September 14, 2002
The Rolling Stones At 40: Still Special For Mick & Keith

By Melinda Newman

It's a little hard to imagine, but Keith Richards says he fears that playing live with his Rolling Stones bandmates may one day feel like just another day at the office. He pauses, slides into a hard guffaw, and adds, "Not that I know what a day at the office feels like."

No, but the Rolling Stones gross more than most corporations when it comes to their night jobs. In the 1990s, the band took in a staggering $750 million from three tours. With a nearly sold-out concert outing newly under way and a greatest-hits package that for the first time spans its entire career, the top touring act of all time is poised to reach a new plateau.

The hits package, Forty Licks, is a joint venture among Virgin Records, Universal Music International (UMI), and ABKCO Records that will be distributed worldwide by Virgin parent EMI Recorded Music. The first half of the two-disc set contains the ABKCO-controlled material, starting with the group's first U.S. chart single, 1964's cover of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." The second half features the post-ABKCO material. The project is due Sept. 23 in Japan, Oct. 1 in North America, and Sept. 30 in all other markets.

Forty Licks features four new songs, which Richards, Jagger, Watts, guitarist Ron Wood, and bassist Darryl Jones recorded in Paris in May. "The last tour ended in 1999, and I thought, 'I probably won't get a phone call for about 18 months,'" Richards says via phone from Toronto, where the band was rehearsing for the tour. "And, sure enough, slightly after [18 months had passed], Mick calls up and goes, 'Do you think we should do something next year?' I just wait for people to get antsy at home."

At the Paris sessions, the band turned out to be amazingly prolific, cutting 28 tracks in four weeks. There was never any doubt, Richards says, whether some of the new material would be included on Forty Licks,"because [of] this Beatles and Stones sort of thing. The main difference between the Stones and the Beatles, I guess, is that the Stones are still going. So we decided it would be important to have this sort of hint of 'to be continued,' rather than it all just being totally out of the can. At the same time, I wanted [new material], because the boys haven't played together for almost three years."

In addition to the driving first single "Don't Stop," the new tracks on Forty Licks are "Keys to Your Heart," which Jagger describes as "a soul tune with a sort of Curtis Mayfield [vibe]"; "Stealing My Heart," which the singer says is "more of a 'battle of the bands' thing, with a hook"; and "Losing My Touch," which features Richards on lead vocals. "It's about a guy on the run who's gotta say goodbye," Richards explains, "and he's doesn't really know how to say it."

Forty Licks marks the first time the Rolling Stones' ABKCO-owned masters (which encompass the band's 1963-1970 London/Decca recordings) and post-ABKCO recordings have co-existed on the same project. ABKCO head Allen Klein previously rejected any offers to blend the two.

"I thought it was a good time to get all these different business groups and bang their heads together and see if they could click this thing out," Jagger says, jokingly adding that he got the parties to agree to the project "by playing on their mutual sense of greed."

Klein says money was not his only impetus for doing the deal. Rather, it was Jagger's appeal and Klein's own sentimentality. "I mean, if this was going to possibly be their last tour and given the amount of time that had gone by ... I would do it for them and not for anyone else." He adds that ABKCO and the Stones actually hammered out a deal in 1989 that allowed for the eventual joint release of an album.

Simply because all parties have finally worked together, Jagger says it does not mean that fans should expect a more comprehensive Stones boxed set: "It sounds like too much hard work. Besides, there's a reason why some of this stuff doesn't come out. Don't hold your breath on that one."

The Stones prefaced the year-long Licks tour by rehearsing for six weeks in Toronto prior to opening Sept. 3 at Boston's FleetCenter. It's not that the band needed to practice "Brown Sugar" or "Jumpin' Jack Flash." "We don't rehearse those," Richards says. "But what we do is rehearse a hundred old songs. Since we're playing [different-size venues], we decided we really needed a lot more ammunition in the locker, so to speak, in order to be able to make the shows appreciably different." He adds that he was especially happy with the way some oldies, like "Heart of Stone," were resurrecting themselves. "I don't think we've played that song in I can't remember when ... slightly before B.C."

To keep things lively, the band will play a theater, arena, and stadium in its biggest markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston. The bulk of the rest of the first leg's 40 dates are arena shows. Openers include No Doubt, the Pretenders, Sheryl Crow, Buddy Guy, and Jonny Lang.

The band has been considering all manner of surprises for the concerts. "With the smaller shows, we've been thinking that we need some kind of theme -- you know, like this is Exile on Main St. night and sort of lean heavily into that album," Richards explains. "Another idea is, 'Let's have a soul night or a blues night.'"

Jagger says, "The whole idea is that you enjoy them all so that you don't get bored doing one thing. I mean, it's a show for the audience, but you've also got to enjoy yourself." Richards chimes in: "Football stadiums -- as big and beautiful and spectacular and wonderful as they are -- I tell you, after about a hundred of 'em, you get bored."

But, after all these years, Richards reveals, "there's still always that element of uncertainty when you step onstage. It's like gambler's fever, you know? It's letting the tigers out of the cage. And then, after a show, you really feel like you've done something, even though sometimes you can hardly walk."

Additional reporting by Margo Whitmire in Los Angeles.

September 11, 2002
Tonic Screws Its 'Head On Straight'

By Catherine Applefeld Olson

While elixirs often mellow with time, guitar-driven melody maker Tonic cranks it up on its third set, Head on Straight, due Sept. 24 from Universal Records.

Nowhere does the trio's current musical statement resound more strongly than in granite-edged first single "Take Me As I Am," which opens with a weighty guitar riff then reveals the pop hooks that first separated the band from the pack in 1997.

"It's a bridge; it's a great way to experience the next step of Tonic," singer/songwriter/guitarist Emerson Hart says. "It's a great way to start, lyrically. We're not about image. We stake our entire career on the strength of our songs."

Bridging the band's previous work -- its platinum-plus debut album, Lemon Parade, and the follow-up, Sugar -- was part of the band's mission on this summer's Jeep World Outside festival. During the tour Tonic dished up old and new material alike alongside rockers Sheryl Crow, Train, and others. Once the album is out, the band will support the set with a U.S. headlining tour that kicks off in October.

This album also brought some changes for the band. For one, Hart bid farewell to Los Angeles, where bandmates Jeff Russo and Dan Lavery still make their home, and hung his shingle in Nashville. Much of Head On Straight was written during an initial year "off," in which Hart says he holed down and let Nashville's "bucolic setting" wash over him.

"I needed that time to get my head together. We had always been touring, always on the road," he explains. "I wanted to make sure the next record would be coming from fresh eyes and ears."

The trio hammered out finishing touches in Hart's basement during a rendezvous, and found their creative muse leading them down a harder-edged road. "We wanted to make a rock record," Hart says. "'Sugar' had rock moments but it was a little more introspective musically, a little more mellow. We wanted to punch it heavy this time."

To get the job done, they turned to veteran producer Bob Rock, whose "laid-back efficiency" and Maui, Hawaii, studio setting provided a welcome change after the draining experience of self-producing Sugar, according to Hart.

Of that experience, Hart says, "It was exhausting. We couldn't stay focused and there was really no neutral party. This time it was a great experience. We enjoyed recording music again, and he was able to bring things out of us -- and particularly out of me as a singer -- that we hadn't been able to capture before."

By David Thomas

Worship and Tribute, the innovative sophomore release by New York post-hardcore outfit Glassjaw, almost went unrecorded. Mired in business disputes with its former label, Roadrunner Records, the group nearly disbanded last year.

Instead, Glassjaw literally saved by longtime supporter and producer Ross Robinson. "We were going to break up because of how much we hated [being on] Roadrunner. But we decided to write the record just in case. Luckily Ross, our boy, bought us out and we signed with Warner Bros.," explains Glassjaw's vocally acrobatic singer Daryl Palumbo. "He's the reason for all of this. He's a member of the band. He's one of my best friends. He's a father figure to a lesser extent. He's everything to me."

Worship and Tribute is a natural evolution from the group's debut, Everything You Wanted To Know About Silence. The set features some elements favored by such progressive metal acts as Deftones but adds to it a melodic blend of hardcore guitars and punishing rhythms reminiscent of fellow New York bands such as Quicksand.

Fans came out of the woodwork when Glassjaw finally picked up its instruments to tour this year. Many shows sold out and a recent stop in South Florida was so packed the group had to play a second show to accommodate the hundreds of fans stuck outside. "Nobody cared 10 minutes ago, and all of a sudden we did that Juliana Theory tour -- our record was pretty much out on the Internet at that point -- and heads were just going crazy knowing all the words," Palumbo says.

The band graduated from packing clubs this spring to being featured on both the Vans Warped Tour and Ozzfest this summer. "I never know how they're going to react to us," Palumbo observes. "I know we have kids that appreciate our music that are from both camps and I know it's not often that can happen. I'm glad that our band can take advantage of that."

When the summer festivals end the group will go back to headlining club tours with support from such acts as Haste, Christiansen, and Boy Sets Fire. "I'll never tour with a joke band because I'm doing well enough that I can pick who we play with and that's the most amazing part of this," Palumbo says.

Besides label headaches, Palumbo has to deal with a much more painful physical ailment: Crohn's disease, which affects the digestive system. Along with other touring singers like Beth Orton and Saves The Day's Chris Conley, Palumbo never knows when the disease's symptoms could flare up. "I'm just praying I don't get sick," he says. "I take a lot of medicine but I just pray I don't get hurt."

But despite the past turmoil, Palumbo and the band have a positive outlook on their current status. "I couldn't be happier right now with the progress we've made and we're doing it all on our terms," he says. "That's the bottom line."

August 26, 2002
Lifehouse Continues Its 'Climb' To The Top

By Charles Daugherty

When it comes to Lifehouse's sophomore effort, Stanley Climbfall, due Sept. 17 via DreamWorks, frontman/songwriter Jason Wade has no intention of hanging on a moment in time.

"Hanging by a Moment" is the smash single that propelled the band's 2000 debut, No Name Face, to sales of 2.3 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. With the new recording, the band and label are unified in their mission to ensure that they avoid the dreaded one-hit wonder albatross. For Wade, the first step in the process was in assembling strong material.

"I started writing songs immediately after the first album was made," he says. "I didn't want to be unprepared when it came time to do the second record. As we toured, we gained a stronger identity of who we were as a band, and my writing grew from there. When putting together Stanley Climbfall, we didn't have the pressure to make another hit single. We just concentrated on making a good album."

Lifehouse manager Jude Cole agrees. "It takes more than a single to define the character of someone's art," he observes. "This record does a wonderful job of capturing the identity of the boys and their music as a whole. It's a more confident record. The songs are more married to each other than their debut."

Stanley Climbfall also reflects a change in focus in terms of the band's overall message. Wade -- who prefers to distance himself from most of the pop culture that is served on radio or TV -- penned most of the set's tracks during downtime between concerts while on tour with Matchbox Twenty and Pearl Jam.

"The album is about moving forward," he offers. "We had a lot of songs to choose from when we started production of the album. It was clear that some songs fit each other better than others. Looking back, it was clear we had a more proactive theme overall. On No Name Face, we spent time identifying where we were at. Stanley Climbfall is about recognizing where we were at and deciding what to do next."

Like the band's debut, Stanley Climbfall was produced by Ron Aniello and mixed by Brendan O'Brien, who helped Lifehouse take Wade's four-track, back-of-the-tour bus recordings and develop them into the 12 final cuts appearing on the record.

"The record has real depth in terms of an overall body of work," DreamWorks president Michael Ostin says, pointing toward stand-out cuts "Wash," "Anchor," and "Take Me Away," as well as the single "Spin" -- all of which showcase memorable guitar/drum-driven hooks that complement Wade's potent lyrics. "They've outdone themselves."

Lifehouse, ending a series of summer concerts in the U.S., will do a handful of international concert dates in September and October before returning to the States for more touring and finalizing decisions on adding a guitarist to the band.

June 28 , 2002
Sonic Youth Surveys Post-9/11 World

By Jonathan Cohen

Sonic Youth's new album, Murray Street (released June 25 via DGC/Interscope), is named after the location of the veteran underground rock outfit's downtown New York recording studio. Murray Street also happens to be a literal stone's throw from the former site of the World Trade Center; an engine from one of the planes that hit the towers landed in the middle of the road on that horrific September morning last year.

In a matter of minutes, the epicenter of Sonic Youth's musical world was recast as ground zero for the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history. The band had already written all of the material that eventually wound up on the album, but guitarist Thurston Moore admits the disaster outside the studio door was an intangible force to be reckoned with once it came time to record.

"We really didn't get to look at the studio until a few weeks later," he says, noting that a 16-man decontamination crew had to be called in to restore the equipment to working order. "Eventually, there was a certain desire to reclaim our workspace in the face of this neighborhood being destroyed. Our mood in approaching this record and actually executing it was certainly different than what it would have been prior."

In the face of such intense working conditions, Sonic Youth nevertheless emerged with an album that largely shies away from the more anarchic, confrontational aspects of its sound. Instead, such songs as "Rain on Tin," "Disconnection Notice," and "The Empty Page" turn back the clock to the blissful, often smile-worthy strains of such seminal albums as 1988's Daydream Nation. Continuing in the vein of 2000's NYC Ghosts & Flowers, the seven-song set gets in and out in an unusually quick 45 minutes, making it one of the band's most easily digestible albums in years.

Five tracks were born out of acoustic guitar-based songs Moore had been playing in solo performances around New York. "I had the desire to introduce them to the band because I really wanted to hear what would happen," he says with a chuckle. "This has always been something I've really enjoyed, because the band takes them and somewhat destroys them or turns them into Sonic Youth songs, as opposed to some singular vision."

Ultimately, the first seven songs put to tape made the final cut for what Moore describes as "a really cool rock'n'roll record." The set also marks Sonic Youth's first with noted producer/multi-instrumentalist Jim O'Rourke as a full-fledged member; O'Rourke co-produced NYC Ghosts & Flowers and toured with the band upon its release.

"During the songwriting process, which he was involved with for the first time, he would hear some of these classic-rock situations arise and he'd point at them," Moore says of O'Rourke, who shares his love for such '70s-rock oddities as Sparks and Mountain. "Normally, we would tend to bury those, and [not doing] that makes the record a bit more fun of a listen.

As for the album's title, Moore admits he "felt a little weird" with the name Murray Street."I took a picture of the street sign, which doesn't denote anything or show destruction, but the sign is kind of bent out of shape. We used it for the back cover. It's hardly anything we felt a need to exploit, but it was such an evocative period."

In-store performances are being planned around the band's summer North American tour, which kicks off Aug. 1 in Dallas and includes a free Aug. 11 show in New York's Central Park.

By year's end, Interscope will salute the band's influential career by rolling out the first in a planned series of reissues: an expanded edition of the 1992 album Dirty. "It's the full CD, and an extra disc of B-sides, eight-track demo stuff, and some loose tape we had found from the songwriting sessions," Moore says. "There are a couple of songs that never got fully realized that were completely amazing to hear."