Rolling Stoneconfirmed that the Who will be the latest Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to perform during the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIV in Miami just hours after the band’s “My Generation” was played on Monday Night Football.
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé got their Tarantino on in “Video Phone,” Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg unveiled their awesome mind trip of a “Heaven Can Wait” video, Bob Dylan got into the Christmas spirit in his “Must Be Santa” clip, and Shakira and Lil Wayne teamed up for “Give It Up to Me.”
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé teamed up recently to record not one but two songs dedicated to phones, “Video Phone (Remix)” and The Fame Monster’s “Telephone,” which was then followed by actor Jason Segel turning his phone number into a chorus at the Swell Season show. In honor of Alexander Graham Bell’s suddenly tuneful invention, we’re dedicating this weekend’s Rock List to all things telephone. Tell us your favorite songs that are in any way phone-related, and on Monday we’ll reveal the Readers’ List of Phone Songs. Before we put you on hold, check out our favorites below:
• Electric Light Orchestra – “Telephone Line” • Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone” • Tommy Tutone – “867-5309 (Jenny) • Steely Dan – “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” • The Replacements – “Answering Machine”
When Michael Jackson died suddenly on June 25th, the stunned and saddened Rolling Stone team snapped to action and devoted a commemorative issue to the King of Pop. Now the magazine’s editors are proud to present an even bigger version of that special edition of RS: Michael, a book devoted to Jackson’s life and career that features more than 100 rare photographs from his Jackson 5 days through his troubled later years.
RS contributor Jon Dolan writes about Bad, Jackson’s last truly great album, and Alan Light examines the making of Thriller, the biggest album of all time. Rob Sheffield contributes a guide to Jackson’s videos and the 25 moments that defined his career. Michael also includes tributes from Slash, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones and others who worked with and admired Jackson.
Order the book, and dive into our special Michael Jackson coverage right here on RollingStone.com, too:
Has any artist this decade been busier than Jack White? The past 10 years alone have seen White emerge from relative obscurity to front three marquee bands — the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather (with whom White is already plotting a new album) — plus produce country legends like Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson. On the big screen, White has rocked out alongside Jimmy Page and the Edge in It Might Get Loud and the Rolling Stones in Shine A Light, plus showed off his acting chops in Cold Mountain and Walk Hard. This week’s Flashback looks back at White at the beginning of the millennium, with Meg and Jack performing their De Stijl standout “Hello Operator” in December 2000 at Chicago’s Empty Bottle.
Bonus Flashback: The White Stripes cover Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored” in 1999 at their hometown Detroit’s Gold Dollar:
As Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien battle for late-night supremacy, one thing has become clear: Jimmy Fallon has the hottest house band. In their eight months on the air, the Roots have played with everybody from Paul Simon to Christopher Cross to Weird Al Yankovic, and have been hilarious in skits. As the group preps for a show featuring Hulk Hogan and Edward Norton, ?uestlove reveals that the network was initially skittish about bringing them onboard. “All they knew of us was ‘rap group,’ ” the drummer says. “They were a tad bit worried if we had range or not. In the beginning they were throwing a lot of debris and Hanna Barbara-style Acme TNT obstacles at us to see if we could obstacle the course. On a whim, four hours before the show they said to us once, ‘We’re going to do a Broadway song. Can you learn it? Here’s the sheet music.’ I was like, ‘Wait a minute, you guys are trying to get rid of us. You think we cant do this.’ ”
In those early days, NBC also put the group on 13-week contracts. “Once we did [the sketch] ‘Freestyling With The Roots’ for the first time, they knew we were there for life. At this point they have complete faith in us.” (For even more on the Roots’ Fallon gig, grab the current issue of RS.)
As ?uestlove sits behind his drum kit in the group’s tiny rehearsal space, he is simultaneously writing texts on his cell phone, eating yogurt, jamming with his band (sometimes playing with one hand) and conducting an interview. Their current problem is figuring out what song to play as Hulk Hogan walks out. Their initial idea to play “Staying Alive” is deemed too mean because the wrestler’s new memoir reveals he contemplated suicide. “I like snark,” he says. “But I don’t like a sucker punch.” They settle on the theme to the Incredible Hulk TV show, which the group nails after hearing it just once on YouTube.
“If Barack Obama goes on Letterman or Leno, they are definitely going to do ‘Hail To The Chief,’ ” says ?uestlove. “If Barack Obama goes on this show, we’re going to do ‘Funky President’ by James Brown.” The group has also been writing countless original songs to avoid exorbitant licensing fees. “It kills me that in order to play 10 seconds of ‘Cry Me A River’ for Joan Rivers, that would cost me $20,000,” ?uestlove says. “And Justin is the cheaper of the expensive people.”
Nightly TV exposure has helped the hip-hop group raise their profile. “In the beginning, some bloggers were making it look like I took my Park Place and my Boardwalk and Penn Avenue and traded it all in for one house on Oriental Avenue,” says ?uestlove. “They actually thought that we were household superstars. TMZ is never chasing me or wondering what girlfriend I’m dating this week. To the majority of the world they think every record we put out is our second record. Not us being on our 11th. I started to notice at shows that we’d start playing bigger halls based on us getting more exposure on the show. Then I was like, ‘Oh shit. This can actually benefit us.’ ”
Miley Cyrus‘ tour bus was reportedly involved in a fatal accident this morning at 8:15 a.m. ET, outside of Richmond, Virginia. Cyrus was not on the bus at the time of the crash. According to NBC 12, the bus driver, whose identity has been withheld until next of kin are informed, was killed after the tour bus overturned. Nine people were on the bus, including members of Cyrus’ production crew, and one passenger sustained minor injuries.
The bus was driving southbound on I-85 when it ran off the left side of the road and overturned, eventually coming to rest on its right side. The cause of the crash is under investigation. The bus was one of four in a fleet heading to Greensboro, North Carolina, for the Hannah Montana star’s concert there Sunday, November 22nd. According to reports, the Greensboro concert will still take place as scheduled.
In 1980, music journalist Robert Palmer was invited to drop by the sessions for John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy in New York. When Palmer arrived, Lennon was adding background vocals to “(Just Like) Starting Over.” Palmer noted that Lennon had sung his parts perfectly in key. Lennon, impressed by Palmer’s ear, said, “You’ll do.”
As Lennon learned, Palmer — who died in 1997 of complications from liver disease at 52 — led a life immersed in music. He was an author (of Deep Blues, a history of Mississippi Delta music), a record producer, a documentary filmmaker, a college professor, even a horn player. But Palmer was foremost a critic equally skilled at writing about John Contrane, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Philip Glass — and his work has been anthologized for the first time in Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer.
Compiled by Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis, Blues & Chaos collects revealing interviews with Eric Clapton, Jerry Lee Lewis and William S. Burroughs; liner notes for box sets by Led Zeppelin, Ray Charles and Bo Diddley; and in-depth stories on the history of Texas blues and the early years of the Band. Palmer was so prolific that DeCurtis spent years tracking down thousands of old clips. “Bob deserved that treatment,” says DeCurtis, who was Palmer’s editor at RS in the 1990s. “This is somebody who really believed that music could take you to another world.”
Rolling Stone editor Ed Ward recruited Palmer to write for the magazine in 1970, which he did for the rest of his life. In 1981, Palmer became The New York Times‘ head pop critic, introducing readers to everyone from Sonic Youth to blues-guitar great Otis Rush. In 1988, Palmer left the Times and returned south — to Mississippi and later Louisiana — to teach and also to deal with addiction to cocaine and heroin. Fighting hepatitis C, he fell ill in 1997 and died while awaiting a liver transplant. In a sign of the regard with which Palmer was held, Patti Smith, Allen Toussaint, Alex Chilton and others played a series of benefits to help pay his medical bill.
“He talked the talk,” says Robbie Robertson, who met Palmer in Arkansas in the Sixties. “He would look further inside of what you were doing, and he knew where things came from. It was so moving to me that somebody knew what well you got your water from.”
Forgetting Sarah Marshall star Jason Segel made a surprise appearance at the Swell Season’s November 18th concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, entertaining the ladies in the audience with a love song featuring his phone number as the chorus. In case anyone in the crowd couldn’t make out the digits, as evidenced by the video above, Swell Season’s Marketa Irglova held up a sign with Segel’s number around the stage like she was a boxing match’s ring girl. This is the second time in a week Rolling Stone is reporting on Segel’s musical endeavors: The How I Met Your Mother actor will also serve as special guest when Maroon 5 play Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve.
Segel recently joined Maroon 5 onstage when the band performed at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, in early November. “Jason was a little apprehensive about playing with us because we were playing a super religious school,” Maroon 5’s Adam Levine tells RS. “There was a hall monitor that told him not to curse earlier. But I knew the crowd would love him.”
In addition to his comedic roles, Segel has acquired a reputation as being a musician in Hollywood after contributing both the infamous “Dracula Song” and Russell Brand’s rock songs to Sarah Marshall. In Segel, Levine found the perfect person to revive an old musical tradition. “I feel like musicians and comedians used to collaborate more, in the ’70s and ’80s. That whole SNL crew. Live concerts had a lot of comedians and musicians. It’s a lost thing,” Levine told RS. “I remember Paul Simon would be on SNL all the time, doing skits, performing. Like on [Eddie Murphy's] Delirious, there was a live band performing before. I’d love to bring that back. Would be so cool to see a comedian you love and a huge band you love.”
As for why Segel turned his personal phone number into a song’s chorus for the hundreds of female Swell Season fans at the Wiltern — and now the 23,000 and counting YouTube viewers — Levine said, “You’ll have to ask him. I can’t reveal the secrets of the mystique that is.”
Lady Gaga vs. David Bowie, “Let’s Just Dance” [Mashup] DJ Terry Urban treats mashups like Cage treats composition, dropping just a micro-fragment of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” behind Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” — to startling effect. This also marks the first occasion for either artist where subtlety has served as an asset.
Kids in the Hall vs. Grizzly Bear, “Leisure Man” [New Track/Mashup] Well, Grizzly Bear’s entré into hip-hop is officially complete; first Jay-Z shows up at a Brooklyn show, now Kidz in the Hall are rapping over “Two Weeks.” Be honest: did anyone see this coming? And if you did, is there any way we can solicit your insight on, say, the next 15 World Series?
Raekwon, “About Me” & “Cataline” [Live] This is the thanks Rae gets, for putting out a record anticipated for a decade that actually lives up to the hype? He gets more-or-less ignored, relegated to live performances on an extreme sports network?
Rihanna, Full London Concert [Live Video] The future is here, folks. You don’t even have to leave your desk now to enjoy a full Rihanna concert. And who do we have to thank for this wonderful Friday gift? You guessed it: the Russians, who appear to be hosting this video on a Russian version of YouTube called — wait for it! — RuTube.
Passion Pit, “Little Secrets” [Jack Beats Remix] Jack Beats takes a scalpel to Passion Pit’s trump card, turning it into the kind of ADD-dance number that inspires full-body dance-floor freak-outs.
Photo:Edelson/NBC 
Photo: Gilkas/FilmMagic 
Photo: Shearer/WireImage