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Frey Rocks Placebo
Rock Lit: Placebo Cops Inspiration From James Frey’s Controversial Memoir
by Emily Zemler
Photo credit: Keren Poznansky
Photo credit: Keren Poznansky
The inspiration for a song on Placebo’s latest album, Loud Like Love, comes from an unlikely place: James Frey’s controversial account of drug addiction that drew headlines for its falsified passages. For frontman Brian Molko, the book tapped into something he wanted to pursue musically. And it’s not the first time the musician has used his interest in reading to inspire a song.
Molko has released seven albums with Placebo since their self-titled 1996 debut and often takes a literary approach to songwriting. The band’s new disc, which recently came out via Universal, extends their lengthy and darkly moody discography, exploring serious subject matter like drug addiction. For Molko, books are a way to tap into new ways of expressing ideas and aid songwriting by learning new words and turns of phrase.
The songwriter and musician spoke with Hive about his experience with books, what sort of literature he prefers and just why he’s so compelled by James Frey.
Men Without Lou Reed
Lou Reed Gone
Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71
New York legend, who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, underwent a liver transplant in May
Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.
With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. “One chord is fine,” he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. “Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.”
Lewis Allan “Lou” Reed was born in Brooklyn, in 1942. A fan of doo-wop and early rock & roll (he movingly inducted Dion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989), Reed also took formative inspiration during his studies at Syracuse University with the poet Delmore Schwartz. After college, he worked as a staff songwriter for the novelty label Pickwick Records (where he had a minor hit in 1964 with a dance-song parody called “The Ostrich”). In the mid-Sixties, Reed befriended Welsh musician John Cale, a classically trained violist who had performed with groundbreaking minimalist composer La Monte Young. Reed and Cale formed a band called the Primitives, then changed their name to the Warlocks. After meeting guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, they became the Velvet Underground. With a stark sound and ominous look, the band caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who incorporated the Velvets into his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. “Andy would show his movies on us,” Reed said. “We wore black so you could see the movie. But we were all wearing black anyway.”
“Produced” by Warhol and met with total commercial indifference when it was released in early 1967, VU’s debut The Velvet Underground & Nico stands as a landmark on par with the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde. Reed’s matter-of-fact descriptions of New York’s bohemian demimonde, rife with allusions to drugs and S&M, pushed beyond even the Rolling Stones’ darkest moments, while the heavy doses of distortion and noise for its own sake revolutionized rock guitar. The band’s three subsequent albums – 1968’s even more corrosive sounding White Light/White Heat, 1969’s fragile, folk-toned The Velvet Underground and 1970’s Loaded, which despite being recorded while he was leaving the group, contained two Reed standards, “Rock & Roll” and “Sweet Jane,” were similarly ignored. But they’d be embraced by future generations, cementing the Velvet Underground’s status as the most influential American rock band of all time.
Books By State
The Most Famous Book Set In Every State
Whether you come from Florida, New York, Texas, or any other state, reading a book set there can make you feel a warm nostalgia for that beloved place.
We rounded up the most famous book set in every state in America.
Hal Needham Gone
Hal Needham, veteran Hollywood stuntman and director, dies at 82
By Steve Chawkins
Hal Needham, a highly regarded Hollywood stuntman and director of frothy, adrenaline-pumped films like “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Cannonball Run,” has died. He was 82.
Needham died Friday in Los Angeles, according to his business managers at Laura Lizer and Associates. No other details were immediately available.
Born in Memphis, Tenn., Needham spoke with a down-home twang.
He was a fixture in the movie business for most of his working life. In a stunt career that spanned hundreds of TV episodes and feature films, he tumbled down cliffs, leaped off boulders, jumped from planes, tottered off balconies and plunged from towers. He was rattled in blasts and blistered in fires. He broke 56 bones, including, twice, his back. He punctured a lung, damaged his hearing, lost a few teeth and was knocked out countless times but maintained a sunny outlook even after swooping into the unknown territory of directing.
The son of sharecroppers, Needham spent most of his childhood so deep in the Ozarks, as he liked to joke, that “you had to pump the sunshine in.” Dropping out of school after eighth grade, he worked as a tree trimmer in St. Louis before joining the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in 1951. Three years and many jumps later, he left the service and headed west with three pairs of jeans, six T-shirts, a buddy and no particular plan.
Stormtroopers Comin’
Famous Artists Reinvent Stormtrooper Helmets for London Underground Exhibit
BY CARLA SCHWARTZ
Today, London’s Regent’s Park Underground Station is set to unveil a creative ode to the Star Warsstormtrooper. The traveling exhibit Art Wars features stormtrooper helmets re-imagined in the styles of well-known artists. Presented by London organization Art Below in collaboration with original stormtrooper creator Andrew Ainsworth, Art Wars includes creations from Damien Hirst, David Bailey, Mr. Brainwash, Paul Fryer and Joana Vasconcelos.
Through exhibitions in Underground stations, Art Below’s mission is to promote the creative community while enhancing the general public’s commuting experience. Billboards throughout the Regent’s Park platform feature the stormtrooper helmet designs,
Ronald Shannon Jackson Gone
Ronald Shannon Jackson, Composer and Avant-Garde Drummer, Dies at 73
By STEVE SMITH
Alan Nahigian
Ronald Shannon Jackson, an avant-garde drummer and composer who led an influential electric band and performed with many of the greatest names in jazz, died on Saturday at his home in Fort Worth. He was 73.
His death, from leukemia, was confirmed by his son Talkeye.
Mr. Jackson, whose distinctive look included long hair that he once braided with rivets and subway tokens, had a muscular style that set him apart from his fellow avant-garde jazz drummers, providing for a thunderous yet economical rumble infused with funk, marching-band patterns and African styles. His band, the Decoding Society, showed his knack for writing rigorous yet approachable music.
He performed over the years with Charles Mingus, Betty Carter, Jackie McLean and Joe Henderson. But his name was most closely linked with three free-jazz pioneers: the saxophonist Albert Ayler, the pianist Cecil Taylor and, foremost, the saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who also hailed from Fort Worth.
She posed in ways that do not match the sacred status of the complex
Rihanna ordered out of UAE mosque complex over photo shoot
Singer asked to leave Abu Dhabi’s sacred Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque complex after posing for “inappropriate” pictures
By AFP
Pop star Rihanna was asked to leave Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque complex for posing for “inappropriate” pictures outside one of the world’s largest Muslim places of worship.
Authorities said they had taken action before the Barbadian singer entered the mosque itself, which is not off-limits to non-Muslims and has become a major tourist attraction in the United Arab Emirates capital.
The 25-year-old, who performed live in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, posted the pictures on online photo-sharing site Instagram. She posed in a black jumpsuit in the courtyard of the mosque, wearing crimson lipstick and nail polish.
She wore a headscarf in all of the photographs but the poses could be regarded as suggestive.
“Life spent in a 3-by-6-foot cell is far harsher than the quick release of a lethal injection.”
Larry Flynt: Don’t Execute the Man Who Paralyzed Me (Guest Column)
by Larry Flynt
Joseph Paul Franklin, who has confessed to shooting Flynt in 1978 and been convicted in a series of racially motivated murders, is set for execution in Missouri in November. Flynt writes for THR, “I have every reason to be overjoyed with that decision, but I am anything but.”
On March 6, 1978, as I stood on the steps of the Georgia courthouse where I was fighting obscenity charges, a series of gunshots rang out. I remember nothing that happened after that until I woke up in the intensive care unit. The damage to my central nervous system was severe, and it took several weeks before doctors could stabilize me. From then on, I was paralyzed from the waist down, and have been confined to a wheelchair ever since.
Years later, a white supremacist named Joseph Paul Franklin was arrested for shooting and killing an interracial couple. He soon began confessing to other crimes, and that’s when he admitted to having shot me. He said he’d targeted me because of a photo spread I ran in Hustler magazine featuring a black man and a white woman. He had bombed several synagogues. He had shot Vernon Jordan Jr., the civil rights activist. He hated blacks, he hated Jews, he hated all minorities. He went around the country committing all these crimes. I think somebody had to have been financing him, but nothing ever turned up on who that somebody may have been.
As far as the severity of punishment is concerned, to me, a life spent in a 3-by-6-foot cell is far harsher than the quick release of a lethal injection. And costs to the taxpayer? Execution has been proven to be far more expensive for the state than a conviction of life without parole, due to the long and complex judicial process required for capital cases.
Franklin has been sentenced by the Missouri Supreme Court to death by legal injection on Nov. 20. I have every reason to be overjoyed with this decision, but I am not. I have had many years in this wheelchair to think about this very topic. As I see it, the sole motivating factor behind the death penalty is vengeance, not justice, and I firmly believe that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself.
Napping In The Whopper Lane
Drunk falls asleep behind the wheel at Burger King drive-through window — for 2 solid hours: cop
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
Booze might make burgers taste better but not if you fall asleep before you can put in your order.
That’s what happened to a drunken New Jersey man who sat in his running Hyundai in a Burger King drive-through for two hours in the dead of night earlier this month, police said.
Kyler Ginter, 41, of Sparta, apparently never got it his way because the fast-food restaurant’s manager saw him asleep at the wheel near the order screen, reported the Morristown Patch.
RELATED: DRUNK, 19, CRASHES TRUCK INTO SAME TACO BELL FOUR TIMES: COPS
Officers found Ginter inside the black vehicle with the key in the ignition about 3 a.m. Oct. 5, police said.
“I knew I couldn’t handle it and I just wanted to stay here,” Ginter told police, according to a police report.
140mph With a 16-year-old as Ballast
Cop sees motorcycle at 140 mph
By Michael Smothers
PEKIN — Maybe Adam Lester really had to go to the bathroom.
That’s what Lester, 26, told the police officer who had just clocked his motorcycle at 140 mph Tuesday night on the McNaughton Bridge, police said.
He had to wait until the officer took him to police headquarters under arrest for speeding more than 40 mph over the limit and fleeing and attempting to elude police, both misdemeanors, as well as other traffic violations.’
The officer also cited Lester, of 18384 Thompson St. in rural Pekin, for endangering the safety of a minor, the 16-year-old girl who clung to him as his passenger on the high-speed ride. That charge, however, was not included among those a prosecutor filed Wednesday in Tazewell County Circuit Court.
Superhero Banksy Supervillian
Banksy Ascends to Superhero (or Villain) Status in City
By Drew Grant
The mayor has condemned him. The police are after him. Possible copycats are posing as him. And vandals who dare deface his work are being humiliated by vigilante mobs.
Which all points to one conclusion: Banksyis Batman.
As we reported earlier this week, street artist Banksy began his one-month “residency,” Better Out Than In in New York with a bang, with two tributes to the World Trade Center and 9/11 raising the ire of Mayor Bloomberg, who said “graffiti does ruin people’s property and it’s a sign of decay and loss of control.”
Though he said he’d leave it up to Department of Cultural Affairs to deal with Banksy, it wasn’t two days before the NYPD’s Vandal Squad were sent out to capture the British artist, according to The New York Post. And now that Banksy’s base of operations has been discovered out in Red Hook, that could lead to a subpoena and investigations of the facility, Gothamist’s John Del Signore speculated.
But wait! There’s more! A tipster sent us over photos today with this note:
It’s making children cry.
‘It’s making children cry’: Police tell man to tone down annual charity Halloween display in honour of his grandmother
A Halloween fan who put up a gruesome display of ‘disembowelled corpses’ outside his home has been asked by police to tone it down.
James Creighton, 25, was told that his scene was making children cry with its macabre reconstruction of a scene from The Texas Chainshaw Massacre.
He has put the display up outside his house in Stevenage to raise funds for charity every year since his grandmother died in 2009.
But one parent complained to Hertfordshire Constabulary, concerned that the collection of ‘bloody corpses and gory skeletons’ was scaring young children.
But Mr Creighton said: ‘I can’t believe it to be honest. I can’t see what I’ve done wrong.’
Water Tunnel No. 3 Done
After Decades, a Water Tunnel Can Now Serve All of Manhattan
Pool photo by Mary Altaffer
Of all New York City’s sprawling mega-projects, the water tunnel snaking beneath the grid — connecting the Bronx to Upper Manhattan, Upper Manhattan to Central Park, Central Park to Queens, and, eventually, Queens to the western edge of Brooklyn — is perhaps the hardest to love.
There will be no new subway to board when the work is done, no elevator to ride to the top of a skyscraper. Even the name is shrouded in anonymity: Water Tunnel No. 3, the last in a trilogy that few New Yorkers would pay to see.
In one of the most significant milestones for the city’s water supply in nearly a century, the tunnel — authorized in 1954, begun in 1970 and considered the largest capital construction project ever undertaken in the five boroughs — will for the first time be equipped to provide water for all of Manhattan. Since 1917, the borough has relied on Tunnel No. 1, which was never inspected or significantly repaired after its opening.
Royal Train Gone
Is the royal train grinding to a halt?
Despite decades in service, the royal train has yet to reach the end of the line – at least according to those who built it
By Joe Shute
In recent days, the Queen’s treasurer has done much to recast himself in the role of Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children, waving down the royal train with a pair of red bloomers to stop it in its tracks.
For, according to Sir Alan Reid, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, the train that has been a permanent fixture of regal life since the reign of Queen Victoria may soon be forced to come to a halt. In an admission to a committee of MPs on Monday, he warned the current rolling stock only has five to 10 years of service left. The prospect of replacing it, he said, would be a major decision, adding that “the figures are quite staggering
20-years On and Grateful
Author James Frey Celebrates 20 Years Clean and Sober
JAMES FREY, PHOTO (C) TERRY RICHARDSON
Hamptons resident, writer and publisher James Frey celebrates 20 years sober today. The 44-year-old author of controversial bestseller A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard, Bright Shiny Morning and, his latest, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible has been both lauded and vilified in the literary world, but he continues to attract a legion of enthusiastic readers and fans.
Frey addressed his friends and supporters on Facebook this morning about this milestone anniversary:
“20 years ago today I went to the Hazelden Foundation for treatment of alcoholism and cocaine addiction. Haven’t had a drink or used a drug since. Thank you to Hazelden, to my family and to my friends for all of the love and support. And to the many many readers and supporters I know on here or have never met, there have been dark times in these years, and you have helped more than you know, more than you know. I’m a lucky mother______. Thank you thank you thank you.”
Banksy for 60
