Kurt Cobain: The Rolling Stone Interview (1994)
“I’ve been relieved of so much pressure in the last year and a half,” Cobain says with discernible relief in his voice. “I’m still kind of mesmerized by it.” He ticks off the reasons for his content: “Pulling this [Nirvana] record off. My family. My child. Meeting William Burroughs and doing a record with him. Just little things that no one would recognize or care about. And it has a lot to do with this band. If it wasn’t for this band, those things never would have happened. I’m really thankful, and every month I come to more optimistic conclusions.”
The Odyssey of Captain Beefheart
Cover story, 1970, on Don Van Vliet, who died Dec. 17, 2010. “Beefheart stubbornly continues what he’s doing and waits patiently for everyone else to come around. He has steadfastly refused to leave the Magic Band or to abandon the integrity of his art. ‘I realize,’ he says, ‘that somebody playing free music isn’t as commercial as a hamburger stand. But is it because you can eat a hamburger and hold it in your hand and you can’t do that with music? Is it too free to control?'”
Don Blankenship: The Dark Lord of Coal Country
On Friday, December 3rd, a week after this article was published in Rolling Stone, Massey Energy announced that Don Blankenship will be retiring as CEO and chairman. “After almost three decades at Massey, itβs time for me to move on,” Blankenship said in a statement. It’s not clear whether he was forced out, but the news took nearly everyone in coal country by surprise. An executive at the West Virginia Coal Association called the announcement “unreal,” and a leading environmentalist exulted, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!”
Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners
The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This “rocket docket,” as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on β securitized mortgages and laby rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn’t even exist when most of them were active members of the bench.
Tea and Crackers
How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster
Obama in Command: The Rolling Stone Interview
In an Oval Office interview, the president discusses the Tea Party, the war, the economy and what’s at stake this November
The Runaway General
Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?” “Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”
Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy — they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash
Wall Street’s Naked Swindle
A scheme to flood the market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers β and the feds have yet to bust the culprits
Sick and Wrong
How Washington is screwing up health care reform β and why it may take a revolt to fix it