Blog Posts by Andy Greene

Last year, Bob Weir told Rolling Stone why Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann weren't part of the new Dead offshoot band Furthur. "Phil [Lesh] and I were boldly pursuing new musical directions onstage, and some of the guys weren't picking up on it," Weir said. "Phil and I are way more current."

Hart and Kreutzmann declined to comment at the time, but when Hart stopped by Rolling Stone last week to discuss his new band, we reminded him what Weir had said. "I don't really have any comment on that," said Hart - who proceeded to spend the next three minutes commenting on it. "You shouldn't read too far into that. It's really hard to say who is current and who is not. I mean, it's a very weak argument. I would just think that would be a slip of the tongue on Bob's part. If he were here right now, we'd probably be laughing about it," Hart said - laughing.

Hart continued: "It doesn't really make sense. I mean, it's almost ludicrous. I'd like to say, 'Bob, are you more

Nick Ashford, one half of the legendary Motown songwriting team Ashford and Simpson - who penned the classics "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "I'm Every Woman" and "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing" - died of throat cancer at a New York City hospital on August 22nd. He was 69. 

Ashford met Valerie Simpson at a New York City church in 1964 and they quickly began writing songs together. They scored their first big hit in 1966 when Ray Charles recorded their track "Let's Go Get Stoned" and brought it to Number One on the R&B chart. They began writing for Motown that same year, and hit it big in 1967 with "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." The song was originally recorded by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, but Diana Ross recorded it in 1970 and made it her first solo Number One single on the Hot 100.

Over the next few years Ashford and Simpson continued to regularly write for Diana Ross, as well as Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and the Marvelettes. In 1978 they wrote "I'm Every Woman" for

Jerry Leiber, one of the most important songwriters in the history of rock & roll - whose 60-year partnership with Mike Stoller produced "Stand By Me," "Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock," "Young Blood," "On Broadway,"  "Yakety-Yak" and countless other classics - has died of cardiopulmonary failure. He was 78.

"When Jerry and I started to write, we were writing to amuse ourselves," Stoller told Rolling Stone in 1990. "It was done out of a love of doing it. We got very lucky in the sense that at some point what we wrote also amused a lot of other people."

Leiber met Stoller in Los Angeles in 1950 when he was still a senior in high school. They had a mutual love of R&B, blues and pop, and began writing music together almost instantly, with Stoller mostly handling the music and Leiber mostly handling the lyrics. "Jerry was an idea machine," Stoller says in their 2009 memoir Hound Dog. "For every situation, Jerry had 20 ideas. As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black

Former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has always been fascinated by music from the distant past, but for his newest project he decided to go all the way back to the beginning of time.  "For the last two or three years I've been sampling light waves from the cosmos, starting 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang," he says. "The signals come from radio telescopes around the world and I work closely with NASA to take the light waves and bring it into our limited spectrum of hearing. Then I add a little spice to them with some reverb and some delay. It makes for a hot little stew."

The Grateful Dead Unveil Giant Box Set: Europe 1972

He's debuting some of this material on a club tour with the newly formed Mickey Hart Band, which features vocalists Crystal Monee and Tim Hockenberry and guitarist Gawain Matthews. "They're local musicians that auditioned," Hart says. "I was looking for just the right people to be able to dance with these cosmic sounds." Recent shows have mixed the new

Click to listen to Tommy Stinson's 'It's A Drag'

As the bassist in Guns N' Roses and Soul Asylum, Tommy Stinson has had little time over the past decade to focus on his solo career.  But over the past five years, during downtime from touring with both of his bands, Stinson slowly began compiling material for his second solo LP One Man Mutiny, which hits stores on August 30th. The LP is being released on Stinson's own label Done To Death Music, which meant that he had complete creative control over the project. "I've gone through enough labels to know that there's not much they could offer me," says Stinson. "This just makes more sense. I'm trying to utilize things like social media and just eke out a little niche for myself." You can stream "It's A Drag" above, or download the track for free right here.

Stinson cut the vast majority of album in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, but the title track came to life on a recent Guns N' Roses tour. "We were having a little dispute within the

Noel Gallagher knows that interviews get him in trouble. "I can't help but offend people," he says. "I've got a certain turn of phrase and way with words, that when written down, they look bad. They look f**king bad. But I live with that s**t. It's a constant tightrope, but I just walk it every day . . . I'm probably one of the only f**king people you will speak with in the flesh where you don't get a list of things not to talk about."

That is certainly true. During the course of a 30-minute phone interview with the 44-year-old former Oasis guitarist, we talked about his new group Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, the possibility of an Oasis reunion, Radiohead, drugs, Amy Winehouse, Mumford & Sons and a lot more. Earlier this week, we wrote about Gallagher's upcoming album and tour. Here's more from our chat.

What do you think about Radiohead?
They're an odd bunch, aren't they? They've been making the same record since Kid A. But this needs to be said. I don't own any of their

Thirty-five years ago, Alice Cooper ditched his longtime band, teamed up with producer Bob Ezrin and created his legendary concept album Welcome To My Nightmare. "I don't live in the past at all," Cooper tells Rolling Stone. "But I recently started working on a new project with Ezrin. He reminded me about the anniversary and we started wonder what Alice's nightmare would be 35 years later. The first nightmare was a seven-year old's, with 'what's in my closet' and 'my toys are coming to life.' Now his nightmare would be hip-hop and technology and working 9 to 5 in a cubicle."

Cooper and Ezrin quickly began sketching out songs for the project, which they dubbed Welcome 2 My Nightmare. "Bob's still a tyrant in the studio," says Cooper. "He does it to get the best out of you. He's also the only person on the planet who knows Alice as well as I do. We're very conscious of who Alice is and what his attitudes are. It's fun to write for another character."

They worked to ensure that the album

Van Halen's Australian mini-tour - originally booked for September - has been canceled. It was supposed to be the band's first performances since their reunion tour with David Lee Roth ended in the summer of 2008. Van Halen was scheduled to headline the traveling five-date Soundwave Revolution Festival, but yesterday promoters announced that they were pulling the plug on the festival, which also had Alice Cooper, Hole, Bad Religion, Alter Bridge and Panic! At The Disco on the bill.

"Many of the festival bands will still be coming to Australia in that time period," says a note on the festival's website. "We will be announcing these events in the next seven days." 

According to reports, the festival was canceled because of poor ticket sales - and organizers' inability to secure a second headliner. Australia's Triple M reports that festival organizers had unsuccessfully tried to book Aerosmith, who launch their own world tour in late October. Although some of the festival bands are still