Tag Archives: long-reads

As Texas slowly turned up the heat on trans youth and their families over the past year, Violet didn’t want to be the frog trapped in the pot of boiling water. “The frog doesn’t realize it until it’s getting cooked,” she says. “We could see where things were going and …

W elcome to Rolling Stone’s 2021 Musicians on Musicians package, the annual franchise where two great artists come together for a free, open conversation about life and music. Each story in this year’s series will appear in our November 2021 print issue, hitting stands on November 2nd. Damian Marley became …

P hoebe Bridgers was in grade school in Pasadena, California, when she heard Metallica’s music in the PlayStation 2 game Test Drive: Off-Road Wide Open. “I was a kid in the early 2000s, so it was kind of a gift when a band that you just got into has an …

Scotty McCreery didn’t have any idea he was playing the Ryman Auditorium’s last pre-pandemic show. For the most part, his March 11th performance at the historic Nashville venue was business as usual, with the country singer turning in a full set of hits for a lively, enthusiastic audience out front. …

Choosing and justifying a list of essential Grateful Dead shows — 20, 200, or even 2,000 — is treacherous work. Passionate challenge from fans, especially hardcore Deadheads and veteran tape traders, is guaranteed. Endless debate over set-list minutiae is inevitable. In fact, there is only one definitive list of the …

When he was fired, arrested, and charged with the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin belonged to a union. Officer Brett Hankison still enjoys union membership, despite being terminated by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department over the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor. Unlike other public sector unions …

O n the morning of October 22nd, 1991, James Dennis awoke at his father’s house in Northwest Philadelphia. He mostly lived with his girlfriend, Helen, but every so often he stayed with his dad, and the two spent that morning discussing their shared passion: music. At barely five feet five …

J ose felt exhilaration and dread as he trailed the coyote. He had just reached the United States, but in the blacked-out night he had to double-time his footsteps to keep up with his guide, navigating cactus spines that sliced his arms and ankles. They were at the beginning of …

In the summer of ’89, Bon Jovi were riding high on so much Garden State gratitude after the success of Slippery When Wet that they named their follow-up LP after their home state. The New Jersey tour would, appropriately, give a leg up to their local friends in the warm-up …

This story originally ran in the March 22nd, 1990 issue of Rolling Stone. It was a January in Johannesburg of events unimaginable only months earlier. Merchants in the Saturday flea market hawked T-shirts celebrating the release of seven leaders of the outlawed African National Congress. The New Nation, a radical …