SPIN 35
Looking Back at the Concert That Tried to Save America
Editor’s note: It’s easy to forget now, but in 2004, we were a nation just as divided. George W. Bush was facing a tough reelection campaign against Democratic challenger John Kerry. That year, Bruce Springsteen and others joined forces to barnstorm through swing states on the Vote for Change tour. The tour hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin and Iowa. The tour culminated with the biggest names from the tour performing on Oct. 11 in Washington, D.C. The lineup was star-studded: Springsteen, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, the Chicks, James Taylor, John Mellencamp, Jurassic 5, Keb’ Mo’ and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. The five-and-half hour show culminated with several all-star collaborations. Zaakir aka Soup from Ju...
SPIN 35 How U2’s Concert in War Torn Sarajevo Came About
This past September 23rd was the 23rd Anniversary of one of the most famous and truly meaningful rock concerts ever staged: U2 playing Sarajevo, soon after the end of the war in Bosnia and the hellish three and a half year seige of the city. Since then time has, as it often does, slobbered all over the occasion and preserved it in a larvae of sacchriny, revisionist myth. In reality, the road to that historic night — and it was a great night, and really did change the morale of a country — was anything but simple and sure, and in the beginning the band didn’t want to do it. I know all this because it was entirely my idea. CREDIT: In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images In the first few days of January 1996, just weeks after the first wars in the former Yugoslavia ended, with Serbia’s...
The Most Influential Artists: #9 Public Enemy
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #9. From Long Island, New York, here are Public Enemy. CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Formed around the nucleus of rappers Chuck D and Flava Flav, production collective the Bomb Squad and others, Public Enemy was conceived as a rap army: militant Black musicians hell-bent on bringing the harsh realities of African-American strife to a mostly unaware audience. Their sample-based sound was as jarring and impactful as Chuck’s megaphone bark was authoritative and Flav’s cartoonish squeal was absurdist — and it strived for a confrontational brio informed by history. (Their contemporaries in N.W.A. approached these matters from slightly different, more misogynistic...
The 35 Greatest Concerts of the Last 35 Years
We know, we know — the best concert of all-time is your friend’s obscure indie-punk band playing a sweaty neighborhood basement back in ‘94. We admit that one slipped through the cracks. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand, but this list is our attempt to narrow down three and a half decades of worthy live music events — legendary festivals, headlining tours from major artists, one-off stage collaborations, multimedia spectacles — into an eclectic and satisfying blend. – Ryan Reed 35. Heilung at Castlefest (8/5/2017) CREDIT: Gonzales Photo/PYMCA/Avalon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Music-related viral clips tend to be silly and easily digestible, like the dude riding a skateboard to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” while sipping on Ocean Spray. So it’s heartening that Heilung’s debut l...
The SPIN Interview: The Dalai Lama
This interview originally appeared in the April 1994 issue of SPIN. The Dalai Lama, since 1950, has inspired worldwide devotion as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and as a political ruler of uncompromising integrity. Dan Reed and Bob Guccione, Jr., journey to India to talk to the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner. When Tibet’s 13th Dalai Lama died in 1933, the Buddhist High Priests, the lamas, went into seclusion to meditate for guidance to find his reincarnated successor. Alongside a great lake outside of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, a vision came to them of a farmhouse with a blue awning. The lamas scoured the countryside for 18 months and finally, in the eastern village of Amdo, found the place they were looking for. A woman holding a two-year-old child greeted the monk who came to...
The Most Influential Artists: #10 Rage Against the Machine
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #10. From Los Angeles, California, here are Rage Against the Machine. CREDIT: Lindsay Brice / Contributor Tom Morello once described Rage Against the Machine’s debut album as a “raw wound,” but it was much more than that: It was revolutionary. Four guys from distinctly different backgrounds, the band navigated the Southern California music scene carefully and skeptically. And with good reason. There was no one quite like them. Mixing unapologetically far-left politics with the fire and fury of Morello’s guitar Tim Commerford’s bass and Brad Wilk’s emphatic drumming, Rage Against the Machine attacked audiences sonically and demanded their voices be heard. For better or wors...
John Mellencamp: American Son
“Hello, Liza. This is John Mellencamp. What do you want to talk about?” It’s a cold, cloudy East Coast afternoon, and, for so many reasons, including John’s 69th birthday on Oct. 7, it’s been tough for us to connect. “I want to talk about you,” I say. “Boy, that’s a boring topic,” he states. I don’t believe him, but I like him already. He’s direct. He’s salty. He’s moody and sharp. He speaks with a gravely Southern lilt, even though born and raised above the Mason-Dixon line. Seymour, Indiana, as we all know from his 1985 hit “Small Town”, is a humble place, under 20,000 people, known, interestingly, for its downtown railroad which intersects the north/south, east/west lines. He currently calls hour-away Bloomington home, though he’s calling today from his house on South Carolina’s D...
The 35 Best Videos of the Last 35 Years
SPIN launched in the peak MTV era, when an innovative — or even just salacious — music video could make or break an artist. Thirty five years later, YouTube is an obligatory part of any promotional push, but no one’s counting on a mind-blowing clip to sell a record. (The views do often matter — just not always the creativity.) A sizable chunk of the best videos came out during the ‘90s alternative bloom, when directors like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Hype Williams experimented with the style and substance of this malleable medium. But the format hasn’t died with MTV: artists like Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar and Miley Cyrus all made this list for a reason — and it wasn’t to meet a decade quota. Here are the top 35 from the last 35. Ready or not, here we go again. – Ryan Reed 3...
The Most Influential Artists: #11 Guns N’ Roses
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #11. From Los Angeles, California, here are the Guns N’ Roses. CREDIT: L. Busacca / Contributor Bursting out of the Sunset Strip faster than you can say “Welcome to the Jungle,” Guns N’ Roses became both a sensation and a cautionary tale for overindulgence. And that was just in their first eight years as a band. At a time when pop-metal and big hair ruled the airwaves, Axl, Slash, Duff, Izzy and Steven Adler crept up like dirt under your fingernails. Appetite for Destruction brought L.A.’s underbelly to MTV before drugs threatened to rip it apart. The album spawned hundreds of copycats, but none could compete with the real thing, who commanded the respect of revered elders (the ...
The Making of Curtis Waters
“Dad’s coat,” one bubble reads. “Brother’s shirt, Mom’s pants,” read little arrows, tracing the origins of the tuxedo flailing across the screen. The belt, however, belongs to the body it’s on. As does the song it dances to and these helpful tidbits from the accompanying “pop up” music video — all from the restless imagination of Abhinav Bastakoti, aka Curtis Waters. “Curtis Waters as a whole project has been around since I was a kid, a comic book character that I used to draw,” he tells SPIN. “I wanted it to feel like an alternate universe where there’s this character, but it gets kind of blurry now ‘cause I’m Curtis Waters full time.” Waters was propelled into the shoes of his persona by the success of his single “Stunnin,’” featuring his longtime friend Harm Franklin. Accumul...
The Most Influential Artists: #12 Beastie Boys
As part of our 35th anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #12. From New York City, here are the Beastie Boys. CREDIT: L. Cohen / Contributor “Just when you think you know the answers, I go ahead and change the questions.” The Beastie Boys embodied that quote from wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper: Just when you thought you had the group figured out, they’d rip your expectations to shreds. Starting off as Bad Brains and hardcore aficionados, Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch were mesmerized by the emerging hip-hop sounds permeating through the speakers of New York City club Danceteria and what they heard at underground clubs. A chance meeting with an older NYU student named Rick Rubin set the trio on a trailblazing pa...
Love and the Muse
Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love, 2019, 1 hour 42 minutes. Directed by Nick Broomfield. “Dearest Marianne,” Leonard Cohen writes to Marianne as she’s dying in a hospital bed, “I’m just a little behind you, close enough to take your hand.” And so begins the elegiac and hauntingly beautiful 2019 documentary, Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love. The film is a jagged sort of love story about Leonard and his Norwegian muse. Because Broomfield was Marianne Ihlen’s lifelong friend (and he adds, her lover on Hydra) the documentary is a magical memory tour that includes personal archival film, photos, and voiceovers of Marianne, Leonard, and the director too. Like a Harold Pinter play that begins at the end of the story and moves backwards in time, Marianne and Leonard transits from Marianne’s ...
