We’ve seen Mick Jagger’s name in the news a lot lately — and the funny thing is, the items we’ve been reading have nothing to do with his mediocre, new supergroup, SuperHeavy, who released their first album last month. First, there was Maroon 5′s inescapable (and dreadful hit, “Moves Like Jagger.” Then there’s Marc Spitz’s biography, Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue, which came out last month. And now, Gothamist reports that a group is trying to hijack New York City’s annual Halloween parade with a gaggle of marchers dressed as Jagger. But they’re not just going to slip into Mick’s leggings; they’re also planning to perform such hits as “Emotional Rescue,” “Dancing in the Street,” “Satisfaction,” “Time Is on My Side,” “Paint It Black,” Miss You,” “She’s So Cold,” “Start Me Up, and “Beast of Burden.” We would love to see this happen but have one additional suggestion: Please also enlist a gang of ’80s-era David Bowies to truly make “Dancing in the Street” worth everyone’s while.
A few days ago we shared adorable pictures from the early years of some of our favorite writers with you, including an amazing photo of Ernest Hemingway in a dress. Today, we thought it might be fun to revisit the concept, but this time turning our focus on the music world. We don’t know about you, but we never really picture rock ‘n’ roll stars as having childhoods; wearing clothes that your parents have picked out for you and going through an awkward stage is the opposite of bad-ass. So, if you’re curious as to what Courtney Love looked like decades before she ever met Kurt — or you’d like to see how freaking cute he was as a little kid — click through to check out our roundup now.
Mick Jagger hasn’t been in a movie since 2001′s The Man from Elysian Fields. Yesterday, Deadline reported that the Rolling Stones frontman may be in line to play a Rupert Murdoch-like character in Tabloid, which is being written by A History of Violence scribe Josh Olson. This got us thinking about other musicians who made the crossover into film. Jagger’s played everyone from Turner in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s excellent Performance, to a “bonejacker” (oof) in Freejack — which currently holds a shameful 15% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Here are other songbirds that also made the leap from stage to screen, in order from best to worst. Leave us your list in the comments.
Mick Jagger’s Superheavy — the supergroup that also features Joss Stone, AR Rahman, Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley, and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics — have just released their first music video, for “Miracle Worker,” and it doubles as a mission statement for the band. We meet all the members one by one, in their element: Marley is hanging at a reggae record store, while Stone is looking fresh and young in front of a flower shop. And look, here’s witch acupuncturist(?) Jagger, gyrating wildly in a hot-pink suit, in a creepy room filled with candles and skull! (Is the Cryptkeeper imagery supposed to read as self-parody?) Of course, everyone eventually comes together for a massive concert in the streets, where Indian ladies in saris dance with b-boys and all of Superheavy hops onstage. The video is a bit heavy-handed, but undeniably fun, even in its most bizarre Jagger moments.
Say what you want about fancy equipment or an expensive studio setting — a lot of what makes a photograph memorable is all about having an interesting subject to work with and being at the right place at the right time. Case in point, Baron Wolman, who was Rolling Stone‘s first chief photographer back in the late ’60s, during the magazine’s first three years. Now, over 200 of the iconic images that he captured during this incredibly important period of music history are being released in a new coffee-table book.
“I enjoyed shooting every musician I ever photographed, each in a different way but each with respect for him or her, with great joy in the moment,” he explains. “When I was shooting a concert I didn’t ‘hear’ the music, I ‘saw’ the music. Through the lens I was looking for single visual moments which would reflect the essence of the performance in the pages of Rolling Stone.” Click through to preview some of our favorite photos in the iconic collection, from a pic of Ike and Tina sharing a San Francisco stage back in 1967 to Pete Townshend grinning at the piano in 1968 London.
Today at Flavorpill, we adored Michel Gondry’s video for Björk’s “Crystalline.” We agreed that On the Road and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are among the favorite books of the secretly jerky. We were not impressed (or surprised) by the trailer for Russian Dolls, the Brighton Beach-set Russian version of Jersey Shore. We celebrated the birthday of Mick Jagger, Helen Mirren, and Stanley Kubrick. We were as ambivalent about Stereogum’s Stroked cover album, celebrating the tenth anniversary of The Strokes’ Is This It?, as we have always been about the band itself. We watched a comedian behave badly at an Apple store without getting kicked out. Amazing line-up additions drove us to contemplate launching a Kickstarter project to fund our journey to December’s Jeff Mangum-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK. And finally, we read a new short story by Jennifer Egan that has us feeling even more compulsive about list-making than usual.
Whoever cast Al Pacino as record producer/songwriter/murderer Phil Spector in HBO’s upcoming biopic is a genius. Even though the pair aren’t exactly body doubles (they are both relatively small men), it’s an exciting choice. Pacino has made a career out of playing dark, bizarre, and morally complex characters, from Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon and Bobby in The Panic in Needle Park to Angels in America‘s Roy Cohn and Jack Kevorkian. We can’t wait to see what he’ll do with the role of one of pop culture’s greatest contradictions — a man who had the capacity to both make beautiful music and kill. The news of Pacino’s casting got us thinking about other musicians and the actors who were born to play them. Ten of our picks are after the jump.
If you watched True Blood on Sunday night, you probably heard the Nick Cave/Neko Case version of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There” that played over the end credits. We were pretty excited to hear about this collaboration, but unfortunately it proved somewhat less than the sum of its parts – Case’s vocals were decidedly lackluster while Cave, as our own Judy Berman put it, sounded “like the deep-voiced guy on every early-’90s house track.” Ouch. There have been plenty of heinous duets over the years (like this one, which is like the musical equivalent of pairing Beelzebub with Elizabeth Báthory) — but no one expects anything good to come of such things. Somehow it’s more disappointing when it’s two artists you genuinely like and respect who combine to create something that proves a whole less exciting than it sounded on paper. Like this lot, for instance.
Recently, rock juggernaut Mick Jagger announced that he will lead a new supergroup, Super Heavy. The impressive line-up also boasts the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, reggae wunderkind Damien Marley, British soul songstress Joss Stone and, perhaps most unexpectedly, Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire composer A.R Rahman. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger claimed Super Heavy is “different from anything else [he's] ever been involved in” and that “the music is very wide-ranging — from reggae to ballads to Indian Songs in Urdu.”
Super Heavy is Jagger’s first new group since the Rolling Stones’ formation nearly 50 years ago and it is, to say the least, a little shocking that he decided to make a foray into reggae and Bollywood-influenced tunes this far into his career. Jagger’s unexpected announcement got us thinking — this isn’t the first time that a well-known rocker made such a drastic career move. We’ve compiled a list of some well-loved musicians’ decisions that seemed to come right out of left field. Check out our picks after the jump and be sure to leave your own in the comments.
It’s T-minus 36 hours to Mother’s Day, and we’ve got you covered: If you haven’t picked the perfect gift for your mom yet, check out our famous mothers-inspired gift guide, as well as a list of books your mom will actually enjoy. (Seriously, the lady deserves better than this.) But if you’re running low on cash or your mother is that self-martyring type who yells when you spend your money on her, then we suggest the two of you plunk yourselves down in front of this post, which is sure to bring a smile to both of your faces. We’ve collected photos of 50 of our favorite cultural icons, from Mick Jagger and David Bowie to Amy Poehler and Christina Hendricks, with their moms. Consider it our Mother’s Day gift to you.
