pop-soul smoothie, like a country Boz Scaggs.

3. Dorothy “Down to the Bottom Live” Singer-guitarist Dorothy Martin – who is managed and produced by pop-music veteran Linda Perry – delivers a perfect mix of blues thunder and alt-rock guitar crunch.

“Glasgow Kisses” This shredding Welsh band sounds like it just time-traveled from 1995, where it had been on tour with Elastica. But “Glasgow Kisses” is a reminder that catchy punk-rock angst spirals are awesome in any era.

Five Songs About Children The singer-songwriter’s latest, The Laughing Apple, features newly recorded versions of songs he wrote in the 1960s.

Stevie Wonder “Isn’t She Lovely” Stevie Wonder had a massive impact on me.

This song is about his daughter and shows the open, honest love that a parent has for a child.

John Lennon “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” This shows a sweet part of John that you don’t often get, since he was so cryptic. It’s an outpouring of love for his son Sean.

6. First Aid Kit “It’s a Shame” This great Swedish indie-folk duo have an album coming out soon, and if this Dylan-meetsEmmylou Harris shot of country-rock sunshine is any indication, it’s going to be excellent.

Harry Chapin “Cat’s in the Cradle” This song has been haunting me for years, since people think that I wrote it. It reflects the dilemma of many homes.

A beautiful song.

The Lovin’ Spoonful

7. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie “Say A’ ”

5. Robert Plant “New World” At 69, Plant remains an exploratory sage, and this highlight from his new Carry Fire lands somewhere between Zeppelin and the Velvet Underground.

10 | R ol l i n g S t o n e

Bronx rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie has a gift for giving classic NYC toughness a buoyant twist. “Say A’ ” balances these impulses perfectly, bright but foreboding, flashing on images of runaway riches and police harassment, smiling defiantly in the face of tragedy.

“Younger Generation” John Sebastian wrote a wacky lyric about a future where children casually take LSD and their parents smoke themselves to death.

Bob Dylan “Forever Young” When a child comes around, you really reveal more of yourself. You’re listening to Dylan wish someone well from the bottom of his heart.

O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

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PROFILE LIAM GALLAGHER’S SWEET REVENGE

P. 16

| Q&A DEMI LOVATO

P. 18

Rock&Roll

LONELY NO MORE Smith in New York, September

JAMES BARBER

Sam Smith’s Raw Return S a m sm i t h wa s f e e l i ng t h e pressure. The English singer’s 2014 debut, In the Lonely Hour, was one of the biggest hits of the decade, selling 12.5 million copies and winning him four Grammys. He was tagged the male Adele and went from playing clubs to arenas in less than two years. But by early 2016, Smith had returned to London after two years of touring and found himself creatively paralyzed. “For the first two months, I really struggled,” he says. He had trouble writing about himself, he adds, “because I

O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

The singer drank too much, battled writer’s block and saw a relationship fall apart – then poured it all into his ‘gritty’ new album

BY PAT R ICK D OY L E

realized I didn’t actually like myself a lot.”

Most nights, he’d go out drinking. “When you drink a lot, when you go out too much, the next day isn’t so fun. And when you’re really supersensitive and emotional, like I am, it’s just not good for you.”

In the end, though, Smith would channel all those dark feelings for his second album, due later this fall, which expands on the throwback soul of his first album, branching beyond breakup songs into new territory, including religion, self-doubt and his sexuality. Smith’s fa- [Cont. on 14]

RollingStone.com

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13

R&R

Checking In: Ezra Koenig

SOUL ASYLUM In a London studio this year with bassist Brendan Grieve

The Vampire Weekend frontman on his new animated Netflix comedy, “Neo Yokio,” starring Jaden Smith – and VW’s long-awaited next album

14 | R ol l i n g S t o n e |

RollingStone.com

Koenig

FROM TOP: JAMES BARBER; CHRISTAAN FELBER

about six months, but it didn’t work out. “He was the loveliest person in the world,” Smith [Cont. from 13] mous tenor is still impres- says. “I just wasn’t enough for him. That’s sive, but it sounds more weathered than OK. It actually left me just realizing I had a before (“I’ve been smoking . . . more than 20 long journey of self-love to go on.” a day,” he sings at one point). “In the Lonely Working with Jimmy Napes, who coHour sounds pretty to me,” Smith says. “This produced much of In the Lonely Hour, album doesn’t sound pretty to me. I want this Smith overcame his early-session jitters. to be more gritty. I want it to sound older, He wrote songs like “Burning” and the sina bit more uncomfortable. In the Lonely gle “Too Good at Goodbyes,” which describe Hour is a gin and tonic with the mental toll of a broken your friends. The new album relationship. (Stargate, Timis a whiskey by yourself in a baland and other hitmak“A lot of people dark room, at night, thinkers also worked on the LP.) ing about life. I went into a get a record Smith says he’d head to the deep place. I don’t think I’m studio around noon, work deal and spend going to go into that place until dark, “and then I would their money on ever again, because it got a go out with my friends, gaystuff,” says bit too deep.” clubbing in London.”

Smith says the instant As his mood grew brightSmith. “I spent fame he found after his huge er, the songs did too. A few it on cheese, 2014 hit, “Stay With Me,” cuts, like “Baby, You Make basically.” “scared the shit out of me.”

Me Crazy,” are relentlessHe grew distant from friends ly upbeat, recalling Sixties and family: “It got to where soul. “But if you actually listhe only time I would see my mum was after ten to the lyrics,” Smith says, “they’re desa show with record execs.” On the road, he perately sad. I call them ‘dance and cry’ gained substantial weight. “A lot of people get songs. I love songs like that. Robyn does a record deal and spend that money on stuff. that for me.”

I spent it on cheese, basically.”

Smith calls the sessions “therapy”: “It’s In 2016, Smith won an Academy Award about me starting to love myself again.” for his James Bond theme, “Writing’s on the These days, he’s stopped partying as he preWall.” But he was frustrated with his Os- pares for a two-year tour. “I want to be on cars performance (he called it “the worst my A game,” he says. moment of my life”) and became a target of In September, Smith released the Internet hate after he mistakenly suggest- stripped-down “Too Good at Goodbyes.” It ed he was the first openly gay man to win immediately became a Top Five hit, and it an Oscar. Smith ducked out of the spotlight, has racked up more than 80 million streams living with his younger sister in London and on Spotify. He gets emotional describing the working on the album. relief he felt when he read positive reviews.

He got in shape, going on a diet and “I cried my eyes out, because I was so scared working out regularly: “I still don’t enjoy it, to release anything,” he says. “It just made but I force myself to do it.” Smith also found me feel so happy, because it made me feel time for a relationship, dating someone for like all the fear was worth it.”

SAM SMITH

The sentence “The guy from Vampire Weekend made an anime with Will Smith’s son” sounds randomly generated. How did this show come together?

Out of respect for true anime, I’ve always called Neo Yokio “anime-inspired” – it’s a hybrid. But I’ve always been a fan of anime, and I always wanted to do something that was kind of a homage to it. Maybe a loving parody.

Vampire Weekend have seen some personnel changes: Rostam Batmanglij left as a full-time member, and you’ve brought on new collaborators. How has that affected the next album?

I had this experience where I was in the studio with Kanye in Mexico, and it was so different than anything I’d done: One day Dave Longstreth is there; the next day Big Sean shows up. Sometimes it wasn’t people working, just talking about music. I was like, “I like this. I need to loosen up.” So I’ve been working with this 68-year-old guitarist, Greg Leisz, and a bunch of other people. Now we’re moving into the final stage where it’s about “how do you take all that energy and reduce it to the album?” It’s tricky.

You were a big Bernie Sanders supporter.

Do you hope he’ll run again?

What I hope is that a younger figure from the left proves themselves to be ethical and moral, and excites Bernie voters and Hillary voters – and, let’s be real, a few Trump voters, too. I still support Bernie, but as he’s said, this cult of personality around politicians is so toxic. I don’t need to see him be president, because then I’m not talking about the issues anymore – I’m talking about my weird sentimental attachment to someone. . . .

So I really don’t care if Bernie’s president, and I hope he doesn’t really care either.

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Jim Beam Black® Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 43% Alc./Vol. ©2017 James B. Beam Distilling Co., Clermont, KY All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Awarded International Wine & Spirits Competition’s 2016 Bourbon Trophy.

Y R O T S I H E K A M

R&R

Liam Gallagher’s Sweet Revenge After coping with a divorce and the demise of Oasis, the frontman is finally back – and ready for a fight

BY BR I A N H I AT T t might not have seemed like it during the champagne-and-cocaine supernova of his Brit-pop Nineties – back when a given night might find him detained by police on a ferry to Amsterdam, tossed out of Abbey Road Studios midsession, or skipping an Oasis gig to go houseshopping – but Liam Gallagher was always thinking long-term. Or at least he was always thinking. Take his habitual onstage pose: arms clasped behind his back, every part of him immobile save for his lips. “I knew for a fact I was gonna live forever,” he says now, having made it to a lean, fiery 45.

I

He ran about seven miles through Central Park this morning, but he’s still pacing the carpet of a New York hotel room. He’s wearing a zipped-up blue jacket and running shorts, as if his top and bottom halves exist in different climates. “So I thought to myself, ‘When I get to about 80, there ain’t no fucking chance I’m doing fucking dance moves like Mick Jagger.’ ” He throws his hands behind him and leans forward to an imaginary microphone. “So all I have to do is just fucking stand still. Jagger’s still gotta jump up and down!”

Unlike Jagger, Gallagher doesn’t have his band anymore, and the odds of ever getting it back are not, at the moment, looking great. Oasis blinked out of existence in Paris eight years ago, after a final confrontation between Liam and his brother Noel, the band’s guitarist and songwriter. Noel’s version is that Liam threw a violent tantrum that night; Liam argues that he was provoked (“He set a few booby traps for me, and I walked right into them because I’m passionate and I wear my heart on my sleeve”), that Noel had been secretly planning to leave the band for months or years and that Noel’s accounts of an attempted assault with a guitar are false. The brothers don’t speak to each other, and Liam says that even their mother has given up on making peace between them. “My mom’s done with it,” he says, laughing a little. “She’s like, ‘I don’t fucking give a shit. I’m 70-fucking-5 now!

Fuck the kids, I’ve had enough!’ She goes swimming, she does her thing. She’s not interested.”

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Liam is in New York to promote his first solo album, As You Were (due October 6th). While Noel was, with rare exceptions, the sole songwriter in Oasis, Liam’s record is a pleasant surprise: a bracing, sometimes wistful collection of unadorned rock tunes (including the excellent single “Wall of Glass”) and a reminder that he’s always been one of rock’s great voices. He sounds more like his hero and “spiritual fucking guide,” John Lennon, than ever. “I do believe he’s here,” notes Gallagher, who stopped by Strawberry Fields for a brief communion during his exercise this morning – and found fans waiting for him there.

“I do believe that he’s looking out for me.”

Gallagher is proud of his album, even though he finds performing and recording under his own name “a bit embarrassing.” Still, he gives considerable credit to his co-writers (who include Adele collaborator Greg Kurstin) and is prone to saying stuff like, “I could fucking sing fucking ‘Three Blind Mice’ and ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and it would still sound like Oasis.”

He used to pop off to the pub while Noel overdubbed guitar solos on Oasis’ later albums, so he appreciated Kurstin’s speed, which reminded him of the “in and out” process of his band’s first two LPs. And Gallagher isn’t shy about admitting a fact that more mercenary artists might avoid: “I would prefer to be speaking about an Oasis album than the Liam solo album,” he says. “And I know Noel Gallagher would. Because we’re better together. I’m well aware of that, and so is he.” (Noel, who has an album due with his band High

Flying Birds, recently indicated to Rolling Stone that he is unready to reciprocate his brother’s sentiments: “I’ve got literally no opinion,” he said.)

In truth, Liam is just happy to be working again. He kept the Oasis momentum going for a few years with Beady Eye, a band that included all of the latter-day members save for Noel, but it fizzled out circa 2013 – around the same time that Liam’s marriage exploded in the wake of revelations about a child he’d fathered with a woman in New York. Liam was unmoored, unemployed, without any of the things that had defined his life. He drifted. He drank a lot. “There was no gig,” he says. “I felt like a shadow. . . . I was lost. I’d think, ‘Fuck, how am I going to get out of this one?’ ” Eventually, he moved to a “nice castle” in Spain, took up running and met his current girlfriend, Debbie Gwyther, who is a constant and calming presence in his life. In all, though, it was “four fucking years of hell, with divorce lawyers and fucking all that bollocks. So I’ve had four years to have a real good think about what I want in life. I’m not chasing success. I’ve got more than enough in life. I’ve got everything. I’ve got more than everything.

I just want to get back to making music, you know what I mean? Singing songs, you know what I mean?”

He remains a partisan for and defender of his particular idea of rock & roll, which involves working-class perspectives, loud guitars and periodic Keith Moon-style bad behavior. “Rock & roll to me is very fuck-

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ANDREW WHITTON/KINTZING/AUGUST

“Noel wants me to just vanish. As if I never even walked the Earth. Well, I got news for him – I’m back, mate.” ing serious,” he says, reserving a particular ire for the band for whom his brother is currently serving as an opening act: “U2 are the shittiest rock & roll band in the world. When was the last time you got into any rock & roll antics? You’re not a rock & roll band!” He likes hip-hop (or “hip-’op,” as he calls it), but only the old stuff – he’s averse to rappers “in skinny jeans . . . like the Kanye Wests and that designer fucking rap – I can’t have it.” And EDM? “Is that, like, dance music? Like Calvin Harris? Fuck that. Devil’s music, that is.” He’s always loved a good pop hook, though – he discovered his voice as a teenager by singing along to tunes such as Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” on the radio (“I fucking love that one!”).

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Post-Oasis British rock had too many “middle-class” bands, he argues. The Gallaghers grew up working-class in Manchester, with an absent dad, and Liam’s class consciousness extends to a particular horror over the recent high-rise fire in London that killed at least 80 people, most of them poor. “A fucking block of flats has just been burned down by you, a bunch of cunts trying to save money,” he says, blaming “rich people” for putting flammable material on the building. “ ‘Don’t look back in anger’ – you should be fucking angry. It’s OK to be angry, you know what I mean?”

He has calmed down a bit since his wildest days – which, he points out, started before Oasis did. “I was doing fucking pure LSD, magic mushrooms, coke, all sorts of

fucking stuff before I even fucking spat in a microphone,” he says. “I’m not a fucking casualty, man. I’m not Pete Doherty. . . . I’ve got a bit of discipline. I’ve never done heroin, never gone really big in on cocaine. We weren’t like fucking Stevie Nicks.”

These days, he says, “I’ll have a good time, but not stupid till six in the morning. A hangover these days is like being caught by the fucking Taliban. It takes me three days to fully come out of it. So I pick my days.”

He has complicated feelings about Noel, seeming to feel genuinely betrayed by what he sees as his brother’s transformation.

“That kid’s a fucking twat,” he says. “He’s a prick, he’s turned into the middle class. He’s turned into the establishment. He’s one of them. He’s all fucking, like, Mr. Prim and Proper. The way he does Oasis songs, it’s like someone sucked all the fucking life out of it because he doesn’t want people jumping up and down like the old days.” For his part, Liam is playing songs from Oasis’ catalog in his solo shows the way they were recorded – he says he didn’t even bother giving his backing bandmates any instructions, figuring they knew the records.

And however estranged the two become, he clearly feels every word his brother wrote: “He’s only a vessel in all of it,” he argues.

“We’re all vessels. The songs don’t really belong to him. They don’t belong to me.”

On a deeper level, he blames Noel for, in his view, abandoning him and Oasis. “He was going to pull the plug on the band,” he says. “And he knows that I found out about it, and now it’s like he wants me to just fucking vanish. As if I never even walked the Earth, you know what I mean? Well, I got news for him – I’m fucking back, mate!

You think you’re going to fucking pull the plug on my band and I’m going to walk quietly? Don’t fucking think so, mate! I’ll let people know until the day I die that he threw me under the bus.”

His face is turning slightly red at this point, and he’s pacing the room again.

“They tried to treat me like some kind of fucking drummer or hired hand,” he says. “I’m the fucking face of the band!

I’m the voice of the band, and that goes a long fucking way.” He sighs and smiles.

“No more questions about Noel. I’ll have a heart attack!”

Even during his toughest times, Liam never became dangerously depressed. He’s baffled and shocked at the suicides of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, as he was

by Kurt Cobain’s, long ago. “There’s geezers fucking killing the likes of John Lennon,” he says. “Your life’s precious. Life is like a fucking plane, man. There will be turbulence on the way. You gotta truly believe that you’ll reach your fucking final destination, and all will be fucking good.” You know what he means?

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her e’s no t m uch t h at Demi Lovato is unwilling to share. The 25-year-old pop singer discusses everything from her broken relationship with her father to her sexual appetites on her new LP, Tell Me You Love Me, featuring the hit revenge anthem “Sorry Not Sorry.” She’s decided to let her fans in even closer with her new documentary, Simply Complicated, which hits YouTube on October 17th. The film details the making of her ultrapoppy album, and how she went from a depressed teen drug addict to a sober mental-health advocate. “I wanted to be completely vulnerable and honest,” she says.

You sang the national anthem before the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Conor McGregor fight, in front of more than 100 million people. How were you feeling as you walked into the ring?

I was shaking so much that I had to hold the microphone with both hands.

I didn’t want to mess up. It’s a hard song to sing – there’s high notes that you have to hit, and you want to make it your own without adding too much.

I think it turned out well. I was going to go to the fight anyway for my birthday. Conor did a really great job, and Floyd’s incredible. It was a great fight.

You talk in the documentary about everything from cocaine addiction to an eating disorder. Is there anything you didn’t want to address?

To be honest, no. I was pretty open with the cameras. The only times I didn’t want the cameras on me were when I was songwriting, because I didn’t want to be distracted.

You’ve been in recovery for drug addiction for a few years. How does it shape your day-to-day life?

It’s not so much about avoiding drugs and alcohol, because I don’t necessarily put myself in those situations.

I don’t go to clubs. It shapes my life in a sense that I do inventories all the time.

If I want to f lip somebody the bird while driving, I check with myself, like, “Why do I want to do that? Why am I impatient right now?”

Earlier this year, you said you were sick of being labeled bipolar. Why? I’m not sick of it. If anything, I’m proud to be bipolar and speak about it.

Bipolar is a mood disorder. I deal with mood swings, I deal with episodes of mania, and bipolar-depression phases as well. But I’ve used my voice to help others, and I feel proud that I’ve been able to do that.

You have a song on your new album called “Daddy Issues,” which has you

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Q&A

Demi Lovato The pop star on growing up on the set of ‘Barney’ and what it was like spending election night with the Clinton campaign

BY A N DY GR E E N E

singing about a torrid affair with an older man.

I grew up having a strange relationship with my birth father. It caused relationship issues and certain behaviors in the future. I learned the reasoning behind those behaviors was because of my dad.

Do you mind fans speculating about who you’re having an affair with in the song?

If I did mind it, I wouldn’t put it out there. I’m kind of used to it by now.

You got very involved in the Hillary Clinton campaign. Where were you on election night?

I actually was with the Clinton campaign in New York. It was extremely uncomfortable. Everyone was devastated.

What did working on the campaign teach you?

That it’s better to use your voice and lose fans than to not say anything at all and people-please. I know there’s a risk that comes with that, but I wanted to see a difference made in this country.

Are you confident that a woman will become president in the near future?

I don’t know if it’s in the near future.

I think that our country has a lot of growing to do before that can happen, obviously. But it’ll definitely happen.

You were one of the child actors on Barney & Friends. How do you look back on those days?

Very fondly. I was more comfortable around adults there than I was with kids my own age when I went to public school. I got made fun of a lot because I had been on Barney. I look back and I think it was mainly jealousy from kids that wanted to sing and act on TV. I actually learned so much in my time being home-schooled that I was able to teach my math class things.

As a teenager, you also starred in Camp Rock with the Jonas Brothers. Would you rather watch that or one of your Barney episodes?

Definitely Camp Rock. There’s at least some sort of substance. Barney was fun, but the songs and the dancing – it was just too much.

Last year, you said you were taking a break from music and you weren’t “meant for this business.” Why? I think I cared too much about what people thought of me. I had gotten to a place where I let my insecurities win – I wanted everyone to love me, and I was getting backlash from interviews that were misconstrued and tweets that people read too much into. Now, I just don’t care. I don’t focus so much on people liking me as much as I just want to do my thing and be a musician.

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DENNIS LEUPOLD

R&R

The Music, Politics and People That Changed Our Culture

Explore Rolling Stone’s past 50 years through the world’s greatest photographers and writers.

Luxurious and oversized, this is the definitive look into the magazine’s fascinating history.

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ANNIVERSARY

FLASHBACK

The Ties That Bind

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n march 1973, an item appeared in the Random Notes sect ion of R o l l i n g Ston e about John Ha mmond of C o lumbia Records. The veteran A&R man had suffered a heart attack while checking out a concert by a new act he’d just signed.

“He attributed it to a heavy work schedule and weakness from a virus he picked up in Paris,” the item read.

“His doctor, however, disagreed. He says it was due to Hammond’s enthusiNo asm at the SpringSurrender steen show.”

It was the first Above: Landau time Bruce Springand Springsteen, 1974. Right: Being steen’s name apinterviewed by peared in the Jon Stewart, 2012. pages of Rolling Stone, kicking off a four-decade relationship that produced 16 cover stories, more than any artist whose career began after the 1960s. The artist and the magazine grew together, as the interviews came to address everything from the majestic power of rock & roll to the fate of Vietnam veterans and the devastating impact of the Great Recession. “We’re on the same mission in terms of celebrating music and seeing it make a difference in the world, politically, socially, emotionally and spiritually,” says Rolling Stone editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner. “We’ve always shared the values of the Beatles, the Stones and Bob [Dylan], but in a way we share them almost more intensely with Bruce.”

Springsteen’s debut, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., hit shelves in early 1973. Rolling Stone ran a mixed (but colorful) review by the legendary critic Lester Bangs. “Old Bruce makes a point of letting us know that he’s from one of the scuzziest, most useless and plain uninteresting sections of Jersey,” Bangs wrote.

“He’s been influenced a lot by the Band, his arrangements tend to take on a Van Morrison tinge every now and then, and he sort

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of catarrh-mumbles his ditties in a disgruntled mushmouth sorta like Robbie Robertson on Quaaludes with Dylan barfing down the back of his neck.”

The assigning editor on that record review was Jon Landau, a 26-year-old Boston-based critic who’d worked for the magazine since the very first issue. He loved Springsteen from the first time he heard “Blinded by the Light,” on Boston’s WBCN radio station, but aside from his close friend Dave Marsh (who became a Rolling Stone editor in 1975), the rest of the magazine’s San Francisco staff didn’t share Landau’s passion. Their cynicism only grew when Springsteen was featured on the covers of Time and Newsweek the same week in 1975, the culmination of a huge publicity push

by Columbia. “When he landed on both Time and Newsweek’s covers, it gave some of us pause, just because we were evolving cynics,” says Ben Fong-Torres, Rolling Stone’s music editor at the time. “I don’t think we thought of the mainstream press as serious rock critics. So we held back a bit.”

Landau was not holding anything back when he wrote about Springsteen in May 1974. After the critic saw Springsteen play a new song called “Born to Run” at Harvard Square Theater, he penned an essay for Boston’s The Real Paper featuring a prescient and now-famous line: “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

Springsteen recruited Landau, who had worked on records by the MC5 and Livingston Taylor, to co-produce Born to Run, and soon after he hired him as his manager. In 1978, they worked on Darkness on the Edge of Town, which finally got Springsteen on

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Bruce Springsteen has always been rock & roll’s truest believer – and in ‘Rolling Stone,’ he found an ally and a place to explore his passion

the cover of Rolling Stone in August that year. Marsh wrote the article, traveling with the E Street Band on a West Coast tour and staying up into the night chatting with the singer. “Even though their personalities are very different, it was like talking to Pete Townshend,” Marsh recalls. “There was a lot of theorizing about rock & roll, what it could and couldn’t do, and what it oughta do and what it not oughta do.”

Marsh also captured lighter moments, like Springsteen and the band hanging out at the Sunset Marquis as they listened to a recording of their newest song, “Paradise by the C.” “[Clarence] Clemons walks into the room with an unbelievably joyous look on his 2 face, and when the tape ends, he takes Bruce by Four the arm and shouts, ‘EvDecades erybody into the pool!’ ” Marsh of Bruce wrote. “The next sound is a seThree of ries of splashes, and in a few Springsteen’s moments they reappear, bath16 ROLLING ing suits dripping, and listen STONE covers: again, then repeat the perfor(1) November mance. Soon, the tiny hotel 1990. (2) August bedroom is crowded with half a 1992. (3) dozen people dripping wet and October 2016. exuberant.”

Things were a little less exuberant in December 1980 when Fred Schruers was wrapping up the reporting for Springsteen’s next Rolling Stone cover story. The River tour was in Philadelphia, and the night before the show, news came down that John Lennon had been murdered. “It’s a hard night to come out and play tonight when so much has been lost,” Springsteen told the crowd. “It’s a hard thing to come out and play, but there’s just nothing else you can do.”

The emotional night, widely regarded as one of Springsteen’s greatest shows, was the climax of Schruers’ piece. “It almost shakes me up to think about it,” Schruers says today. “I have never seen somebody work themselves that hard physically, in any context. Maybe a couple of prize fights I’ve seen.”

Four years later, Springsteen released Born in the U.S.A. and transformed into a pop star whose popularity was rivaled only by the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. During a twoyear period, he was on the cover of Rolling Stone four times.

Kurt Loder wrote the first cover story during that era. “The Born in the U.S.A. tour was a physically demanding experience,” says Landau. “We kept putting it off, and then finally Bruce agreed to talk to him after a show in San Francisco. That night, I got a call from Kurt. He was totally cool, but he said, ‘Jon, there’s a problem with the interview.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘He fell asleep.’ ” By 1992, Brucemania had long since subsided. Springsteen’s new albums, Human Touch and Lucky Town (released on the same day), were critical and commercial disappointments, and there was much upheaval in his life. He’d married his backup singer Patti Scialfa after his marriage to actress Julianne Phil-

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lips collapsed, and his fans were incensed over his decision to fire the E Street Band.

All of this was weighing heavily on his mind when he sat down with Rolling Stone music editor James Henke – to whom he’d grown close when they traveled the world together in 1988 on Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now! tour – for a cover story. It was perhaps the most revealing interview of Spring steen’s career, touching on his painful divorce, his fading career and his decision to see a 1 therapist.

“I realized that my central idea – which, at a young age, was attacking music with a really religious type of intensity – was OK to a point,” he said. “But there was a point where it turns in on itself. And you start to go down that dark path, and there is a distortion of even the best of things. And I reached a point where I felt my life was distorted.

I love my music, and I wanted to just take it for what it was. I didn’t want to try to distort it into being my entire life. Because that’s a lie.

It’s not true. It’s not your entire life.

It never can be.”

3 Springsteen briefly touched on politics in that interview, criticizing President George H.W. Bush and praising Jesse Jackson as well as Democratic presidential candidate Jerry Brown. But it wasn’t until the 2004 battle between George W. Bush and John Kerry that Springsteen finally decided to let his audience know exactly where he stood. In an interview with Wenner, Springsteen detailed his pro-Kerry Vote for Change Tour. “It was a touchy issue for Bruce,” says Wenner. “He was reluctant to confront his audience too much or intrude on their enjoyment of the music.”

But with Bush sending young Americans off to die in two unwinnable Middle East wars, the rocker felt he had no choice. “Sitting on the sidelines would be a betrayal of the ideas I’d written about for a long time,” he said. “Not getting involved, just sort of maintaining my silence or being coy about it in some way, just wasn’t going to work this time out. I felt that it was a very clear historical moment.”

The 2004 election didn’t go the way Springsteen had hoped, but his music remained infused with the politics of the time, bringing him even more in line with Rolling Stone’s worldview. His 2012 cover-story interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart was just one of his recent pieces that discussed the growing crisis in global leadership. “There’s an alignment of sensibilities between Bruce and Rolling Stone,” says Landau. “The result is that he has a certain iconic status at Rolling Stone. It’s ANDY GREENE been very satisfying.”

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EDDIE’S QUIET RIOT ACT In Tennessee, Vedder showed solidarity with the NFL’s protesting players. “We support everyone’s constitutional right to stand up, sit down or take a knee for equality,” Pearl Jam tweeted.

Paul’s NYC Serenade Paul McCartney took New York by storm with an eight-show minitour that included performances in Brooklyn and New Jersey. The highlight came at Madison Square Garden, where McCartney brought out surprise guests Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt to perform “I Saw Her Standing There.” “The last time we played together was in London’s Hyde Park, and they pulled the plug,” McCartney said.

This time, the two had time to rip through the Beatles classic twice.

Green Day, Stevie Wonder and others were on hand for Global Citizen Fest in Central Park. The event was a global-poverty fundraiser, but artists took on racial injustice, mental health and Trump’s war with the NFL.

SHINING BRIGHT Beyoncé and Rihanna put rumors of a feud to rest at Rihanna’s Diamond Ball charity event in New York. Beyoncé is rumored to be planning a big tour.

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GREEN GIANT Billie Joe Armstrong changed the lyrics of “American Idiot”: “I’m not a part of the Don Trump America,” he sang.

Wonder got on both knees and offered what he called a “prayer for our planet, our future.”

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: MJ KIM/MPL COMMUNICATIONS; AMY HARRIS/INVISION/AP IMAGES; KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES, 3

Combat Rock

KING HARVEST Thirty-two years after the first Farm Aid, Willie Nelson is still committed to the cause. This year he joined Sheryl Crow for the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider.”

“I think we got the message out!” says Nelson.

MARS ATTACKS In Vegas, Thirty Seconds to Mars paid tribute to Prince, David Bowie and Chester Bennington, whom Jared Leto called “an incredible artist.”

UP IN SMOKE Halsey hung at the iHeartRadio fest, where onstage she took a swipe at her collaborators the Chainsmokers by singing only her part of their hit “Closer.” “My part’s the better part anyway,” she said.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JEFF MOORE/ZUMA PRESS; KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR IHEARTMEDIA; DAVID BECKER/GETTY IMAGES FOR IHEARTMEDIA; KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES; TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE MEADOWS MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL; ROLLING STONES/TWITTER; MAURICIO CASTRO/SOFAR SOUNDS

WINGS OVER AMERICA Ed Sheeran played an intimate living-room set in Washington, D.C., at a charity event. He’s been having a blast on tour: “We are trying to finish off 1,000 wings by the end of the tour. Eating wings every day is quite fun.”

“Love always trumps hate,” Jay-Z said during his set.

FAMILY REUNION Mick Jagger and Tina Turner met up in Zurich.

Turner recently called her old duet partner the “brother I never had.”

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Heavy Meadows BACK TO THE FUTURE Future brought out Nicki Minaj, calling her “my baby, my friend forever.”

New York’s festival season closed with the Meadows fest, a hip-hop blowout that included Big Boi and Jay-Z, who let the crowd sing the hook of “Empire State of Mind.”

“That was really fucking beautiful,” he said.

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ROLLING STONE R EPORTS

A Final Fight for the Keystone Pipeline Can a group of Midwestern farmers and activists finally shut down the most controversial Big Oil project in America?

BY SAU L E LBEI N t the end of january, jane kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, drove to the Nebraska Sandhills, a region of rolling pasture and farmland an old rancher once described as halfway past “where the prairie chickens fuck the barn owls.” As the president of the Bold Alliance, a grassroots campaign to challenge Big Oil, Kleeb had helped lead a rural resistance to defeat the Keystone XL pipeline, blocking it in-state and successfully lobbying President Obama to deny its permit in 2015. But that was before Donald Trump endorsed bringing back the project on the campaign trail, saying during one debate

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that eminent domain – the government seizure of private property for public use – was “an absolute necessity” for companies to beat back landowners who oppose them. Now, as Kleeb stands at the front of the O’Neill Community Center, dressed in a Western-style sports coat and cowboy boots, it is a foregone conclusion that Trump’s State Department will permit the pipeline (as it would do six weeks later), which means Nebraska is, once again, the final front in the struggle to stop it.

Many of the people in the room have been meeting now for close to a decade and represent some of the last holdouts on the pipeline’s 1,100-mile route from the Alberta Tar Sands to the Gulf of Mexico. In the coming months, the state’s Public Service Commission, a five-person panel, will make a final decision as to whether TransCanada, a foreign corporation worth $70 billion, will be able to use seized land to transport oil that would neither off-load, nor on-load, in Nebraska. The governor and Nebraska’s three House members support the Keystone XL. Thirty-three state legislators recently sent a letter to the PSC, asking the commissioners to permit the pipeline.

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But thus far, government support for the project has not kept the Bold Alliance from repeatedly outf lanking TransCanada, uniting the state’s farmers with two simple ideas: Fossil fuels are a threat to land and water, and corporate use of eminent domain is tantamount to theft. No pipeline has ever come before Nebraska’s PSC, whose members will rule by November 23rd on whether Keystone XL stands to benefit the state. If the commission denies the permit, Kleeb says, “I think it’s done.”

Two of the fiercest holdouts along the proposed pipeline route are Art and Helen Tanderup, Bold members who have come to take the fossil-fuel economy as a personal insult. On a visit to their farm, Art takes me down to the rye field where, in 2014, Willie Nelson and Neil Young played for 8,000 anti-pipeline demonstrators, and points out a row of cottonwood trees that screen the fields from the road. “That’s where the line comes through,” he says. “We’ve about picked out the trees we’d have to sit in.”

Art is past 60 and nearly as wide as he is tall, but he isn’t joking. In 2012, the TransCanada land agent who told Art and Helen about the Keystone XL presented

the pipeline as “the best thing since sliced bread,” Helen says. TransCanada offered good money and promised to restore the topsoil – the Tanderups would never even know the line was there. “Boy, by the time she got done you just wanted to jump up and salute the American flag,” Art says. The land agent, he adds, was especially clear about one thing: This pipeline was shipping “crude oil.” Something about the pitch didn’t sit right with them, though, so Art did some research. “And I went, ‘Oh, my God, this isn’t oil.’ ” The Keystone XL, the Tanderups discovered, would carry diluted bitumen, one of the new science-fiction technologies the energy industry has been moving toward for the past decade. Oil companies bulldoze Alberta forest to expose a thick, semi-solid tar, which is melted out of the ground with superheated steam, and diluted with byproducts of fracked natural gas. The Keystone XL is designed to send this concoction down to Texas, where, under a great deal of heat and pressure, refineries can “crack” it into crude oil. Beneath the Tanderups’ farm lies the greatest expanse of fresh water on the continent: the Oglalla Aquifer, an underground reservoir twice the volume of the Great Lakes. It is because of this aquifer that the prairies are a breadbasket to the world; in some places, the water table is so high that fence postholes fill with water. “If that thing leaks,” Art says of the pipeline, “it goes down into the water table, and we aren’t gonna know about it until something dies.”

The Tanderups told the TransCanada agents: no deal. And the agents told them they had no choice. Under rules derived from the Fifth Amendment, states have the right to take private property for “public use” provided they pay fairly for it. In most states, the standard for public use is the “common carrier” – a utility like a school, road or hospital that anyone can use. For obscure reasons of history, most states also give this right to pipeline companies. Typically, farmers can argue in court for more money, but they’re not often able to keep

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CRUDE PROTESTERS The pipeline march in Lincoln, Nebraska, in August. “It’s easier to go up this steep hill if you’re not the only one pushing the boulder,” says Kleeb, president of Bold.

NATI HARNIK/AP IMAGES

the pipeline off. “It’s not like the government’s saying, ‘We’re gonna improve this highway so we need another 20 foot of land,’ ” Art says. “That’s what eminent domain is supposed to be for.”

At an early Bold Alliance meeting, Art and Helen discovered the situation was worse than they’d thought. After a onetime payment, the company had control of the easement forever: It could enter at any time, destroying whatever crops it deemed necessary. “At one meeting,” Art recalls, “one lady stood up and said, ‘If Nebraska approves this, we’re just getting turned into a whore. We’re letting them pay us a little money just to abuse us.’ ” TransCanada would also force landowners to accept massive liability and restrict how they could develop their land. If a landowner accidentally damaged the pipeline – say, ran over the buried pipe with a combine – they were left holding the bag, not only for repairs and cleanup, but any lost revenues.

“If that happened,” Art says, “we might as well go to the bank, withdraw all our cash and fly to a foreign country.”

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ow, w ith the psc decision coming up, the fight over the future of the Keystone XL may be approaching its endgame. Following the January meeting in O’Neill, Kleeb and other Bold members fanned out across the state, holding meetings in

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bars, community centers and church basements. “We go to the people – we don’t expect them to come to us,” Kleeb says. “We frame it like a conversation with a friend at a coffee shop.” The small scale allows for a certain intimacy – attendees can hear, for instance, one grizzled rancher choke up about the endangered whooping cranes that have recently been visiting his land. In an environment where TransCanada is always circling, trying to pick off landowners, the meetings create the kind of solidarity that lets a cash-strapped farmer say no to a million dollars, bills on the barrelhead.

“It gives you a stiffer backbone,” Kleeb says.

“It’s easier to go up this steep hill if you’re not the only one pushing the boulder.”

In August, as the commission prepared to hold a round of hearings, Lincoln braced for violence. Bold had gotten more than 461,000 comments submitted to the commissioners; the Omaha World Herald and the Lincoln Journal-Star, among others, published 32 letters from Bold support-

“If the pipeline leaks,” says Tanderup, “and goes down into the water table, we aren’t gonna know about it until something dies.”

ers. The police department canceled leave during a week of planned protests; Kyle Kirchmeier, the North Dakota sheriff who led that state’s police against the Standing Rock demonstrations, warned that Nebraska might be in for similar unrest. But as the day of the rallies dawned and nearly 1,000 people took to the streets, led by Lakota riders on horseback, chanting slogans like “Water is life,” the Nebraska capital was free of violence (Bold even got a tweet from the Lincoln Police Department thanking it). In a country spun toward division, it seemed a rare point of light. “For me, it was – the movement had grown so much,” Kleeb says. “A totally diverse crowd – white, black, Latino, Native American, urban and rural – marching in the streets.”

There are signs that the national attitude is shifting as well. Over the past two years, from Ohio to Kentucky, state courts and legislatures have looked skeptically at the idea of pipelines using eminent domain. In West Virginia, the Supreme Court of Appeals found little evidence that the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural-gas route from West Virginia to southern Virginia, would serve any “public use,” and denied its surveyors the right to enter private property without permission. In Georgia, the Republicandominated Legislature has twice voted to deny pipeline companies the right to condemn land. The issue of fossil-fuel companies using eminent domain, says Brian Jorde, a Bold attorney, “will be before the Supreme Court again in some form.”

Kleeb is already organizing for an intensified struggle in the event that the Keystone XL survives the PSC’s decision. “We have two years of eminent-domain lawsuits” mixed with direct action and civil disobedience of the type seen at Standing Rock, she says. It is all part of Bold’s larger legacy: a new environmentalism, galvanized by a lack of access to clean water in ever more places, that has taken root in rural America. In 2014, Art got “so pissed off at TransCanada” that he installed an array of solar panels by his barn – “It’s the only crop I made money on last year,” he says – and now rolls to the town coffee shop in a Chevy Volt. “It’s good,” Helen says, “to feel like part of the solution.” If the bulldozers come, they say, TransCanada will meet massive resistance. “Money’s nice, but it’s not important,” Art tells me. “If one of your grandchildren drinks a drop of benzene, that’s important. If our grandchildren decide not to have children because they’re worried about the planet they’ll grow up on, that’s important.”

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NEW MORNING Kesha in Topanga, California, in August

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The Liberation of Kesha Before she could make one of the year’s best albums, Kesha had to save her own life

BY BRI A N HI AT T

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PHOTOGRA PH BY PEGGY SIROTA

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an we start again?” the tall woman in the vintage Stones T-shirt isn’t happy with her scream. She’s standing in a vocal booth, sweating a bit. “When I sing really high,” she says, “it makes me really hot.

And not in a sexy way.” The stately guitar riffage of T. Rex’s 1972 nugget “Children of the Revolution” kicks back in, and this time Kesha greets it with a feral “Yowww!”

Way better. She carries on.

“You can bump and grind,” she yelps, at the top of her range, big vibrato f luttering, “if it’s good for your mind.” As she sings, her hands weave tapestries in the air. Each of her long, manicured fingernails has a tiny, perfect rainbow painted on it; there are turquoise bracelets on both of her wrists. Out in the control room, producer Hal Willner, a white-haired, Falstaffian 61-year-old, nods along – the track is intended for a multi-artist tribute LP he’s assembling for late T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan, one of Kesha’s many old-rockdude heroes (she calls him her “glitter twin,” and namechecked T. Rex’s Electric Warrior on the 2012 track “Wherever You Are”).

This evening’s session is at Los Angeles’ the Village studios, an old-school-luxe complex that birthed albums from Aja to Tusk to Doggystyle. Kesha is currently howling her way through her sixth take of the night, after shrugging off the jacket of her custom-made shiny-striped suit, which she’s complemented with cowboy boots. She sounds great, looks cool. But who even is this person? Clearly, the old Ke$ha – she of the digitally enhanced vocals and the halfrapping and the whiskey- assisted den-

tal hygiene and the party at a rich dude’s house – can’t come to the phone right now.

At age 30, as she recovers from an eating disorder that nearly killed her and an ugly, still-unresolved legal battle with her longtime producer, Kesha Rose Sebert wants us to meet the real her, at last.

A Nashville friend who guides her through “yoga and chanting and stuff,” advising her on mantras – “hippie shit” – told her that “we all want to be seen,” a piece of wisdom that resonated. “I feel like myself,” says Kesha, “for the first time ever. And I made a record I’m extremely proud of, from the bottom of my guts – I excavated the most gnarly lyrics that were so difficult for me. And people still like it!

It’s really beautiful, and it’s very healing. I feel like I’m being seen for what I actually am, and people are OK with it.”

The gut excavation resulted in the eclectic Rainbow, her long-delayed third album, which turned out to be one of this year’s best – raw, emotionally complex, a total surprise. If the old Kesha hits, for all their fun, had a hint of the robotic, this untamed music could be heard as a Westworld-style rebellion. She leans hard into rock & roll, especially on two bouncy tracks recorded with Eagles of Death Metal, whom she’s known since she was a teen superfan, sneaking into their shows and becoming a band pal by age 14. “I was like, ‘You want us to be on the record,’ ” says that band’s frontman, Jesse Hughes, “ ‘when there’s a lot on the line?’ ” Hughes notes that he ended up doing some engineering on the session, because one of Kesha’s producers was so deep into modern pop that he “wasn’t really that sure how to mic live drums.”

There’s country, too, appropriately enough for an artist who spent some of her childhood in Nashville, practicing yodeling in her backyard. She duets with Dolly Parton on “Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You),” an old song co-written by Kesha’s mom and frequent collaborator, Pebe Sebert – it was a country smash for Parton back in 1980. On “Hunt You Down,” Kesha pursues an unexpected Sun Studio rockabilly vibe, with the help of Lana Del Rey collaborator Rick Nowels. “What we did,” he says, “was very, very natural for her.”

Rainbow debuted at Number One in August – not bad for an album that Kesha says she wasn’t sure would ever come out.

“I’ve been through a lot,” she says, “and a lot we can’t talk about.” She has decided

In rehab, Kesha played a cordless keyboard “because you can’t have anything that could be used for suicide.”

Senior writer Bria n Hiatt wrote about Joshua Homme in September.

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not to say a further word about her war with her former producer, Dr. Luke, to not even utter his name in our time together.

She sued him in 2014, accusing him of “years of unrelenting abuse” and alleging that he raped her – accusations that Luke, born Lukasz Gottwald, denied without equivocation (“I didn’t rape Kesha, and I have never had sex with her,” he tweeted) and countered with defamation and breach-of-contract lawsuits. He contends that Kesha manufactured the allegations to try to get out of her contracts with him.

There is no end in sight to the conflict, but Kesha at least got her album out, on Kemosabe, the Sony-owned label Dr. Luke founded but no longer runs, after his deal with Sony expired earlier this year. (Dr. Luke’s reps argued that there was actually never anything stopping her from releasing the album – his lawyer, Christine Lepera, said that “she exiled herself.”

Kesha’s reps have contended that the option of recording without Dr. Luke wasn’t offered until after she sued, and that Luke is suing her under a clause in her contract that requires him to produce at least six songs on her albums.) Now, Kesha seems to be itching to move past the whole thing.

“I could fight forever,” she sings on the new album, “but life’s too short.” And there is, it turns out, so much else to talk about.

(Hughes is less discreet on the subject.

“When she was going through her shit,” he says, unprompted, “we were like her big brothers. I was like, ‘Who do I fuck up?

You want me to go to his place right now?

You want me to beat that fucking contract out of him right now? I will.’ That’s how strongly I felt about it. That’s not even a lie, man.”)

Kesha strolls into the control room and listens to her voice glide over a backing track recorded earlier by Elvis Costello’s band the Imposters, with Wayne Kramer of the MC5 on guitar. Anticipating this collaboration the other night, Kesha was “playing MC5 records and crying,” she says. “ ‘Kick Out the Jams’ is one of the greatest songs. The first time I heard that song, I went down a rabbit hole, with MC5 and then Iggy Pop. It was basically the beginning of my life. I was 10 years old!” It would be foolish to underestimate Kesha’s music geekery, which in her teenage years extended to stuff as obscure as Captain Beefheart’s Safe as Milk: “I figured that, if anything, she’d try to be the next PJ Harvey or something,” says Hughes. But instead, she signed her deal with Dr. Luke at age 18, plunging into the great American pop machinery of the past decade.

As her version of “Children of the Revolution” plays on, Kesha wrinkles her freckled, gold-ring-adorned nose in suspicion.

Does it sound too good? “Is there anything on it?” she asks, wondering what studio magic might be at work. Just a little reO c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

PREVIOUS SPREAD: BOOTS FROM LUCKY DRY GOODS

KESHA

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#FreeKesha (1) Supporters outside a New York courthouse in 2016. Kesha became a cause célèbre, with Taylor Swift donating $250,000 to her. (2) With her mom, Pebe, 2011. (3) Kesha broke down after a judge declined to release her from her contract with Dr. Luke’s label.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ROY ROCHLIN/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID TONNESSEN/ PACIFICCOASTNEWS/NEWSCOM; JEFFERSON SIEGEL/“NY DAILY NEWS”/GETTY IMAGES

3 verb, she’s told. “It sounds like you’re live with that band,” says Willner, employing a bedside manner honed over decades.

“That’s how I want it to sound,” she says.

She raises an admonishing finger, eyes narrowed: “Do not even touch a button of Auto-Tune!”

“We wouldn’t even know how to use it,” Willner replies. She laughs, relieved. An hour later, she gets to hear a near-final version of the song, comped from several of her takes. “That sounds fucking good,” she says, and gives an exultant pelvic thrust, directed at no one in particular, or at least no one in the room. What was that, someone asks, amid general laughter. “Y’know, it’s not a motion for anyone to suck my dick,” she says unconvincingly, and giggles.

Her first two albums, especially the debut, are rife with digitally manipulated vocals, a stylistic choice that was too easy to mistake for a crutch. A lyric to a Rainbow outtake called “Emotional,” released as a Japanese bonus track, suggests how deep this issue goes: “When they say I can’t sing/I just want to die.” But it’s not just the Auto-Tune she’s over. It’s the idea of “perfect,” the whole glossy, airbrushed, O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

2 starved, impossible nightmare of it. “Perfect” made her sick, quite literally. “I don’t know how to deal with that word,” she says. “ ‘Perfect’ is a tricky word. Because it’s like, ‘What the fuck is perfect? And who gets to decide?’ Like, they can shove it up their ass.” Instead, she wants to be human, to be vulnerable, to let her life veer off-pitch once in a while, so that “maybe some kid out there” – in a society that offers a selfie-tweaking app called Facetune – “would be like, ‘Oh, that’s OK, to be just a person.’ ”

K

esha is cry ing. not sobbing or anything, but her already sparkly blue eyes are getting shiny with tears. She’s adjourned to a break room covered in dark wood that evokes the studio’s long-ago past as a Masonic temple, and also looks not unlike the creepy basement in Get Out. Kesha has choked herself

up thinking about her fans, how “unwavering” they’ve been. She doesn’t mention it, but some of them went as far as holding public protests to try to get her out of her record contract: free kesha, their signs and hashtags read. “I don’t know what I did,” she says, voice catching, “to deserve such wonderful people in my life.”

In a New York court last February, Kesha burst into tears as a judge ruled against her request for a quick injunction that would allow her to record for a different label. (The same judge later dismissed the bulk of her case, in a decision Kesha is appealing even as Dr. Luke’s defamation lawsuit continues, with no trial date in sight.) As photos of that moment and word of the judgment spread, her cause became an international sensation, with many of music’s most famous women (and some men) expressing solidarity: Adele did so onstage at the Brit Awards, and Taylor Swift went as far as to donate $250,000 toward Kesha’s expenses. Swift, Kesha says, “is a fucking sweetheart. Very, very sweet, very, very genuine, extremely generous, picks up the phone every time I call her. My mom doesn’t even always pick up the phone!” And, as for Swift’s latest controversies: “I’m not really up on my pop culture. Should I know something about it? I live in my record player.”

A few minutes later, Kesha begins to cry again, this time thinking about being on the cover of Rolling Stone. “It was my dream since I was a little kid,” she says the next day. “I had Rolling Stone covers all over my bedroom at my mom’s house. They’re grateful tears. They’re not sad tears.”

No doubt, she’s been emotional lately – cracked wide open, really. “I have nothing to hide,” she says. “The beautiful, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it.” Recovery from an eating disorder, she explains, brings with it the same kind of eyes-wideopen, shivering-newborn-chick sensitivity that recovering addicts experience. One of Rainbow’s co-writers, Ricky Reed, remembers her dissolving into tears during sessions and needing some encouragement early on. “I love your ideas,” he ended up telling her. “You are a good songwriter.

Anybody who’s ever told you otherwise is wrong.”

Some of the album offers a direct window on her feelings during a three-month stay at a women’s inpatient facility called Timberline Knolls, outside Chicago. She wrote a bunch of songs there, after persuading the administration to let her have a battery-operated keyboard. She wasn’t allowed to use one with a cord “because you don’t want to have anything that could be at all used for suicide. And I was like, ‘I respect all of that, but please let me have a keyboard or my brain’s going to explode.

My head has all these song ideas in it, and RollingStone.com |

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KESHA I just really need to play an instrument.’ ” As it was, she needed headphones for the keyboard, so she used it for an hour at a time, under strict supervision. But the songs came out.

Rainbow opens with “Bastards,” a track that encapsulates how far Kesha has strayed from her electro roots. For the first half, all we hear is Kesha’s gorgeous, unadorned voice and an acoustic guitar: “I’ve got too many people that I’ve got left to prove wrong,” she begins. “All those mother fuckers been too mean for too long.” The song came to her while she was in traffic one day; she sang most of it into her phone, and rushed to a guitar as soon as she got home. “It just kind of sums up how I feel about mean people,” she says.

“I feel like being nice is not overrated.”

She felt out of place as early as middle school, where the popular kids bullied her.

She was an artsy kid, from a quirky family.

She had known she wanted to be a singer from the age of two, and her mom treated her impending recording career as an established fact, saying things like, “When you get to put your first record out . . .” They would write songs together, “even, like, if we were in a fight about my room not being clean,” Kesha says. “And all of a sudden we would leave the bullshit at the door, and we would get in a room with a piano and a guitar and write the most sincere beautiful music. You really can’t front when you write with your mom.”

Kesha made her ow n clothes, plotted music videos from the age of nine.

But, again, none of that went over too well in school. “I refused to conform,” Kesha recalls, “and they refused to be nice.” At one point, some kids played an elaborate prank that ended with her hands tied to a cafeteria table – a lunch lady had to cut her loose. She took to eating lunch in the bathroom. Later, she would sneak out to spend lunch with a boyfriend who worked at a guitar store. Years afterward, as she sat at awards shows “next to Rihanna and Katy Perry and all that,” those feelings came back: “I just felt like so the outcast, the same person sitting at the lunch table.” Rainbow ends with “Spaceship,” in which she imagines a return to some alien planet where she will finally feel at home.

court papers, she accused Dr. Luke of calling her a “fat fucking refrigerator” – he denies pressuring her to lose weight.) “I really just thought I wasn’t supposed to eat food,” she recalls. She doesn’t hesitate on this topic, doesn’t get emotional, even in its darkest corners. She wants people to know this story, wants to be an example of getting help and becoming healthy. “And then if I ever did, I felt very ashamed, and I would make myself throw up because I’d think, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe I actually did that horrible thing. I’m so ashamed of myself because I don’t deserve to eat food.” Which, on some level, means she decided she didn’t deserve to live. She nods at that. “I was slowly, slowly starving myself. And the worse I got and the sicker I got, the better a lot of people around me were saying that I looked. They would just be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, keep doing whatever you’re doing! You look so beautiful, so stunning.’ ” She remembers it all coming to a head at a dinner party with friends and family. She sat there, pretending to eat, trying to figure out how she could hide her food. “And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what if they walk outside and see this food in a bush? Or they see it in the garbage can?’ And I just had all this mounting anxiety.

And then finally I was like, ‘Fuck. This. Shit. Fuck this shit. I’m hungry!’ And I am so anxious that I feel like I’m going to explode from all the secrets. All the secret times I’m pretending to eat or other times I’m purging, and I’m trying to not let anybody know. And I’m just fucking sick of this shit.

And I remember just shaking because I was so fed up, so anxious, and I was just mad that I had let myself get to that point.”

S o on a f t er w a rd , she pulled her car in to a gas station parking lot and asked her mom to meet her there. She needed help. “I didn’t know how to even eat,” she says. “At that point, I’d forgotten how to do it.” Her mom flew with her to rehab, where a nutritionist taught Kesha how to keep herself alive. “I just remember crying into a carbohydrate,” she says, “being like, ‘I can’t eat it. It’s going to make me fat, and if I’m fat, I can’t be a singer because pop stars can’t eat food – they can’t be fat.’ ” But even as she started to get her health back, she felt “like a loser.” At least until a friend in the music business, one she won’t name, called her the day after he won several Grammys. “He was like, ‘Congratulations to you,’ ” she says. “And I was like, ‘For what?’ And he was like, ‘Who cares

“I was so anxious I felt like I was going to explode from all the secrets,” she says of her eating disorder.

for m a n y y e ars, k esh a felt th at she had to “be a certain size,” and took increasingly extreme measures to get there.

She says that “certain people” around her would shame her for wanting to eat. (In 30 | R ol l i n g S t o n e |

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about my Grammys? You just saved your fucking life.’ And I just was blown away by that, because it made me look at the whole thing totally differently.” She realized, “Oh, wait. I did just take my life into my own hands and choose life over a slow, painful, shameful self-imposed death.

And I need to stop just being so fucking mean to myself.”

And what else did she learn in rehab?

She laughs. “See album Rainbow,” she says.

K

esha is touchingly protective of Ke$ha, her old self. It’s almost as if she’s her own big sister.

You might expect her to disavow some of her old music, to dismiss it as juvenilia or to blame Dr. Luke or the industry at large for crafting a false image – especially since her lawsuit said that Dr. Luke “fully controlled the content” of her albums and that he “forced” her to record “lyrics and songs that she did not wish to include.” (He denies all of this.) But instead, she maintains that “Tik Tok” and her other hits simply reflected her younger, wilder self. Sure, she worshipped Bob Dylan and Alice Cooper, but she also loved early Beastie Boys, and it was the rhyming-crunk-with-junk part of her that emerged first. Not to mention tracks like the pride anthem “We R Who We R,” which means as much to her fans as “Born This Way” does to Gaga’s.

“I loved what I was doing when I was doing it,” she says. “It was so much fucking fun! I wouldn’t change all the Worst Dressed lists, I wouldn’t change the mohawk, I wouldn’t change all that shit. I’m proud of myself for being that ballsy young girl that was ready to take life by the balls.”

Kesha is smart, Hughes says, to stay connected to her older work. “If you renounce a part of yourself,” he says, “you’re throwing yourself out with the bathwater – not even the baby.”

Despite rumors about the supposed real nature of her rehab, she insists she never had a drug or drinking problem – and that she can be more sure of that than most people, because her treatment program closely examined every aspect of her life.

“I looked at everything,” she says. “I used to drink more, and now I don’t. And that’s fine. Truth is, I don’t really like alcohol that much.”

Kesha was “always a feminist,” she says, and she saw value in playfully objectifying dudes (“Turn around, boy/Let me hit that!”) in her lyrics. “I was like, ‘I’m going to talk about men this way and level the playing field.’ And I still think that’s fuckin’ cool of a woman of that age. And I admire a lot of the stuff I did. Because I truly didn’t give a fuck at moments, and that was very cool.” But that could harden into a pose. “There were moments when I O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

ROB CABLE/LFI/PHOTOSHOT

was in a lot of emotional pain,” she says, switching gears. “My feelings would get hurt, and I would just pretend like I didn’t give a fuck. It’s a front. Put on glitter, act happy.” Another shift: “And for the most part, I was really happy.”

She was also, however, according to her lawsuit, “broken, damaged and traumatized,” and “lived in constant fear” of Dr. Luke. (Again, he denies this.) As she tells it now, it was all happening too fast to take in. She wrote and recorded all of her 2010 bonus album, Cannibal, in a single month, for instance. “I just felt like I was like, ‘Keep your head above the water, keep going,’ ” she says, before shifting metaphors: “I was just on a life treadmill, and I was sprinting.” on the afternoon following her studio session, Kesha has an appointment to get a tattoo. She already has more than 30 of them, including a huge tiger head on the back of her left hand.

She got her first one, an anchor on her wrist, from a dude she met on the streets during a trip to Cuba in her late teens. The guy tried to sell her a couch – but when she said she wanted a tattoo, he brought her upstairs and gave her one. He boiled a needle while holding a baby.

Thus began her habit of piling on a series of “by-choice scars.”

Her current tattooist of choice is more legitimate than the rando in Cuba: one Derrick Snodgrass, a handsome, thickbearded dude in full motorcycle leathers, an acclaimed artist who works in an upscale shop hidden in the back of a downtown L.A. storefront. “You’re making me look scarier and scarier as my life goes on,” Kesha tells him, settling into a red folding chair to have a preliminary stencil drawn on her fingers. “I love it.”

Today, she’s getting an eight-part tattoo across her fingers. She had two ideas: either “Stay free” or “Live free.” Snodgrass insisted on the latter. “Stay free,” he says, “is a tampon commercial.”

“Live free” works for her. “I think,” she says, “that it sets the tone for my life pretty well. . . . This is never going to be a notpositive message for me.” She’s wearing a long Western-style shirt over a miniskirt and knee-high boots. She lies on her belly for some of the actual tattoo, which hurts a lot, though not as much as the ones on the palms of her hands – the planet Saturn on the left, an eyeball on the right – O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

did. “It’s like being shot over and over,” she mumbles. “Aaaah, fuck my life – my finger doesn’t like this very much!”

But then it’s done. And for good measure, she has Snodgrass fix an adjacent, homemade smiley-face tattoo.

Kesha’s boyfriend, a sweet-faced rocker dude named Brad, is jealous of her star-

After the tattoo, we stroll through the gentrified downtown streets. When a farm-to-table-y restaurant won’t seat us because it’s not precisely 5:30 yet, we wander over to a chicken coop that, presumably, supplies the place’s eggs.

Kesha has a deep thing for animals.

“When I interact with them, she, says, it’s like this energy exchange.”

She is eager to exchange some energy with the four chickens. “I want to pet one,” she says, “but I’m scared I’m going to get a hand infection.” Instead, she grabs a piece of lettuce from inside their pen and tries to feed it to them through the wire. The chickens, heretofore silent, begin clucking to one another, loudly, as if discussing the weird situation – they’re reacting much the way Jerry Seinfeld did on a red carpet this year when Kesha made an unsuccessful attempt to hug him.

She translates for the fowl: “Should we trust this lady?”

Trying to befriend a gang of hipster chickens is one thing, but Kesha likes to swim with actual sharks. “I’m like a huge shark ambassaTik Tok dor,” she says. “I just feel like they get a Onstage, 2009. bad rep. And they’re “I wouldn’t change the so smart.” But don’t Worst Dressed lists or they, like, eat peothe mohawk. I wouldn’t change all that shit,” dom-powered freedom ple? “It depends on Kesha says of her to get hand tattoos. He the shark,” she says. earlier, wilder persona. kind of wants her to stop.

“And it depends on They live together near where you go, and it the canal in Venice, in a depends on your enhouse filled with musical ergy, like, how you instruments and Kesha’s three cats: Char- behave towards the animal, same as how lie, Mr. Peeps and Queso. you’d behave towards a person. If you beHer stylist introduced her to Brad a few have aggressively, usually you’ll get agyears back, and Kesha was suspicious at gression back.” first due to his lack of a beard – facial hair Fair enough. But in a world filled with had always been a must for her. “Then things that bite, is Kesha going to be all he kissed me, and it was the nicest kiss I right in the end? To answer that, maybe ever had,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Wow, allow her old friend Hughes to tell a story. you’re such a pure soul. Holy shit.’ And I Once upon a time, she was smoking weed knew from that moment, ‘I gotta hold on with the guys from Eagles of Death Metal, to you.’ ” While she was in rehab, he would circa age 16. Some bro – not a band memfly out every weekend to visit. They’d sit ber – grabbed one of her breasts. She and color for a couple of hours – that was calmly asked him if it was an accident, if their courtship. he had meant to pass her the joint. No, he She’s not sure how long she plans to stay replied, and she didn’t hesitate. “She just in Venice, happy as she is there. “I don’t fuckin’ popped him,” Hughes recalls, with know if I’m ever going to stay in any one palpable admiration. “Boom! Right in the place for a couple years at a time,” she says. lips, kind of split his upper lip. Then, she “I want to live on an island in the Carib- forgave him when he apologized.” bean, on a boat at some point, like that’s a He laughs. “I admire her,” he says. “She’s goal. But I don’t know how my cats would a fuckin’ hero, and she’s a fighter.” He adds feel about it.” one last salient point: “And she wins.”

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THE ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW

Jerry Brown’s California Dream

By Tim Dickinson Photograph by JUSTIN K ANEPS

The governor has created a climateresistant, economically supercharged state – is this the blueprint for a more progressive America?

erry brow n’s california now sta nds like a par allel universe to Donald Trump’s America: a land of tolerance, high immigration, tight gun control and world-beating innovation – combining a soaring economy with plummeting greenhouse-gas emissions. In recent months, Brown has signed a new gas tax to fund more than $50 billion in repairs to the state’s roads and bridges, and he extended California’s cap-and-trade program, which has raised $4 billion for clean energy, electric cars and high-speed rail. ¶ Brown is a towering figure in California. He is closing out the last of four terms as governor – completed in two eras, bracketing 28 “out” years in which he served stints as a progressive radio host, mayor of Oakland and state attorney general. The son of Pat Brown, California’s governor from 1959 to 1967, Jerry Brown at first rebelled against politics, taking a vow of obedience to enter a Jesuit seminary, before carving a path of public service that’s been anything but acquiescent. Pushing 80, Brown has a bit more than a year left in a political career that saw him mount three presidential bids – the first in 1976. Across the decades, there are through lines, including an abiding commitment to fiscal discipline, renewable energy and thinking big. “I like to combine ideas and action,” Brown tells me.

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STATESMAN Brown with his corgi, Colusa, in Sacramento in August

Jerry Brown He greets Rolling Stone in a sharp gray suit and natty silk tie, a black Fitbit on his wrist. His coffee-dark eyes still sparkle. It’s a late-summer, near-triple-digit day in Sacramento, where the Corinthian columns of the state Capitol are shaded by palm trees and sequoias. When Brown returned to this city in 2011, California’s finances were a horror show; on the presidential stump, Mitt Romney compared its economy to Greece’s. But with a combination of tax hikes and temporary belt tightening, California eliminated a $25 billion deficit, paid off $32 billion in debt and has stocked away a rainy-day fund that will soon top $8 billion. Along the way, Brown signed bills that granted driver’s licenses and access to college loans for undocumented immigrants; required background checks to buy bullets; raised the minimum wage to $10.50 – heading to $15 by 2022 – and put California on target to hit 50 percent renewable power by 2030.

Contrar y to Republican dogma, Brown’s brand of progressive, green economics hasn’t killed jobs – it has spurred the creation of 2.34 million. In the past five years, with just 12 percent of the U.S. population, California has driven onequarter of America’s economic growth. The state’s greatest challenge today is a downside of a hot economy: an affordable-housing crisis and a spike in homelessness.

The flame-keeper of America’s progressive policy agenda, Brown has also emerged as an essential global leader in the fight to arrest climate change. Where President Trump sees a “hoax,” Brown describes an “existential crisis.” He was an influential presence at the Paris Climate Conference and visited China to calm the waters the week after Trump pulled out of that deal.

Working with 187 other city, state and provincial governments, Brown has forged the Under 2° Coalition – representing more than 1.2 billion people – committed to holding global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.

“The world is watching very closely what the state of California does – not what Washington does – on the issue of climate action,” says Kevin de León, the president pro tem of the California Senate. The son of an immigrant mother, de León represents downtown L.A., and comes from another world than Brown. But de León insists those differences spur a productive

give-and-take. “He has the ability to not be entrenched in his views, but actually expand,” he says of Brown. “When you get to a certain age, people don’t do that. He does.”

Entering the governor’s chambers requires navigating around a life-size bronze bear. The 800-pound sculpture, installed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009, lends an odd Disney California Adventure aesthetic to the Capitol. Brown’s entourage includes his dog, Colusa, a corgi named for the county where his family ranch sits in the north of the state, and where he will retire at the end of his term.

As Colusa snoozes near the governor’s feet, Brown speaks in an impressionistic style: words and phrases missing here and there, leaving gaps you have to bridge just to keep up, even as he’s lofting references to Daoist poets, German Marxists and the Book of Revelation.

ideas and action. I have ideas that are expansive, and sometimes innovative – and then to do ’em is the whole point.

We had a very strong majority of Democrats, and that allowed us to do things.

And each one of those things we needed to do! Either you do Obamacare or you don’t. So it was very binary. And certainly doing it seemed more positive, more building to the future. Same thing is true on the renewable energy – we pushed hard on these things.

With a combination of higher taxes and reinvestment, you’ve not only balanced the books, but – contrary to GOP ideology – your state has grown faster than the national average. What can California’s experience teach the rest of America, versus, say, the lesson of Kansas?

A lot of politics is based on belief. I’m not talking about belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I’m talking about more trivial beliefs: Lowering taxes will create jobs. Regulation will stifle innovation. Those are beliefs that people have in their little minds – we all have these movies playing in our heads – and they act on ’em. “Free enterprise!

The market is God! The magic of allocation based on the price signal – nothing can be better. It’s perfection.” They believe that!

That’s why they don’t like climate change. We have to put a price on carbon with regulation. That goes against that belief system. It’s saying, like, “There is no God. The free market is not sovereign. There are other interventions that will help make a better market.”

The guy down in Kansas [Gov. Sam Brownback] said, “I can lower the taxes, and I will get more revenue, and whooo!”

[Reagan-era economist] Arthur Laffer’s curve will just [throws up hands as if sprinkling magic dust]. But it didn’t work that way. You have to be very careful.

California stimulates innovation through regulation. When we require cleaner engines, cleaner engines are produced. And the cost of cleaner engines goes down, because the California car market is so big.

Or renewable portfolio standards [requiring clean-power generation]. That stimulates photovoltaic and renewable energy.

Well-thought-out regulation is a key ingredient in innovation.

Now regulations can cause a problem. Yes, raising the minimum wage too quickly in some areas may cost jobs. But in California, because of the dynamism of the economy, we can absorb taxes and regulations.

Politics is addition, not subtraction. Trump doesn’t understand that.

He’s looking at that base.

But it’s so narrow that it’s self-defeating.

Contributing editor Tim Dickinson profiled grassroots activists in August.

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Brown remains a bundle of contradictions – a radical with a deeply conservative streak, a man who can decry the “destructive power of global capitalism” while standing at the helm of the sixth-largest economy in the world. He is grounded in politics as the art of the possible. But get him rolling and the old “Governor Moonbeam” shines through – promoting a vision for America that, he acknowledges, given our current political climate, might as well come from “another planet. Not even planet Earth!” he says. “This is the other side of the moon!”

When you took office in 2011, you faced more than $50 billion in deficit and debt.

Many people in your position would have trimmed their sails, just focused on the economy. What gave you the confidence, in that moment of crisis, to push forward on big ideas?

Because they were possible! Why would I take a job, as you say, “trimming my sails”?

What would be the point, at my age, of doing that? Or at any age! I am in office because I like to do things. I like to combine

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On the Trail

FROM TOP: OWEN FRANKEN/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

Above: Brown during his 1976 presidential bid. Left: On a trip to Kenya with then-girlfriend Linda Ronstadt in 1979. “If you spend enough time at something, and you’re curious and you listen, you can learn a lot,” he says.

“I’ve been doing that longer than anybody in California.”

Your career has spanned more than four decades. And you’ve spent time in the wilderness. What political wisdom have you unlocked that’s enabled this remarkable run on your return to the governorship?

[Whispers conspiratorially] It’s called timing.

I’m riding the wave of economic recovery.

Now, it’s true that if you spend enough time at something, and you’re paying attention and you’re curious and you listen, you can learn a lot. I’ve been doing that longer than anybody in California. It gives me a certain familiarity with the work.

You just put together a two-thirds majority coalition – getting Republicans to cross over – to extend California’s cap-and-trade program. This is serious governing. Has that become easy for you?

Cap-and-trade looks good to the industry because it is an impersonal market that gives a great deal of flexibility and it will be a lot cheaper for many industries to comply.

And that’s why they all supported [extending it]. That was helpful. Without the Republicans, we could not have done it. [But

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a few] Republicans came to me and said, “We believe climate change is an important issue, and we want to do something.” We were working together. That helped!

I do believe that external events play a big role. I’m more of a structural . . . [holds up two fists]. You have structure [wags one fist] and agency [wags the other]. Those are the two abstractions. I’m much more on the structural. Another word is context. You have to have the right context. You can’t just, out of the blue, do something. Everything has to fit.

There’s a Chinese saying, a Daoist saying: wu wei. The idea is “nothing against the grain.” [Smooths his hand over the grain of the wooden coffee table in front of him] Go with the grain. Don’t try to go against the grain. That’s very Daoist. It’s such a great thought. Go with the grain. I learned that from Gary Snyder. I didn’t invent that on my own. That’s from Gary Snyder, the poet.

Do you know who he is?

I don’t.

Well, you should know! He’s a very important California poet. Won the Pulit-

zer Prize in 1975 and was the head of our California Arts Council. That’s where I heard that phrase.

It’s Rolling Stone’s 50th year. . . .

My 50th year in politics.

I joined the “peace slate ’68” – was started in ’67. It was a slate of candidates to run against Lyndon Johnson that later adopted Gene McCarthy as our candidate, and then of course Bobby Kennedy got hit. It was a whole different world. Vietnam War. But anyway . . .

In 1992, you set up a campaign office brief ly in the Rolling Stone offices.

We came in. You’re right!

What do you remember of that?

That was our New York office. I remember Jann Wenner had a little beard, didn’t he? Is Jann Wenner still there? He must be old. How old is that guy?

[Laughs] He is younger than you!

The only thing I can remember of Rolling Stone was the photo of Linda Ronstadt, lying on her bed. I recommended against that picture.

She’s been in poor health.

[Quiet] Yeah.

Are you still in contact?

Yeah. Yeah. She’s in San Francisco. Well, Parkinson’s. A lot of people have Parkinson’s. Not good. But she’s . . . [pause] It’s a very slow-moving disease. . . .

Do you ever think back to your 1992 platform and go, “I had that spot-on”?

I did say that Washington was a “confederacy of corruption, careerism and campaign consultants” – and they all need to go. It was overdone. I never gave another speech like that. But that thing about “Take Back America” – definitely.

There were big, populist themes in there.

That was the mood in 1992. And that was Bernie’s thought in 2016. And that was Trump’s thought. That theme of, “the system is not working. We need to transcend this mired status quo that’s not delivering the goods.”

How do you understand the crisis of the Trump presidency?

The crisis. What do you mean? The crisis that there is one? Or his crisis?

How do you approach his presidency?

I think the fact that Orange County voted for Hillary – and Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin voted for Trump – is very telling. There’s a certain segment of the population that’s been disadvantaged. Their hopes have been dashed. The very spectacle of Trump connoted “This is

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Jerry Brown change.” And in Ohio, in these districts, they said, “I’m gonna vote for that, because I don’t want another four years of what I’ve had. Because look where I am: Wages going down. Losing these jobs.”

Trump was a response to this discontent. The problem is to execute on that.

It would be difficult – even with the best of will, and with real, astute understanding and skill. But Trump is now talking to this very hardcore base. You can’t have a governing coalition based on a hardcore 20 percent that irritates many more than that.

Is Trump’s governing strategy a dead end?

Aside from the morality of what he’s doing, he’s not trying to build a governing coalition. He’s putting his faith in this base. He thinks that what got him elected will make him successful. He doesn’t understand – if I can paraphrase [philosopher Ludwig] Wittgenstein, who said in the Tractatus: What you need is a ladder to climb up.

But when you’ve gotten up to the roof, or wherever it is you’re going, throw away the ladder. So whatever got Tr ump elected, throw that away, and start building a coalition across parties. His base wouldn’t like that.

And he’s looking at that base. But it’s so narrow that it’s self-defeating.

Politics is addition, not subtraction. Democracy can only function if the minority has confidence that their voice is being heard. Trump doesn’t know that. When you win, you haven’t won 100 percent.

You’ve only been given this opportunity.

You have to bring in the people who didn’t vote for you in some way. . . . Trump won, but he’s not governing. And I don’t think he will be able to govern.

Yet the Trump spectacle rolls on. . . .

He’s found the machine of Twitter as a positive. He’s dominated the media. But you can’t dominate a global context. To some degree, you’re riding the waves. You’re not creating the waves. Trump doesn’t understand that distinction: between the context and him, or the structure and his agency. His capacity for affecting reality.

Many people of color feel unsafe in this country because of Trump’s praise for white supremacists, his executive actions targeting immigrants. What’s California’s responsibility to protect – whether it’s Dreamers or others – people who find themselves targets of this administration?

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Trump is saying and doing things that threaten millions of people. And it’s very unfortunate. And not fair. And not helpful to the cohesiveness of our society. Millions of people are here, undocumented. That’s true. And their status needs to be codified.

For them, but also for us. In California, we have somewhere between 1 million and 2 million people working and contributing to our society. And just to scare the hell out of them with raids – by showing up at schools or courthouses, to handcuff them and put them in jail for deportation – is not a very human way to proceed.

In California, we are protecting people who work by giving them legal recourse if their employer tries to intimidate them because they’re undocumented. Same is true of people who get stopped for a petty offense. We don’t want them to be auto-

Jerry’s Back Pages Brown, photographed by Annie Leibovitz in 1976, has been profiled seven times by R OLLING STONE .

matically sent over to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. We’re putting up millions of dollars to defend the young people – the Dreamers.

California is respecting the federal law, but we are doing our part to make sure that federal officials don’t run amok. At the end of the day, the federal law is supreme. If the president wants to hire enough immigration agents, he can grab a lot of people and move ’em out. But that’s disruptive. It violates basic human norms. And the political feelings and beliefs – both in California and around the country – will ultimately push back against that, and stop it.

Is Trump fit to serve?

President Trump has said so many outrageous statements, and he’s shifted his position so often, that he is undermining public confidence in the leadership of America.

And that reaches beyond our shores to many other countries. On his present trajectory, it is hurting the country. And I just hope he might shift his tactics and get closer to the norm of being a president.

Do you have any hope for that?

I always want to look at the brighter side of things. But his latest performance at the U.N., where he threatened to annihilate 25 million people in North Korea? Instead of casting rhetorical missiles out at that part of the world, we ought to find every way to prevent being threatened – to have dialogue with China, with Russia, with Japan, South Korea. And with North Korea. And do it in whatever way will get the job done.

With so much under assault from Trump – environment, rule of law, basic compassion – what is the role of the states in leading resistance to what’s going on?

I don’t think we’re at the point of “resistance.” I hesitate to use this word that I identify with the French Underground and Albert Camus. “Resistance” conjures up World War II – underground, danger, death. That was some serious shit.

This other thing is serious too. But it’s not the same. We should have our issues. Our ideas.

Build our alliances.

Oppose! And affirm!

I’m pursuing climatechange policies, labor policies, health care policies that fit with what Californians want, what I think is a good way to go. Affirm the good. Instead of just resisting the bad and the stupid and the frivolous.

You’re exerting global leadership on climate change. What are the most important next steps?

The important thing for California is to bring down the cost of electric cars. [Editor’s note: Californians drive 350 billion miles a year.] The automobile – if you add in all the life-cycle costs – it could be 50 percent of the greenhouse gases in California. So that is the most difficult, and the most important. We [renewed] the capand-trade program, and we are making hundreds of millions of dollars available – subsidies to buy electric or zero-emission vehicles.

Around the world? We need the exchange of ideas – at the technical level as well as at the political level – done by the United States and done by other countries.

And we’re not doing that! Because Trump doesn’t take it seriously. But it’s much more serious than people are talking about. What happened in Texas is a good example of ex-

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treme weather events that most climate scientists say are going to be the norm. I see it as coming fast. And as Houston demonstrates, boy, when the weather goes bad on you, what the hell are you going to do? Like this hot weather. [Sacramento was expecting temperatures up to 110 degrees in coming days.] If this hot weather lasted a couple of months, we’d have uncontrollable forest fires. We already do!

That’s going to wreak havoc on our lives and our economy. So we better do what we can to prevent it. But we’re on a trajectory not to do enough. We’re not taking the steps. And no one is talking about it. The fact that climate change is inexorably coming down the road? Not news? To overstate the case: The end of the world is not news.

And the states: Florida taking out the words “climate change”? Trump is removing it from documents. This is insane!

There’s a vacuum, and it’s very hard to deal with longterm. So California has a role to play. We have to face these oncoming changes even in the face of a very impaired governing process.

Is that the idea behind the climate summit you’re hosting in San Francisco next year?

The Global Climate Action Summit will bring together subnational entities – states and provinces as well as cities and corporate executives – to discuss and disclose all they’re doing to meet the Paris Agreement and beyond. That’s important, given the undermining by the Environmental Protection Agency and the president himself.

I’m doing the Under 2° Coalition. We have 187 subnational jurisdictions, representing over a billion people. The Under 2° Coalition started from a simple idea: That if California keeps adopting these advanced regulations and taxes, we’re going to be completely uncompetitive. We’ve got to get a lot of people doing what we’re doing!

Is the cap-and-trade system here in California a global model?

Yes. Can a combination of cities and states and corporations make up for the lack of national leadership?

No. We can’t make up for the lack of national leadership. We’re coming together – we have 14 states and Puerto Rico in a Climate Alliance. So that’s a positive. We’re filling the vacuum. But that’s only temporary. The president and the Congress, their denial of climate change is bad for our country and the world.

We’re at a point that’s very serious. And our response is tepid. Relative to what is

needed. This is not good. In Revelations, God says, “Because you’re neither hot nor cold, I spit you out of my mouth.” That’s the Protestant version. In the Catholic version, it’s “I vomited you out of my mouth.”

That’s tepidity. In the Jesuits, we were told that there’s nothing worse than tepidity.

You gotta be more zealous, more passionate, more committed; we’re not – about climate change, or nuclear weapons. The risk of nuclear accident, or blundering into some horrible nuclear exchange, is greater than it’s been since the height of the Cold War. Those are two big issues. Then you could go into cyber, governance, inequality. Pretty much, that’s it: You gotta solve those five things. Oh, yeah, and then jobs in the age of robots and the global economy.

That’s a biggie.

Looking at the Democrats, what do you make of the raw divide between the Bernie

health care has to be extended to everybody, and that our foreign policy needs to be survival-oriented – instead of bellicose and confrontational.

We need the activist spirit! How we then fit that into governing – that’s always a challenge. You can’t be so mundane as to be totally practical. But you can’t be so utopian as to build up unrealizable expectations.

Where between those two poles the leader finds himself or herself defines a successful or mediocre president.

What’s the way forward for Democrats?

They have to embrace unifying themes.

But everyone is pulling apart with all these different issues. I hesitate to even name them. We can’t divide. We need to unify.

Not just to win. But to govern.

The biggest policy divide right now is over the idea of single-payer health care.

There was a “Medicare for all” bill that died in the California Assembly.

Would you have signed that bill?

It didn’t get to me. I did support single-payer when I ran for president. It’s become an idea of fairness and health care as a right.

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, but I would say to my friends who feel strongly about this: It needs a lot of careful consideration. It’s a big undertaking.

To operationalize that at the state level is difficult. The federal level, there’s more room; you might control pharmaceutical costs. We only have one example of putting it to the people, in Colorado. Got 21 percent of the vote. Vermont passed it, but they couldn’t make it work, and they gave up on it.

Single-payer health care in California would be about $400 billion a year. You’d need more revenue. About $100 billion more? If you had everybody on board, you might be able to create something like that.

But the [new California gas] tax – which is only $5 billion – got one Republican vote, and it’s already causing a recall. Now we’re talking 20 times that? Is that serious?

Sen. Sanders has gotten a lot of support from top Democrats for his national Medicare-for-all platform. Is this the wrong issue for Democrats to be rallying around?

The critical issue is the structural inequality that is still growing. A universal health care program would mitigate that to some degree but still leave gross gaps in the safety net and leave virtually untouched this increasing structure of inequality. So I think the economic challenge needs to be front and center.

I also think Obamacare needs to be defended in the short term, because there’s a

Trump’s said so many outrageous things, and shifted positions so often, that he is undermining confidence in the leadership of America.

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supporters and the Hillary supporters – the idealists versus the pragmatists of the party?

It reminds me – and this will be a very obscure reference – of the Social Democratic Party in Germany before World War I. It was a Marxist party that was composed of two groups. The revisionists who did not want to have class warfare but wanted to win parliamentary seats and form alliances with other parties. They also had a radical wing who wanted the great takeover: The proletariat would take over and all of a sudden there’d be this nirvana of a new form of government. Eventually, the revisionists squashed the radicals.

Do you think the Bernie wing of the party is too pie-in-the-sky – too much “against the grain”?

I don’t know that there is a Bernie wing.

I’ve run for president and often excited lots of people, but after the election is over, new issues, new personalities emerge. There is a widespread desire for a progressive political program for Democrats. The country has devolved. Many Democrats feel that inequality has to be addressed seriously, that

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Jerry Brown real threat that Republicans in Washington could deeply undermine that program.

That’s a clear and present danger to millions and millions of people.

So what should the Democrats’ economic platform be?

What lost the election – at least in those four states – related to economic security.

It’s going to be difficult to deal with that.

With the global economy, you may need more government intervention to cushion the shock. Income supplements, or whatever. There was talk in the 1960s about “demo-grants” and the government actually helping. Nixon [proposed] family assistance. Nobody talks about that anymore.

Are Americans going to need that – given the “age of robots” that Elon Musk and Silicon Valley want to bring us?

It ought to be on the agenda. We need some different ideas if we’re going to hold society together. A lot of the power and wealth is coming from income that is disproportionately finding its way to the top. This is one of the paradoxes. The incentives demanded by those at the commanding heights are ever-increasing – and never enough. You have to keep paying your CEOs more and more. But because of the global economy, the average guy is in competition with China and Mexico – their wages have to stagnate.

That’s the dilemma. For example, in Mexico, [workers are paid] $5.50 an hour at auto plants just as productive as those in Detroit. How are you going to deal with that? Protectionism has a lot of problems.

Income assistance is something that needs to be looked at carefully – as part of a program of transition, whether that be in the coal industry or other parts of the manufacturing sector that are being undermined by global competition. We need to get at it sooner rather than later. But there’s no basis for that. Because the market-as-God – or as one guy called it, “closet dictator” – is dominant.

How can Democrats better appeal on values?

The real belief is in an America that is open and accommodating and supportive of families – in ways that it is not today. You need common themes that may not win the vote of Republicans but will enlist their support through the period of an administration. The people are nervous.

Trump tapped into that anxiety by scapegoating immigrants. A quarter of California’s population is foreign-born.

What are the benefits of having a huge immigrant population? And what are

the challenges, in terms of economics and language?

The good news is population growth; the bad news is population growth. The good: California is a dynamic economy. That’s because people are coming in here. Look at Silicon Valley. They’re not all born in San Jose or Palo Alto. If we relied on that little narrow jurisdiction? We wouldn’t get anywhere. It’s global.

We have people who come from Mexico that are in every walk of life. That has built our economy. It is supporting our tax structure, our pension system. Now the negative is: How quickly can you assimilate difference? And what holds us together? If you don’t get a common theme, you sometimes get demagoguery based on demonizing the stranger in the land. And you’re seeing it with Trump and all his rallies.

So I’d say integration is challenging. Lan-

Homelessness has also spiked in California. Is there more the state can do?

Part of it is mental health. We used to have 30,000 people locked up against their will because they were mentally disturbed. Now we might have 1,000, but our population is two and a half times larger.

By rights, we should have 75,000 people in mental institutions, which no longer exist. So they’re in tents and in jails and in prisons. Or wandering the streets. That’s a challenge. There’s a dark side to all of this affluence.

Your father was a builder as governor.

You’re tackling big infrastructure projects.

Why is that so unusual in America today?

We can’t even invest in the basics like bridges or freeways. There’s a failure of imagination that leads to a failure of nerve. Look at the New York subway – to me, that is emblematic of everything.

What happened? They say they can’t fix it. Why weren’t they fixing it all along?! They didn’t put the money up. In California, we have $59 billion in deferred maintenance. We finally got [a way to pay for it] with the gas tax! And the Republicans – as their number-one priority – are recalling one of the people who voted for the gas tax.

Which is long overdue and absolutely needed by any stretch of the imagination.

But fixing stuff is not shiny new objects. What we want is shiny objects.

Shiny objects can be tough too – your high-speed rail.

They don’t like that either. Anything big is bad. “The market is good, government is bad. And don’t ask me to pay for anything that can’t be done in a year. And, by the way, we are going to be the global leader. We’re the indispensable nation – and we’re going to cut our taxes.” Now you tell me how that works? That is a formula for total failure.

High-speed rail is moving forward with a lot of difficulty.

I’m being sued at every step of the way.

We’re winning all the lawsuits.

Why is that so much harder here than it is in other countries in Europe or Asia that have been doing this for decades?

Because there’s no vision. It’s kind of a mystery. The Republicans were for it.

[House Majority] Leader [Kevin] McCarthy [of Bakersfield] was for it – until Obama gave us money. Then it became bad.

As part of the [GOP] belief system: “Democrats bad. Democrats party of government.

We’re the party of free enterprise, we’re the good guys. We believe in God. We believe in the free market. And these other barbar-

The Republicans have one unifying theme: no taxes. But holding on to it cripples America. If you want a great country, you’ve got to invest.

38 | R ol l i n g S t o n e |

RollingStone.com

guage: We have 100 languages spoken in the public schools. But it’s a good challenge, and we’re rising to it.

California is a rich state, but there’s a tremendous amount of poverty here too.

How does California address, in this boom time, that inequality?

We raised the minimum wage. We expanded the Obama health care. We support measures, small though they may be, to help people on housing. We have aggressive enforcement of labor law, hours of family leave. We also have the local-control [school]-funding formula – where we are putting disproportionate resources behind schools that face challenges from poverty or immigration. So we’re reacting and trying to compensate.

But the government intervention in the face of the destructive power of global capitalism is modest. The overwhelming capitalist flow of money and people is what it is.

Everybody moves into San Francisco, New York, London, Beijing, Tokyo. Drives up the prices. That’s the main reason for that poverty, because of the price of housing. Can we control that? Only within limits.

O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

JIM WILSON/“THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX

ians are going to ruin everything. So: Bad!” We got caught up in that belief system.

I don’t get it. The congestion is real. We should be doing far more. I lived in Japan for six months. Take that train from Tokyo to Kamakura, where I was living? One hour exactly. Set your watch. That would be very good to have. Can we do that? It’s very challenging.

Trump campaigned for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending. At least in principle, Democrats don’t disagree with that platform.

A trillion’s not a lot of money. And Trump is going to do a flimflam with Wall Street. Goldman Sachs will find the money from somebody, take a nice little fee for it, and we’ll have a toll road and pay it all back. And the government [wipes hands in the air] – magic.

It will be free. Well, that’s not the way the world works.

You’ve got to invest. But investing, to the public, has the ring of taxes. So it would be better for America to go down the drain than we raise taxes. What is it the guy said? Galbraith! “Private affluence.

Public squalor.” That’s the philosophy. “Tax is the Antichrist. That is all evil.”

The Republican Party – they only have one unifying theme between the libertarians and the religious fundamentalists and the old-fashioned Republicans: no taxes. If they lose that they may disintegrate. So they’re holding on to it. But holding on to it means that America has to be crippled. And that is the Republican philosophy.

And the perfect example: Trump unveiled his big tax cut. In a year when the deficit is already $690 billion. So where do you get the money? You’re cutting your revenue when you’re already borrowing! So, “I want a big tax cut; I’m going to China to borrow the money.” Nothing could be more crazy, and yet you won’t hear an objection.

You’ve spent a lot of time in China. What have you learned from the Chinese?

Whatever you want to say about how they run themselves – they’re not only building at home, they’re building abroad!

Do we have a “One Belt and One Road” [China’s project to create a modern Silk Road connecting China to Europe]? Are we building freeways or subways in Africa or Asia? No! We’re not even building them here! We’re not building abroad, and we’re not building at home. And we think this is

O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

the way? Well, I don’t think so. If you want to be a great country, you’ve got to invest.

Who is building all the electric cars?

China is really investing! They’re making everybody share their technology. They control photovoltaics. They control wind.

We’d better get going. But I don’t think that may fit in the political process. That may not even be cognizable, what I just said.

In fact, this whole interview I don’t even think is reportable. I don’t even know how you’re going to write a story. It’s nothing to do with [our] politics. It’s zero. It’s on another planet. Not even planet Earth! This is the other side of the moon! No functionality in our current political setup.

What happened to the GOP in Califor-

Home on the Range Brown on his ranch in Northern California, where he plans to retire at the end of his term next year.

nia? Orange County was the cradle of modern conservatism, but the party has collapsed even there. Is the national party in any danger of following suit?

Some of it was the alienation of Latino voters by Pete Wilson, the [former] Republican governor. It’s also hostility to the environment, to gay marriage. A certain notvery-modern atmosphere characterizes the Republicans. That’s hurt them with young people – and their fall in popularity has been continuous for more than 20 years. So the national party should take note.

Have you run into challenges with the marijuana legalization passed last year?

It’s a bold experiment! It’s a bold experiment. We don’t know how many people will be stoned, how long. Is it going to reduce the influence of criminals and cartels? Or is

it going to lead to just another – you know: There they go! [Droops his head back on the couch, pretends to be a stoner.] “Well, I’m gonna have another joint; don’t worry about climate change.” [Makes huge inhaling noise as he pantomimes smoking a doobie.] “It’s all great.”

What would you recommend to other governors?

[Colorado Gov. John] Hickenlooper says it’s working pretty good. He has more experience. I would say the devotion and the zeal of the marijuana people is extraordinary. And far exceeds the mainline church community’s, as I encounter it.

What music are you listening to?

I saw Neil Diamond. He packed the arena. Neil Diamond was darn good! A lot of the songs – you know what they are! He’s one of the last of the last. He was around in ’67. That whole period started when I just got out of law school. I remember seeing Bob Dylan in Gerde’s Folk City. 1963.

Is there any advice that you’d give now to yourself starting out as governor in 1974 – something central about politics?

I should have planned my presidential campaign more carefully. That would be my advice. But on the other hand, I had a lot of good experiences doing different things, which I might not have done.

Is there any advice your dad gave that you carry with you?

He was very supportive, proud and excited when I was elected governor. But I grew up in an age where parents were not hovering over you, coming to your school or watching your games. There was an adult world. And there was a kids world.

This whole business of parents having all this interaction with their kids, that’s a new cultural pattern that was far more infrequent in the Forties and Fifties, when I was growing up. Obviously, I emulated my father because I became governor and attorney general like he did. But I don’t remember him offering a lot of advice.

I have a hard time, after this conversation, thinking of you on your ranch as a retired person. What’s next for Jerry Brown?

Well, first of all, I have to understand the animals and the archaeology and the geology, the trees, the insects, the rattlesnakes, and the wild boar and the elk and the fauna and the flora. There’s a lot to govern up there. A lot of complexity – and I’m going to work on that. But I’ll be available for assignments. I don’t think I’ll be quiet.

RollingStone.com

| R ol l i n g S t o n e |

39

Six Decades of Rock Style From mod to grunge to hip-hop street style

Photographs

by Mark Seliger

40

1960s “The mod way of dressing was hip, it was clean and it was groovy. . . . You had to have short hair, money to buy a smart suit, [and] you had to be able to dance like a madman.”

—Pete Tow nshend, 1968 On her: Helmut Lang coat, Brooks Brothers shirt, Levi’s skirt, Bonheur cuff, Falke tights.

MODELS, FROM LEFT: ALLIE BERMAN, LUKE RATHBORNE

On him: Topman coat, Levi’s denim jacket and shirt, Theory pants, H&M tie.

1970s “Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that . . . sense of reinvention.”

42 | R ol l i n g S t o n e

—David Bowie, 2002

1980s “Jay used to say that the thing about hip-hop . . . the way we dress, the way we communicated – it was allinclusive.”

—Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC, 2009

T H I S PAG E

MODELS, OPPOSITE PAGE FROM TOP: SHEIKH EIMAN MAKKI OF YOUR WORLD IS YOUR MUSIC, CHARLOTTE KEMP MUHL OF UNI, AND THE GOASTT; THIS PAGE FROM LEFT: BOLT BROWN, COLLETTE BROWN

On him: 3.1 Phillip Lim vest, Vintage Champion jersey, Levi’s jeans, H&M hat, Christian Louboutin shoes.

On her: Levi’s jean jacket, No Ka 'Oi sports bra and leggings, Breelayne leather pants, Shinola watch, Bonheur earrings, Pamela Love choker, Annelise Michelson cuff, Dsquared2 boots.

O P P O S I T E PAG E

On him: John Varvatos pants and head scarf, Thomas Sabo red bracelet, Justin boots.

On her: The Kooples robe, Velvet Cave overalls, Pamela Love rings, Bonheur earring and ring, Harumi Klossowska necklace, Christian Louboutin shoes.

1990s “We weren’t like these bands now in $400 jeans. We just wanted to dig in our heels and rock the fuck out.”

—Matt Cameron of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, 2010

44 | R ol l i n g S t o n e

2000s

“I don’t really care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks.”

MODELS, OPPOSITE PAGE: PROMISELAND; THIS PAGE: HEATHER GOLDEN OF BEAU

—Julian Casabl ancas, 2009

T H I S PAG E

Wildfox top, Levi’s shorts, Brooks Brothers tie, Adieu shoes.

O P P O S I T E PAG E

March NYC jacket, Woolrich top, Tripp NYC sweater, Converse shoes.

2010s “People in the art world look down on fashion.

But the most energy currently is around fashion. . . . Fashion designers are superstars, too.”

MODELS, FROM LEFT: LUELLA ROCHE, JORDUN LOVE, SAARA UNTRACHT-OAKNER OF BOYTOY, RICHIE QUAKE

—K an ye West, 2015

From left: Helmut Lang sweater, Vince tank top, BCBG skirt, Wolford fishnets, H&M earrings, Christian Louboutin boots; Zadig & Voltaire sweater dress, Levi’s jeans, Converse shoes; Do+Be leather jacket, Vince tank top, 3.1 Phillip Lim net skirt, Helmut Lang leggings, Fratelli Rossetti boots; Levi’s leather jacket, Tripp NYC T-shirt, A.P.C. pants, Oliver Peoples sunglasses, Dr. Martens boots.

Hair by Fernando Torrent at L’Atelier NYC. Makeup by Ingeborg. Set design

by Michael Sturgeon at ADB Agency.

Casting by Barbara Pfister.

Produced by Coco Knudson.

R ol l i n g S t o n e |

47

©2016 Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.

Starburst and all affiliated designs are trademarks of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company or its affiliates.

Maybe juiciness comes from MC Hammer’s juicy raindance.

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Reviews

“Wanna move into a fool’s gold room.

Swimming pools full of animal jewels.

All the rules that you choose to use To get loose with the luminous moves.”

—Beck, “Wow”

Beck’s Day-Glo Vision of Modern Pop Chrome-plated funk and hip-hop whimsy: The left-field genius gets back to having fun

Beck Colors Fonograf/Capitol

HHHH

BY WILL HERMES

Throughout Beck’s nearly 25year career, his finest moments – oddball hip-hop hits like “Loser” and “Where It’s At,” the 1999 funk romp Midnite Vultures, the 2014 folk-rock dark horse Morning Phase – have mixed sincere musical cratedigging with winking selfawareness. It’s a balancing act that can easily tilt into cheap parody, and while many artists have followed Beck’s lead (Father John Misty being the most prominent recent example), few have done it with Beck’s range, wit or soul. Which is why Colors is so welcome; it’s a brilliant attempt to reckon with – and put his own stamp on – modern pop in the late 2010s. The result is his most straight-ahead fun album since the Nineties.

The first signs of his new project surfaced in 2015 with the glistening “Dreams”: funky, chrome-plated rhythm guitar with multifarious vocals – falsetto, wildly pitch-shifted – ric-

Illustration by Alex a nder Wells

RollingStone.com

| R ol l i n g S t o n e |

49

Reviews

50

Marilyn Manson Heaven Upside Down Loma Vista

HHH

The goth-metal veteran gets back to his shock-rock roots

Rowsell

Wolf Alice Deliver NoiseRock Seduction

Tw o ye a r s a f t er r ele a s ing the surprisingly mature goth-metal offering The Pale Emperor, Marilyn Manson has returned to straight-ahead shock. “I write songs to fight and to fuck to,” he sings on “Je$u$ Cri$i$,” from his 10th LP, over spiky, electro-hardrock riffs that occasionally recall his glammy Mechanical Animals period. That old black magic often sounds forced, but he makes up for it with a few more melancholy tracks, the best of which, “Saturnalia,” is an eight-minute ode to orgiastic revelry that feels like a longlost descendant of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” KORY GROW

Twentysomething U.K. rockers revel in the power of nuanced guitar thunder Wolf Alice Visions of a Life Dirty Hit/RCA

Pink

HHHH

Beautiful Trauma RCA

Wolf Alice are four U.K. twentysomethings who never got the memo about rock not mattering anymore. On a second album that dares to both sprawl skyward and focus its volume introspectively, they fashion clouds of guitar noise into a crown for singer-guitarist Ellie Rowsell. It glitters seductively, but she will draw blood if you step to her wrong.

There’s Rowsell on “Don’t Delete the Kisses,” monotonic like a Pet Shop Boy over a pulsing beat, about being too shy to grab the love that’s right in front of her; and there she is on “Yuk Foo,” screaming like a hardcore heroine about wanting to fuck everyone she meets. Bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey turn rhythmic thunder into dubwise moments of clarity, freeing guitarist Joff Oddie to punch a hole in the space-time continuum, as waves of swamprock reverb give way to sci-fi squalls, meditation chimes and chandeliers of star shine. Oddie’s guitar is a compass pointing in every direction at once. Rowsell favors melodies that feel like shouts even when they’re whispers. She grapples with a predatory world that creates demands from within and without. The music underneath merges raw physical pleasure and dreamscape explorations. The stakes are JOE LEV Y high, and the payoffs are real.

HHHHH Classic | HHHH Excellent | HHH Good | HH Fair | H Poor

HHH

A spunky diva keeps the energy high and the vitriol catchy

Pink was dominating the charts with spunky, real-talking anthems back when today’s slowsad divas were in preschool, and her seventh LP is a reminder of that. The title track and the strummy “Whatever You Want” are vintage Pink, with juicy hooks and pop-rock muscle; “I Am Here” underscores its EDM-powerment message with a gospel choir. Trauma’s chilledout middle sags, but “Revenge,” her bad-romance duet with Eminem, offers a shot of energy; Max Martin and Shellback’s homage to Dr. Dre’s skip-step beats may be too on the nose, but Em’s rhymes nicely recall a time when even lunatics rode MAURA JOHNSTON bright hooks.

Ratings are supervised by the editors of R OLLING S TONE .

RICHARD ISAAC/REX SHUTTERSTOCK

ocheting like spotlights off a disco ball amid Eighties electro-pop and Seventies stadiumrock flourishes. Over those carpet-bombing hooks, our hero declares himself “about a lightyear from reality,” shouting out a girl (likely his paramour, Marissa Ribisi) who’s making him high. The 2016 single “Wow” found him higher still, with redeyed trap beats and a kaleidoscope of whistling tones, Beck rhyming “jujitsu” and “girl with a Shih Tzu” with a baked oldschool flow. The funniest stoner jam in ages, it was a long way from the moony Morning Phase, but no less compelling.

Both of those songs are highlights of Colors, but so is nearly every track, in terms of offkilter pop craftsmanship. The title song matches an ocarina-tone melody with cyborg hand claps and vocals apparently jacked from Melle Mel’s “White Lines.” With its musichall piano, “Dear Life” nods to both the Beatles and late indie-folk virtuoso Elliott Smith.

It’s a reminder of the tradition Beck comes out of, as is “I’m So Free,” whose title he enunciates to resemble “I’m so fake,” while brightly snarling chord changes recall Nirvana at their most shamelessly inviting.

It’s a sign of the respect Beck commands that his Colors collaborator is Greg Kurstin, the superstar producer-writer who helped Adele create “Hello” – roughly the 21st century’s biggest pop hit. (The men also have history: Kurstin was a keyboardist on Beck’s 2002 Sea Change tour.) Together, they jampack each song with sonic ideas, even as they zero in on pop simplicity.

The title of the strangely haunting “Fix Me” recalls a certain big-box Coldplay ballad, likely not by accident. With pretty bell-tone f lourishes, its standout verse declares, “I want you, I want you, I want you, oh, I want you.” Trite? Arguably. But clichés are clichés for a reason. And in the right hands, the everyday can feel utterly fresh and essential all over again. Which is exactly what happens here.

The New Kurt and Courtney

Vile and Barnett

Kamasi Washington

A conversational collaboration from two of rock’s best talkers

Harmony of Difference Young Turks HHH½

Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett

Hip-hop’s favorite sax man shows his free-form genius

Here are two great indie-rock songwriters getting together to spool out autumnal guitar prettiness and converse about life, art and whatever. As collaborators, they’re a perfect match: Kurt Vile is a master of zoned-out fingerpicking and droll longhaired jive; Courtney Barnett is a Dylanesque image ninja who can turn everyday stuff like making ramen noodles into rich, personal meditations.

On the dappled “Over Everything,” they trade lines about songwriting strategies and tinnitus over beautifully bent riffs, and whistle and whoo-hoo their way through the relaxed country rock of “Blue Cheese,” which shouts out a weed dealer named Tina and free-form radio hero Tom Scharpling. The pair do a song by

California saxophone virtuoso Kamasi Washington’s latest release since becoming the favored session man of Kendrick Lamar and Run the Jewels is a tidy half-hour EP. Brevity aside, he still manages to cover plenty of ground. Five short numbers warmly flirt with gentle Brazilian f lourishes, smooth jazz and glossy Seventies funk fusion. The 13-minute “Truth” is the grand highlight, a mashup of the EP’s other five pieces that cascades like Pha roah Sanders’ Black Unity meeting up with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN

TOM ROSS

Lotta Sea Lice Matador HHH½

Barnett’s partner, Jen Cloher (the Crazy Horsestyle aloneness anthem “Fear Is Like a Forest”), and tenderly duet on Belly’s 1993 deep cut “Untogether.” Most endearing is “Continental Breakfast,” a jangle-folk ode to their friendship; Vile sings about weird shit he’s been thinking and walks he’s been taking, and Barnett chimes in, “I’m feelin’ inferior on the interior.” It’s like buddies at the bar, or a 2 a.m. text thread. They JON DOLAN make each other feel better.

51

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Reviews

Demi Lovato

Open Mike Eagle

Torres

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Tell Me You Love Me

Brick Body Kids Still Daydream Mello Music HHH½

Three Futures 4 AD HHH½

The Kid Western Vinyl

Singer-guitarist Torres’ 2015 breakout, Sprinter, was a stirring study in spiritual reckoning. Her latest is even more raw, offering conf licted images of emotional and physical release over bracing industrial-rock textures co-produced by Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey). The harsh, pr e d at or y “ Sk i m” sp o ol s through questions like “Did he hold your hips with authority?” as if weaponizing betrayal, and on “Three Futures,” she seems to give breaking up an almost religious significance over a spare melody that flickers like a dying prayer candle. JON DOLAN

Pastoral synthesizer landscapist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith broke out last year with Ears, an acclaimed set of Terr y Riley-esque gurgles and flutters, using noise to evoke nature. On her fourth LP, The Kid, a concept album about the human life cycle, she paints an even lusher world using cosmic swoops, squelches and lots of her highly processed vocals.

Sounds don’t align with the rhythms, and Smith’s voice is awash in alien echoes. But as challenging as this avant-garde music is, it’s also warm, absorbC.R.W. ing and gorgeous.

Island/Safehouse/Hollywood

HHH

The pop star shows off her brassy firepower

Demi Lovato is at her pop-princess best when her majestic wail takes over, as the high points of the singer’s sixth album attest. The title track channels the brassy clamor of her 2015 smash “Confident” into maximumoverdrive R&B; “Sexy Dirty Love” throws back to the robofunk era, with Lovato using its fluid bass line as a springboard for vocal pyrotechnics. The LP gets bogged down in chilledout trap pop (see the Lil Wayneassisted “Lonely”). But slow jams like “Concentrate” perfectly balance the downtempo and the energetic. MAURA JOHNSTON

HHHH

Indie rocker’s unsparing meditations on desire

Chicago-born rapper offers an impressionistic history lesson

Motormouthed rapper Open Mike Eagle has gotten raves for albums that explore the comedy of neurosis. His new one, easily his headiest, is a concept LP built around Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, a famously mismanaged housing project destroyed 10 years ago. Eagle impressionistically inserts himself into events real and imagined. “We live in a space that should have never existed,” he raps. The results add a historical angle to hip-hop’s powerful mix of the personal and political.

CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN

Synth experimentalist gorgeously maps the life cycle

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Movies

By Peter Travers

How to Replicate a Hit Blade Runner 2049

The Florida Project

Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford

Willem Dafoe

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

HHH½

Directed by Sean Baker

HHH½

w h a t c a n i s a y a b ou t Blade Runner 2049 without having the spoiler police on my ass? Elvis is in it. Ditto Sinatra. It runs two hours and 43 minutes (46 minutes longer than the 1982 original).

For newbies, that’s a lot of sitting. For Blade Runner junkies like myself, who’ve mainlined five different versions of Ridley Scott’s iconic sci-fi film noir on DVD, every minute of this mesmerizing mind-bender is a visual feast to gorge on.

Harrison Ford, at his hardcase best, roars back as Rick Deckard, long past his days as a blade runner in a relentlessly rainy Los Angeles circa 2019, when his job was to kill replicants (androids). Scott thought that Deckard was himself a replicant, but Ford argued for his humanity. When Deckard ran off with a repli-cutie named Rachael (Sean Young) at the end of the first film, we didn’t know what to think, but for decades we rarely stopped talking about it.

Gosling and Ford go rogue.

Cut to 2049, when Deckard is in hiding and Officer K (a superb, soulful Ryan Gosling) is the new blade runner on his tail. K’s boss (Robin Wright) thinks Deckard is the key to something that could “break the world.” So watch out for Jared Leto as a replicant designer not far from madness or from revealing secrets about K. Am I being vague enough?

Director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival), taking over for Scott, who exec-produced, shows a poet’s eye for details that reveal emotion. And camera

genius Roger Deakins creates a look that both salutes and moves on from the original.

When K and Deckard finally meet, the film takes on a resonance that is tragic yet hopeful.

Turns out the theme of what it means to be human hasn’t lost its punch, not in a Trump era when demands are made on dreamers to prove their human worth. Blade Runner 2049 delivers answers and just as many new questions meant to tantalize, provoke and keep us up nights. Would you have it any other way?

Cruise Goes Top Gun in the Drug Trade American Made Tom Cruise Directed by Doug Liman

FROM TOP: STEPHEN VAUGHAN/WARNER BROS.; A24 FILMS; UNIVERSAL PICTURES

HH½

so what if the fact-based American Made feels generic, like you’ve seen it all before (Blow, Sicario, The Infiltrator, War Dogs, Narc os). The big difference is that Tom Cruise is spreading his star shine over this one as Barry Seal, a TWA pilot and family man who became a smuggler for the Medellín cartel. Director Doug Liman, who powered Cruise

O c t o b e r 1 9 , 2 017

A Small Wonder

Cruise on a mission to smuggle

through 2014’s excellent Edge of Tomorrow, keeps the action moving, but not whooshily enough to prevent sameness

from stalling it.

Soon Seal is running guns to Contra rebels (Arthur L. Liman, the director’s father, was chief counsel to the Senate probe in 1987). But when the film needs to get serious and dark, it’s clear no one laid a foundation to support consequence, much less calamity. Until then, Cruise makes it a fun ride.

HHHH Classic | HHH½ Excellent | HHH Good | HH Fair | H Poor

willem dafoe should top Oscar’s Best Supporting Actor list for his stellar work in The Florida Project, a film that is as hilarious and heartbreaking as it is unclassifiable. Dafoe’s Bobby is a motel manager working the low-rent fringes of Orlando’s theme-park paradise (read: nightmare, if you’re Bobby). Director and co-writer Sean Baker (Tangerine) digs into the darker subtext of this candy-colored cosmos, cutting

Dafoe, Prince

to the core of what’s at stake when children are set adrift in a shining world of false promises.

Bria Vinaite excels as Halley, 22, a tattooed single mom trying to scrape by for the sake of Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), a six-year-old with a mouth on her, just like Mom. Halley quit her job as a stripper, but is now drifting into prostitution.

Prince is a youthful force of nature, a genuine find. And Valeria Cotto, as her friend Jancey, is her equal in mischief. The girls are hardly aware they exist on the poverty line. They’re always up for a prank, a spitting contest or a new way to scam strangers for an ice cream.

When reality intervenes, Baker pulls the rug out from under these innocent lives. The jump in moods can be jarring.

But Baker, blending the Little Rascals with his own brand of indie neo-realism, creates a major work in a minor key.

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THE LAST WORD

Marilyn Manson The goth rocker discusses relationship advice, Beethoven and how to earn the respect of employees Who is your biggest hero and why?

David Bowie. The first video I saw on MTV was “Ashes to Ashes.” I hadn’t listened to a great deal of music at the time, because I was at Christian school. He’d created a radio pop hit that was so unnatural, so different, full of unease and tension. And yet it had some sexiness to it. It was like I was watching a movie. Now when I make a record, I want it to be like a movie. When you hear a song, it’s like a scene in a movie. If you accomplish that scene well, you’re going to want to see the next scene.

What’s the best advice you ever got?

As a kid, my dad told me, “Son, when you get your first job, fire somebody so everyone fears you.” I think what he meant to say is: Inspire awe in the people that you work with. They don’t need to fear you, but they need to respect you without any question. When I’m trying to accomplish something very intense, my brain is working in crazy ways I can’t explain. If they aren’t inspired by you doing your job well, then they’re not meant to be on your team.

You’re from Canton, Ohio. What’s the most Canton thing about you?

That I lost my virginity there, and got crabs at the same time. That is the terrible thing that is disqualified now by the fact that women tend to use laser hair removal or waxing, so it eliminates the risk of crabs. Who in 10th grade has crabs? I guess that unfortunate, slutty cheerleader in Canton, Ohio.

What was your favorite book as a kid?

Alice in Wonderland, because it speaks in great words. It never really describes how anyone looks. The Mad Hatter is never described as wearing a hat. It makes your mind create images.

What music moves you the most now?

My favorite song of all time is “Moonlight Sonata,” by Beethoven. Every time I hear it, it soothes me and also gives me dark thoughts, too. “Moonlight Sonata” speaks so much without saying anything.

What do you do to relax?

I usually watch a film. My friends that have the most money in the world come to my house and are astonished by the fact that I have a projector player. They’re like, “How did you do that?” I’m like, “It’s just a fucking projector playing on the wall.” I find tranquility in the house being completely dark, putting something on the TV. I get lost in the story, and that gives me a moment of relief.

Manson’s new album, “Heaven Upside Down,” is out now. He’s touring the U.S. into November.

Illustration by Mark Summers

What’s the most indulgent purchase you ever made?

I don’t have a driver’s license – I don’t have any vehicles. So I think the most indulgent purchase I made recently came from an auction of some of Hannibal Lecter’s items [from the show Hannibal]. I bought the kill suit that he wore to keep blood off his suit, his apron he used when he cooked, the knife, and a severed tongue.

You’ve had several long relationships with women. What have you learned from them?

I learned to use logic before emotion. If you’re in a fight, it’s almost a scientific fact that it takes men about six minutes to just walk it off. If women start crying, you give them 15 minutes, they’ll stop. If you even try to coddle or be nice in a fight situation, it won’t work.

Problems can be avoided by not arguing, and you have to look at life as being very short. I’ve also learned that you have to take the responsibility if you want to be in charge of your own life.

Every relationship is 50-50. You cannot fight alone.

No one wins.

Do you consider Marilyn Manson to be separate from Brian Warner, your real name?

No. People can call me whatever they want.

People who know me usually call me M or Manson. In the past, I didn’t want to be called Brian Warner, because that was a person I left behind, symbolically. That’s not as important to me now because I’ve realized that names are just semantics.

What drugs do you refuse to try?

Bath salts would be top of my list.

I don’t want my flesh to fall off. I’ve smoked human bones and taken acid.

I don’t want to do either again, because all your demons appear when you smoke bones or take acid. The older you get, the more demons chase you around and you have nightmares.

Is there anything about Donald Trump that you admire?

I do admire the fact that he created Trump Tower, because when I did an interview and it went wrong and I got arrested for putting a gun in the mouth of an editor of Spin, I hid from the law there.

That’s the one good thing he built. [Manson was sued in 1999 for threatening to kill an editor of Spin, and his bodyguards were accused of assaulting the editor. They settled out of court. Manson was not arrested.]

You’ve lost both of your parents in recent years. What has that taught you?

I learned that time is valuable, so spend it wisely. I also learned that when you’re at the point in your life where you get to do what you want to do, enjoy it. Don’t miss out on the dream when it’s hapINTERVIEW BY ANDY GREENE pening.

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