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SEPTEMBER 2018 ISSUE 1319

INSIDE

TRUMP’S JUDICIAL TAKEOVER

SIA HOW THE POP STAR SAVED HERSELF

THE TV ISSUE STARRING

Stephen Colbert The ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW

P U E SPIC GHT I N E M GA ! S K C SNA

®

PEP IT UP!

©2018 Hormel Foods, LLC

ISSUE 1319

The TV Issue

‘ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS’

74 How Sia Saved Herself The pop star on learning to stay alive. By Hillel Aron

78

52

The Triumph of Stephen Colbert

Blood and Oil

How he coped with anxiety and came to rule late-night. By Brian Hiatt

How Mexico’s drug cartels are infiltrating the gasoline industry and threatening Mexico’s future. By Seth Harp

58

10 Shows We’re Excited to See Jim Carrey, a mission to Mars and more: fall’s can’t-miss TV.

68 RS STYLE

The Rise of ‘Riverdale’ The twisted Archie revival and its cast of newcomers.

‘If that loser can become president, this loser can take him down.’ Tom Arnold On his new reality show, The Hunt for the Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold

64 PHOTOGRAPH BY Peter Yang

Contents 35

National Afairs 45

Trump’s Judicial Takeover How conservatives and Senate Republicans are packing the courts at a record pace. BY ANDY KROLL

MATT TAIBBI

48

The Mix

Senate candidate Corey Stewart is the president’s more obnoxious doppelgänger. Can Trumpism exist without Trump?

Mitski’s Big Moment The heartbroken rocker steps into the spotlight and embraces joy on her excellent new album.

49

On his campaign for governor and the state’s economic power.

BY REBECCA HAITHCOAT

26

Inside the Prince Estate’s Big Plans A thousand unheard songs, a hotel and licensing deals could be on the way.

BY NEIL STRAUSS

50

Scenes From an American Tragedy An award-winning illustrator travels to Texas to document families emerging from the border crisis.

BY DAVID BROWNE

SPOTLIGHT

30

Gavin Newsom’s California Dream

Anderson .Paak Wants to Take Hip-Hop Higher

BY MOLLY CRABAPPLE

30 Reviews

The SoCal rapper on touring the world, his ambitious new concept LP, and staying hydrated.

Music 87 Another Side of Paul McCartney

BY BRENDAN KLINKENBERG

MY STYLE

35

The British hitmaker on her tour essentials and favorite throwback accessories.

BY ROB SHEFFIELD

BY DANIELA TIJERINA

88

Q&A

36

92

Whether evoking the Beatles or protesting Trump, his music sounds as fresh as ever.

Anne-Marie’s ’90s Flashback

Slash

Travis Scott’s ‘Astroworld’ Hip-hop’s high-end punk has elevated his game on his latest album.

The Guns N’ Roses guitarist on his new solo album and the band’s wildly successful reunion tour.

19

BY BRIAN HIATT

45

BY CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN

90

Quick Hits Blood Orange’s revolutionary soul, Paul Simon’s album of obscure remakes, and eight more albums you need to know.

90

Main Street Outlaws New country albums subtly mess with musical and political rules. BY WILL HERMES

Movies 92 20 Fall Must-Sees From superhero epics and rock biopics to Oscar hopefuls, here’s a preview of what’s next. BY PETER TRAVERS

Departments Letter From the Editor Correspondence Playlist Random Notes The Last Word

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September 2018

On the Cover Stephen Colbert photographed in New York on July 20th, 2018, by Peter Yang. Grooming by Jenna Robinson. Makeup by Kerrie Plant Price. Styling by Antonia Xereas. Suit by Ermenegildo Zegna. Prop styling by Maggie O’Toole.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WILL BEACH; HOLLIE FERNANDO; UNIVERSAL PICTURES; SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; DANNY CLINCH

17

Trump’s Favorite Nut Job

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September 2018

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Eddie Ko ROLLING STONE (ISSN 0035-791x) is published 12 times per year, which is subject to change at any time, by Penske Business Media, LLC, 475 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017. The entire contents of ROLLING STONE are copyright © 2018 by ROLLING STONE LLC, and may not be reproduced in any manner, either in whole or in part, without written permission. All rights are reserved. International Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 450553. The subscription price is $49.95 for one year. The Canadian subscription price is $69.95 for one year, including GST, payable in advance. Canadian Postmaster: Send address changes and returns to P.O. Box 63, Malton CFC, Mississauga, Ontario L4T 3B5. The foreign subscription price is $99.95 for one year, payable in advance. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing ofices. Canada Poste publication agreement #40683192. Postmaster: Send address changes to ROLLING STONE Customer Service, P.O. Box 62230, Tampa, FL 33662-2230. From time to time, ROLLING STONE may share subscriber information with reputable business partners. For further information about our privacy practices or to opt out of such sharing, please see ROLLING STONE’S privacy policy at https://pmc.com/privacy-policy/. You may also write to us at 475 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Please include your full name, complete mailing address and the name of the magazine title to which you subscribe.

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Editor’s Letter

“I thought, ‘There’s a world out there and I’m not part of it. But I might like to be.” —SI A

THE FIRST “ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW” to make an impression on me was a wild, combative encounter writer Kurt Loder had with Bob Dylan in 1984. As a Dylan fan hunting for clues to his mysterious, mercurial persona (and an aspiring journalist hunting for clues on how to translate my fandom into a career), I devoured that electric conversation, in which Dylan bizarrely denied (contrary to a string of albums with clear Christian themes, and his own past statements) that he’d ever become born-again; declared that there was no diference between JFK and Nixon (“politics is the instrument of the devil”); and generally let loose in a way he hadn’t in years. From the magazine’s inception, the ROLLING STONE Interview became a place for musicians to deeply discuss their craft and their worldview — a forum that didn’t exist anywhere else. Founder Jann Wenner’s all-night 1968 conversation with Pete Townshend, in which the Who’s leader revealed his plans for Tommy and delved into the inherent sexuality in rock & roll, set a high bar — and over the years, RS Interviews with everyone from John Lennon to David Bowie, Madonna, Kurt Cobain and Kendrick Lamar became an essential part of the DNA of the magazine and of rock & roll legend. Luminaries from the worlds of ilm, TV and politics have also appeared, including Jack Nicholson, Bill Clinton and, three times, Barack Obama — irst, during his 2008 “Yes We Can” campaign, next in 2012 as he confronted climate change, and inally four years later, in a somber White House the morning after Donald Trump was elected. In this issue, we feature another sweeping, deeply personal RS Interview, with Late Show host Stephen Colbert, who, after stumbling when he replaced David Letterman, has found his voice as the funniest, most fearless late-night host and a foil to the chaos of the Trump presidency. Senior writer Brian Hiatt, in typically obsessive fashion, prepared by poring over every past Colbert interview, YouTube clip and podcast he could ind. “If you have the knowledge, the questions come,” says Hiatt. “Often the interview itself is a sort of guided improv where you have certain things you know you’re going to touch on.” Colbert gave Hiatt six hours carved out over two frenetic days on the Late Show set. He used the opportunity to go deep, describing how he briely turned to Xanax to combat anxiety early in his career, and the agony he felt after Trump’s election. “There’s a certain expectation on the part of both the journalist and the subject of these interviews,” Hiatt says. “Ideally, it’s a feeling that this is going to be something special.”

JA S O N F I N E EDITOR

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September 2018

GOT A HOT NEWS TIP? WE WANT TO HEAR IT.

E-mail us, confidentially, at Tips@ RollingStone .com

Gas thieves in Mexico

INSIDE THE STORY

Infiltrating the Gasoline Mafia From interviewing Los Zetas to following the trail of fuel smugglers D U R I N G H I S reporting for “Blood and Oil” (page 78), an investigation into how Mexico’s criminal syndicates have infiltrated the nation’s legitimate economy, journalist Seth Harp took some extraordinary risks. Through dozens of interviews with past and current cartel members, he uncovered an entrenched system of crime, corruption and violence that a number of experts said could now pose a far greater threat to Mexico’s stability than even the ongoing Drug War. “Reporting in Iraq and Syria, I’ve never encountered such fear,” says Harp. “People are also angry and fed up. It would be a mistake to think they’ve somehow gotten used to the violence. They haven’t.”

UPDATE

America’s Growing Environmental Disaster The Interior secretary’s plan to gut the Endangered Species Act

I N “RYA N Zinke’s War on the Interior” [RS 1318], Mark Binelli reported on how Zinke, Trump’s secretary of the Department of the Interior, is dismantling federal protections to allow the fossil-fuel industry and other pri-

vate interests to exploit public lands. In July, Zinke’s department proposed a revision to the Endangered Species Act that would weigh the economic interests of industry in the federal protection of plants and animals facing extinction. “The fact that we have any grizzly bears, blue whales and dozens of other iconic species left on our overdeveloped, overmined, over-logged, heat-stressed planet,” Jef Goodell wrote in a column for Rolling Stone.com, “is largely a tribute to the success of this law. And so, of course, the Trump administration must destroy it.”

TOP: RODRIGO CRUZ

The ‘Rolling Stone Interview’

LOOKS GREAT. TASTES GREAT. Great taste. Only 96 calories. MILLER LITE. HOLD TRUE.

Correspondence

+ L OV E L E T T E R S & A DV IC E

“Church should run for president in 2024. Why doesn’t he throw his baseball cap in the ring? He could be the moderate this country needs.”

Standing With Stacey Abrams I’ve known her professionally for 15 years. We have a candidate who has done everything to take our state back to the early 1900s, and then we have Abrams [“The Future for Democrats?” RS 1318], a progressive candidate for all of Georgia, who has shown the ability to work across the aisle, even when it wasn’t popular. This is the easiest decision in Georgia’s history.

—givemeglenn, via the Internet

—Howard Jay Meyer, via e-mail

Eric Church Risks It All In our August issue, Nashville renegade Eric Church went where most country stars never go, discussing everything from his disdain for the National Rifle Association to his love of Bernie Sanders [“The Defiant One,” RS 1318]. His beliefs even caught the attention of NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch, who called out his comments on the Las Vegas shooting on NRATV: “He’s blaming an organization of millions of members. These are people who are his fans. Or at least were his fans.” Fox commentator Tomi Lahren also joined the conversation, tweeting, “I really like Eric

Church and respect his opinion but this is pretty disappointing. Crazy people kill people. The NRA fights to preserve rights for law-abiding Americans who protect and defend themselves from crazy people.” Church’s fans were divided. One reader, Joe Zito, called him a “common-sense superstar,” while another, Diana Summers, tweeted, “Nope. Done with you.” But fellow country star Jason Isbell put it simply, tweeting, “I really don’t think Eric Church cares if you’re mad at him or not. Just doesn’t strike me as the type to give a rat’s ass about that.”

@JohnWorr: Eric Church going the Dixie Chicks route on politics. Pretty sure this won’t end well for his music career.

AWARDS

Life on the Streets With Trans Teens Last year, with support from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, investigative journalist Laura Rena Murray spent weeks on the streets of New York with America’s most vulnerable population while reporting “Teen, Trans and Homeless,” which appeared in RS 1297. The result was a chilling look at the daily dangers transgender youth face, diving into the harsh realities of sex work, drug abuse and the pursuit of a safe transition. A few months after Murray’s report was published, the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD nominated the piece for Outstanding Magazine Article for its 29th annual GLAAD Media Awards. Following this nomination, the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, the NLGJA, named Murray the recipient of its 2018 Excellence in Longform Journalism Award.

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September 2018

Bitcoin Metropolis These crypto-billionaires, like Brock Pierce, are not Robin Hood types – they are looking for tax havens where they get to keep more of their money [“The Hippie King of Crypto-Currency,” RS 1318]. They’re looking to make bank buying primo (sometimes even protected) land for pennies on the dollar. They are not saviors or collaborators. They are a new breed of colonizer. They want Puerto Rico repurposed according to their plans, not according to people’s needs.

—Carlos Anglada, via the Internet I have some empathy for Pierce, and I agree that he is something of a prophet. But he either has incredible vision and timing, or the ear of some people with vast amounts of money.

—adi, via the Internet

CONTACT US

Letters to ROLLING STONE, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104-0298. Letters become the property of ROLLING STONE and may be edited for publication. E-mail: [emailprotected] Subscriber Services: Go to RollingStone.com/customerservice or call 800-283-1549.

NEW SERIES AUGUST 31

Opening Act

Bruce’s Backstage Mood Board Each night before he takes the stage for Springsteen on Broadway, his hit one-man show, Bruce Springsteen looks at some very familiar faces pasted to his dressing-room mirror: the E Street Band crammed into a booth in 1978; the extended Springsteen family in 1961; heroes like Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando. “It’s a whole mood board of his life and his inspirations,” says Danny Clinch, who took this photo. Springsteen recently signed a deal to film Springsteen on Broadway for Netflix, and he isn’t ruling out taking it on the road. “I’m [in New York] until December,” he said recently. After that? “We’ll see. We’ll see.” ANDY GREENE PHOTOGRAPH BY Danny Clinch

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© John Middleton Co. 2018

KJ434

WHAT’S NEW, WHAT’S NEXT, WHAT’S NUTS

Mitski’s Time Is Now Lorde’s favorite heartbroken indie rocker steps into the pop spotlight and embraces joy PHOTOGRAPH BY LeAnn Mueller

Rolling Stone

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The Mix

$ign of the Times: Ty Dolla’s World Ty Dolla $ign has been a steady presence on the rap and R&B charts since 2014, but this has been the 33-year-old artist’s biggest year yet. Here are the stories behind six of his recent all-star collaborations. By Elias Leight

DRAKE “After Dark” “Drake sent me the beat and his hook and told me, ‘Whatever you hear, go in,’ ” Ty says of this lusty Scorpion slow jam, which he co-wrote and sang on. “I sent it back and he hit me like, ‘Yo, bro, this is magical.’ ”

TY AND JEREMIH MihTy “Me and Jeremih happened to be making a lot of songs,” Ty explains of this collaborative album with the Chicago R&B singer. “It ended up being 40 songs, so we’re like, ‘Fuck it, let’s put out a project!’ ”

KANYE WEST Ye The frantically creative last-minute sessions for Kanye’s new album yielded three Ty appearances, along with songs that ended up on LPs by Teyana Taylor and Kids See Ghosts (Kanye with Kid Cudi). “Does it look like it was challenging?” Ty jokes. “Hell-motherfucking-no.”

POST MALONE “Psycho”

Ty co-wrote this song in a session a few years ago; when it turned up this summer on the Carters’ Everything Is Love, he was as surprised as the rest of the world. “I thought it was gonna be on Lemonade,” he says. “Bey and Jay are both geniuses — they know what they’re doing, they know what time to drop whatever.”

MITSKI

G

ROWING UP IN a family that relocated often because of her parents’ jobs — from Japan to Turkey, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries — Mitski Miyawaki spent much of her teens lost in a dream. “I was in cars a lot, looking out the window,” Mitski says as she winds through rush-hour gridlock in Los Angeles. “I entertain myself, make up stories in my mind.

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That’s where probably a lot of mishaps and misunderstandings came about as a teenager.” One of the most insidious of those had to do with her ambition to break into the music industry. Like many adolescent girls, she became obsessed with dieting and exercising. “If I’m beautiful, then I will be discovered and get to sing,” she remembers thinking. Fortunately for today’s heartbroken youth, they have Mitski to teach them how to see the world more

September 2018

CHRISTINA AGUILERA “Accelerate” Kanye, who co-produced this high-energy dance tune for Aguilera, recruited Ty to give its hook a little more edge. “He asked me to come through and hop on a joint,” Ty says. “Next thing you know, the address they sent me to was her house. She still smokes motherfuckers — people can’t step onstage with Christina Aguilera.”

ESSENTIAL TRACKS TOWNIE (2014) A rush of post-adolescent feeling: “I want a love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony.” YOUR BEST AMERICAN GIRL (2016) This stormy farewell to a relationship torn apart by cultural diferences is Mitski’s signature song. NOBODY (2018) A dip into cool, seductive disco.

clearly. The 27-yearold singer-songwriter, known for her casually crushing lyrics and fuzzed-out guitar chords, has become a hero to a generation of women who grew up on the Internet. Her breakthrough albums, 2014’s Bury Me at Make-

out Creek and 2016’s Puberty 2, are full of observations that ring true to anyone with more frenzied feelings than they know what to do with. “One morning this sadness will fossilize/ And I will forget how to cry . . . I will go jogging routinely/Calmly and

rhythmically,” she sings on Puberty 2’s “Fireworks.” This year, Mitski has moved conidently toward pop, opening on Lorde’s spring arena tour, writing songs for other artists she can’t name yet, and releasing a new LP, Be the Cowboy, featuring her most unabashedly catchy songs to date. “I don’t really see the point in putting together a bunch of words for the sake of my own expression,” she says. “I’m interested in having someone understand me.”

Mitski prefers not to elaborate on the romantic struggles that inform her records. “I already give my soul and my songs,” she says. “I don’t want to also give you my life. I want something for myself.” That said, Be the Cowboy sounds like a turning point in her work: She still understands pain, but it seems she’s no longer drowning in it. “It’s really great to grow up,” Mitski says with a smile. “You don’t have to be feeling things all the time. It’s such a relief!” REBECCA HAITHCOAT

FROM TOP LEFT, LEFT TO RIGHT: DENNIS VAN TINE/GEISLER-FOTOPRESS/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP IMAGES; PRINCE WILLIAMS/GETTY IMAGES; BERTRAND RINDOFF PETROFF/GETTY IMAGES; HAGOP KALAIDJIAN/BFA/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; SCOTT GARFITT/REX SHUTTERSTOCK; ROBIN HARPER; LUKE GILFORD

BEYONCÉ AND JAY-Z “Boss”

Ty reins in some of his trademark vocal flair for his co-starring turn on Post Malone’s smooth, hummable Number One hit. Why did it top the charts? “Because me and Post are good-looking,” Ty jokes. “You put a good-looking white boy and black dude together, you already know: Number One, let’s go.”

PRACTICE FLOW Left: The band (bassist Jef Ament, frontman Eddie Vedder, McCready, drummer Matt Cameron and guitarist Stone Gossard) in Berlin before a set that included the Stones’ “Angie.” “Ed wanted to play it, and I found out an hour before,” says McCready. Below: Vedder and Ament heading to the stage.

ON THE ROAD

Pearl Jam’s Tour Diary GUITARIST MIKE MCCREADY remembers the irst time his band Pearl Jam toured Europe. It was February 1992, just months after they released their debut, Ten, and they were playing venues that held just a few hundred. “I could inally see places I had only read about or seen on TV,” he says. “I felt we had a big road ahead of us.” Twenty-six years later, that road returned them to Europe this summer for a 15city tour playing celebratory stadium shows that included surprise guests like Jack White and covers like Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” “I feel gratitude that so many people come to our shows,” says McCready. “It is beyond the wildest dream I could have ever had. I sit here in stunned silence in amazement of our career.” ANDY GREENE

RIOT ACT Above: Vedder in Barcelona. Left: After the show in Berlin, Vedder embraces Cameron, now in his 20th year in the band (longtime tour manager Mark “Smitty” Smith stands to the left). Right: McCready in a Thunderpussy shirt; he produced the Seattle band’s new single. “Go see Thunderpussy,” he says. “You will believe too.” The guitarist adds that “European crowds are super passionate. We get a lot of soccer chants. It’s amazing to hear our songs sung in a crowd’s second language. That always blows me away.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY Danny Clinch

September 2018

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The Mix

PLAYLIST

MY

LIST

OUR FAVORITE SONGS AND VIDEOS RIGHT NOW

1

FIVE GREAT DANCE-FLOOR BUMMERS

6

2

By Mark Foster The Foster the People frontman, who will tour this fall supporting the band’s 2017 LP, Sacred Hearts Club, is a big fan of “downtempo disco.”

UNITS

“Missing U” The Swedish singer is the queen of weepy dance-floor bangers, and her latest is a dazzlingly overwrought anthem to match her 2010 classic, “Dancing on My Own.” It has us more psyched than ever for a new Robyn LP.

2. DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper & Quavo “No Brainer” No one will ever accuse DJ Khaled of being too artistically challenging; here he convenes nearly the same lineup from last year’s “I’m the One” to recapture its cork-popping vibe. It works. “No Brainer” is pop-rap escapism of the highest order.

3. Sky Ferreira “Voices Carry” Ferreira crushes a cover of ’Til Tuesday’s Eighties hit, finding new levels of darkness while also honoring the heroic performance of original vocalist Aimee Mann.

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6. Mumford & Sons and Friends

This is from 1980. I can hear what would later be an influence for bands like LCD Soundsystem.

THE BEACH BOYS

7

“The Weight” (live)

4. Eric Church “Desperate Man” On the title track from his new LP (due in October), Nashville’s top modern outlaw delivers a freewheeling renegade jam with Southern-rock soul, funky bongo-driven drumming and enough hard-bitten Bakersfield guitar grit to make it feel like vintage country.

5. Cuco feat. J-Kwe$t “Summer Time High Time” There’s a Beck/Brian Wilson home-studioas-playland feel to the music of 20-year-old L.A. singer-producer Cuco; this stoner escapade mixes squishy synths and drowsy doo-wop vocals into surrealist latesummer beauty.

September 2018

At this year’s Newport Folk Fest, Mumford & Sons brought up a crew of friends including veteran soul powerhouse Mavis Staples and country rebel Brandi Carlile to sing the much-covered Band chestnut with rousing communal passion.

new crush, sung in a near whisper by killer songwriter Katie Bennett. It’s an intimate highlight from the Free Cake for Every Creature’s excellent new LP, The Bluest Star.

9. Ella Mai The rising London R&B vocalist behind this year’s breakout hit “Boo’d Up” evokes greats like Mary J. Blige and Lauryn Hill on a sumptuously sadhearted ballad.

“Girls Night Out”

8. Free Cake for Every Creature “Shake It Out” A delicate indie-pop song about getting to know a

It’s not hard for me to picture Mike Love and Bruce Johnston wearing polyester bell-bottom suits underneath a giant disco ball.

GIORGIO MORODER “Knights in White Satin (Part 2)” I first heard “Knights in White Satin” through my friend Jena. There are very few artists that even attempt to make dark disco like this.

“Trip”

7. Charli XCX Being part of Charli’s crew must be a full-time gig: “When we’re out at the Weekend/RIP to the club,” she sings over a stabbing bass line and hyped-up keyboard on this relentlessly fun track. Proof that no one detonates the party quite like her.

”Here Comes the Night”

10. Jade Bird “Uh Huh” For reviews, premieres and more, go to Rolling Stone.com/ music

Twenty-year-old Bird hearkens back to golden age alt-rock heroes like Alanis and Courtney Love. But it’s the traces of Loretta Lynn-style downhome feminism that put “Uh Huh” over the top.

MINISTRY “Work for Love” The days when Al Jourgensen was kind of a heartthrob – like 21 Jump Street-era Johnny Depp meets the Cure.

JAN HAMMER AND JERRY GOODMAN “Earth (Still Our Only Home)” Nasty, simple groove, supernerdy chord changes, and a ripping prog guitar. I applaud the bravery.

FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: SIMONE ROCHA; FRANCESCA ALLEN; DANIEL BOCZARSKI/REDFERNS/ GETTY IMAGES; NEIL KRUG; DOUGLAS MASON/GETTY IMAGES; ANDREW THOMAS HUANG

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1. Robyn

“High Pressure Days”

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EDM TRIBUTE GROUPS FAKE THE FUNK

PICKS

FALL TOURS

Daft Punk haven’t toured in more than a decade, but cover bands are happy to try to re-create the thrills

Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic Tour September 7thNovember 10th

HOT SIDE JOB

School of Rock: When Your Professor Is a Star Want to talk Michael Jackson with Questlove? Learn jazz secrets from Herbie Hancock? For students, it’s all possible. An increasing number of artists are getting into the teaching game. Here’s where you can learn from the best. ELIAS LEIGHT

One More Time duo’s final world tour, in 2007. One More Time are the biggest players in a booming EDM cover-band scene whose other members range from Argentina’s Livemau5 (complete with a bootleg mouse helmet) to the U.K.’s Calvin Harrison (literally just a guy playing Calvin Harris songs). “Nostalgia is like a drug,” says promoter Thomas Dunkley, who has performed in a Justice tribute act called Rough Justice. “It’s a natural high — that’s what they come for.” LUKE WINKIE

Q-Tip’s Jazz Odyssey

Steve Earle’s Camp Copperhead

After combining hip-hop and jazz with A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip will co-host an NYU class this fall tracing rap’s jazz connections. The Roots, Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar are in the curriculum, and students hit the studio. It’s part of Q-Tip’s mission to “institutionalize” rap: “For so long, the creators and the practitioners of the form were looked at as degenerates. . . . Like jazz, [it’s] a true American art form.”

Earle welcomes 100 fans to a four-day summer songwriting camp in upstate New York, where he shares tips from mentors Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, plus wild stories, like the time he shot a hole through his tour bus. “There is a torch to be carried,” Earle says. “Songs aren’t finished till you play them for people.” The trip doubles as a vacation for him: “By 3:00, I’m done teaching and we hit the pool.”

Questlove’s Classic Albums

Herbie Hancock’s New Head Hunters

The Roots drummer held three-hour weekly NYU classes dedicated to groundbreaking LPs, from Aretha Franklin to Led Zeppelin. When RS visited the class a few years ago, he dissected Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, playing demos and talking about how the album defied black stereotypes of the time. Questlove even hung with his students on weekends: “My goal is simply to teach 24 students how to enjoy music.”

Hancock, 78, took jazz in funky new directions, so it’s no surprise his UCLA class is all about pushing boundaries. The keyboardist encourages students not to be “locked into some predefined box.” He dares classical students to improvise and venture into dance and hip-hop — and takes them to countries like Vietnam and India to tour with him: “[I] get as much out of being in these classrooms as the students do.”

HIGHLIGHT The dazzling Eighties sexcapade “Versace on the Floor”

BTS’ Love Yourself Tour September 5thOctober 3rd WHY IT’S GREAT The seven-member K-pop phenomenon bring a relentless energy to their live shows, and their dynamic dance moves are a perfect fit for a set that shifts from ballads to high-octane hip-hop. HIGHLIGHT Choreography moves that are cleverly ripped from Nineties rap videos.

Ozzy Osbourne: No More Tours II

Inside the Boutique-Festival Boom IN THE SPRING, the Eaux Claires festival — founded by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner of the National — made a startling announcement: It would not share any details of its July 2018 lineup ahead of time. “It’s a way to get out of the headliners’ arms race,” Dessner says. “We want unknown artists to feel as vital as some band playing hits.” This is a radical stance in the crowded world of music festivals, where homogenous lineups have set the stage for smaller, artist-driven events to flourish. Gorillaz’s Damon Albarn says his second Demon Dayz L.A. festival (October 20th) will ofer “a mirror of real America,” from Erykah Badu to Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux. Foo Fighters, meanwhile, are using their second Cal Jam in San Bernardino (October 6th), named after the famed 1974 festival, to showcase rock, from Iggy Pop to Greta Van Fleet. “We would probably sell tickets faster if we called it the Foo Fighters concert,” says drummer Taylor Hawkins. “But it’s our wink and nod to our influences.” ELIAS LEIGHT

WHY IT’S GREAT One of the best arena tours of the past few years isn’t about eye-popping visuals or high-tech sets: The spectacle comes from the man himself, whether he’s dancing like James Brown or crooning like Michael Jackson.

Through October 13th

Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters curated the Cal Jam lineup.

WHY IT’S GREAT After participating in Black Sabbath’s emotional farewell shows for 13 months, Ozzy is playing 40 years of metal and hard-rock classics on what he swears is his last-ever solo tour — not to be confused with his first No More Tours run in 1992. HIGHLIGHT

“Iron Man,” duh.

22 | Illustration by Lars Leetaru

FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ONE MORE TIME; NOAM GALAI/GETTY IMAGES

In 2010, Arizona DJs Ben Linsenmeyer and Ron Diep played a college Halloween party in costume as Daft Punk. It went so well that they turned it into a full-time gig: One More Time, their surprisingly successful Daft Punk tribute act, have headlined venues like New York’s Brooklyn Bowl and L.A.’s Regent Theater with custom helmets, a stage pyramid and lights that evoke the French

Three blockbuster concerts you won’t want to miss

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ADDED NITRATES OR NITRITES*

DISCOVER A WORLD OF TASTE *EXCEPT THOSE NATURALLY OCCURRING IN CELERY JUICE AND SEA SALT.

The Mix RISING STAR

REGGAE’S BRIGHT FUTURE

PICKS

ARTIST PLAYLISTS Three of the best handpicked Spotify streams

Big Freedia: The Sound of Bounce

The influence of Jamaican pop can be felt everywhere, from Drake’s “Controlla” to Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” — but modern Jamaican reggae artists have had a hard time breaking into today’s charts. Enter Protoje, 37, who’s part of a new generation of artists blending traditional roots reggae with hip-hop, pop and rock influences. “[Reggae] is not some resort music that people drink piña coladas to,” says the Jamaican singer. “I don’t want to be pigeonholed.” Take ”Bout Noon,” a smooth groove that’s a highlight of his fourth album, A Matter of Time: “It doesn’t have any of the traditional reggae stuf, no che-ke with the guitar, no bang on the piano, no organ bubble,” Protoje says. “But still it has the reggae feel. We want to make this so fresh that people question what reggae music is.” While the new album recently debuted at Number One on Billboard’s Reggae Albums chart, that’s not good enough for Protoje. “The [genre] charts are not hard to be Number One on,” he says. “I’m more concerned about making the Top 200 of all albums. Hopefully my next album can do that — even if it’s just 199.” ELIAS LEIGHT

If you loved Drake’s summer smash “Nice for What,” now is the time to catch up on the high-energy, twerk-ready New Orleans bounce music that inspired it. This playlist, curated by the scene’s undisputed queen, is a jubilant celebration of the sound’s malleability, from Galactic’s groovy live interpretations to producer Mannie Fresh’s Southern robot-funk beats.

The indie singer-songwriter’s seven-hour Spotify odyssey is a lovingly warped vision of pop, where composer Bernard Herrmann’s theme from Taxi Driver bumps into inspirational treacle from Amy Grant and Seventies synth-punks Suicide hang out with Ray Charles. The resulting mood is just as darkly hilarious as Father John’s own excellent albums.

Four More Leaders of the Reggae Revival Chronixx

Jah9

Alborosie

Kabaka Pyramid

No young reggae singer has earned as much attention as Chronixx, who has described his output as “black experimental music.” On 2017’s Chronology, he jumps gracefully from dancehall to gospel to vintage reggae. Best of all: “Smile Jamaica,” a breezy, reassuring love song made for festival singalongs.

Unlike some of her peers, Jah9 is less interested in mixing reggae with other forms, preferring to burrow deep into dub. One of her finest hits, “Steamers a Bubble,” relies on “The Apartment Riddim,” originally cut in 1982. As limber bass trundles beneath her, Jah9 glides gracefully from bar to bar in a singsong flow.

Perhaps no modern reggae act has a more unusual story than Alborosie, a Sicilian-born, Kingston-based singer and multi-instrumentalist signed to reggae institution VP Records. He invited former Bob Marley bandmates to help create June’s Unbreakable, a polished homage to traditional roots reggae.

A fan of East Coast rap classics by Wu-Tang Clan and the Roots, Kabaka Pyramid is less well-known in the U.S. than peers like Protoje and Chronixx. But he’s got an impressive knack for hummable melodies, as heard on “Kaught Up,” a streamlined, radio-ready dancehall song from his June LP, Kontraband. E.L.

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Rivers Cuomo: Psychedelic Mellowness The Weezer frontman loads up this psychpop love letter with Beach Boys tunes like 1970’s “Deirdre,” plus Aquarian jams by the Byrds, Monkees and more — including the Paramounts’ garage-party take on the raunchy doo-wop classic “Poison Ivy.”

FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: CHANCE NKOSI GOMEZ; CHE KOTHARI; NICKII KANE; WILL TWORT; FERNANDO F. HEVIA

Father John Misty’s Father John Misty Playlist

® ®

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Hornitos® Black Barrel® is aged like a whiskey. Hornitos® Cristalino is triple-distilled and refined for extra smoothness. Both push boundaries with every sip.

THE FIRST TWO YEARS after Prince’s death were chaotic: No will was found, leaving the courts to determine who his oicial heirs were, and his estate owed millions in taxes. Now, those issues are resolved, and his six siblings and half-siblings have gone to work monetizing the Purple One. His famously giant recording vault of unheard music is being cataloged for future releases, and clothing and TV licensing deals are in the works. Would Prince, who was notoriously picky about how his image was used, object? Troy Carter, the ex-Spotify executive helping to oversee the estate, admits that’s a diicult question: “If we went by everything [following] exactly how Prince would do things . . . you can’t really do that and run an estate at the same time.” DAVID BROWNE

Prince in 1984

A MUSICAL GOLD MINE

PURPLEBACK WRITER

SYMPHONY TOUR

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LOTS OF LICENSING

NEARLY 1,000 unreleased songs have been found, “enough for many albums,” says one exec. Prince’s family wants them out. “Why else would he keep this stuf?” says sister Tyka Nelson. The irst, Piano & a Microphone 1983, is out September 21st.

A FEW DAYS before his death, Prince asked Nelson for “information about Daddy’s side of the family.” It was for a planned memoir. Though uninished, it will be released soon with excerpts from journals, by the publishers behind JayZ’s Decoded.

A TOUR FEATuring live orchestral versions of Prince songs curated by Questlove will launch in September. Nelson says the family approved 4U: A Symphonic Celebration of Prince because “my brother liked real music, and those are real musicians.”

NELSON SAYS Prince loated opening a hotel in his name “to his assistant some years ago.” It’s something Nelson wants to investigate; she points out her brother carefully mapped out his Paisley Park museum. She cautions the idea is in its early stages.

WANT A PRINCE baseball or inlatable guitar? You can buy them at the Minnesota Twins store at Target Field — one of many licensing deals his estate has made. Expect his music in movies and TV shows, starting with Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman.

TREND WATCH

Hitmakers Go Out on Their Own “EASTSIDE,” A RISING DUET between Khalid and Halsey, features

Blanco

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a silent partner: producer-songwriter Benny Blanco, who is credited as a third lead artist, even though he doesn‘t sing on the song. For Blanco, who has crafted hits for Britney Spears, Camila Cabello and more, becoming an artist makes sense. In addition to more artistic control, he stands to receive profits from master recordings he wouldn‘t get as a writer. That‘s important in streaming, where “the top songs drive almost everything,” says music-biz expert Larry Miller. Andrew Watt (Justin Bieber) and BloodPop (Lady Gaga) are also stepping into the spotlight. ELIAS LEIGHT

FROM TOP: RICHARD E. AARON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Every family has a black sheep. Or two.

Inside the Prince Estate’s Big Plans

Right now, 8,224 people want to quit their job to focus on their music. But only 76 are taking their shot.

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THE

The Mix

BREAKDOWN

Drake’s Chart Domination

2020

2019

2018 2017

then I’m headed for it,” Drake rapped in 2014. Four years later, he’s made good on his word, in one way: With his double album Scorpion reigning over airwaves and headphones this summer, he now has 187 appearances on Billboard’s Hot 100 — more than any other artist in the 60-year history of the chart. Thirty-one of those songs have cracked 15 20 the Top 10; all of them are plotted on this graph. Drake has been aided by the streaming revolution, which makes vastly more songs eligible for the Hot 100. But still: 014 2 impressive. AMY X. WANG

“IF I AIN'T THE GREATEST,

HOTLINE BLING

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The video inspired thousands of memes and an SNL parody starring Donald Trump.

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NICE FOR WHAT

Started From the Bottom

2013

With this hit, Drake became only the 11th artist to ever replace himself at Number One on the chart.

Hold On, We’re Going Home

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Work (Rihanna feat. Drake)

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2016’s song of the summer, it was the first track to ever reach 1 billion streams on Spotify.

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Look Alive (BlocBoy JB feat. Drake) Walk It Talk It (Migos feat. Drake)

Love Me (Lil Wayne feat. Drake, Future)

Right Above It (Lil Wayne feat. Drake)

Find Your Love

2018

Passionfruit

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Forever

F**kin’ Problems (A$AP Rocky feat. Drake, 2 Chainz, Kendrick Lamar)

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I’m Upset

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MOST TOP 10 HITS OF ALL TIME Just nine years after his Hot 100 debut, Drake has the third-most Top 10 hits ever — behind Madonna and the Beatles, and tied with Rihanna, whose first hit came four years before Drake scored his.

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The Mix

SPOTLIGHT

Anderson .Paak Wants to Take Hip-Hop Higher The SoCal rapper on touring the world, working with Dr. Dre and staying hydrated

T

HREE years ago, Anderson .Paak won over rap fans as one of the key voices on Dr. Dre’s Compton — a gig he got after impressing the legendarily fastidious producer with a freestyle that made the album’s inal cut. He turned even more heads in 2016 with his Grammynominated LP, Malibu. Now, the 32-year-old rapper, singer and drummer is determined to keep that momentum going. “You’re trying to be the same person, but in a new car,” he says from a tour stop in

Italy. “Everything we made for Malibu, we made from the dirt. Now, it’s trying to keep that same mentality when you have everything. When you’ve been eating calamari and lobster, when you’ve been going to festivals and playing for 40,000 people, when you have two kids now and a wife to support.” His next project, due out this fall, is an album tentatively titled Oxnard Ventura, named after the two Southern California cities where he grew up. With its sprawling psychedelic grooves and conident verses, it’s his tribute to a bygone era of major-label rap. “I feel like ambition is missing from today’s music,” he says. “This is the album I dreamed of making in high school, when I was listening to [ JayZ’s] The Blueprint, the Game’s The Documentary and [Kanye West’s] The College Dropout.”

In addition to signing .Paak to his label, Aftermath, in 2016, Dre is also executiveproducing the new LP — a rare nod of approval these days. “I thought he was just going to mix it, but he was like, ‘Nah, man, I want to be part of this,’ ” .Paak recalls. “He’s putting his all into this album.” The life lessons he’s gleaned from all this are simple ones: “You just have to stay steady and trust that what you’re doing is going to work,” he says. “And you have to drink a lot of water to stay healthy.” BRENDAN KLINKENBERG

PHOTOGRAPH BY Hollie Fernando

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What is TRUVADA for PrEP?

Who should not take TRUVADA for PrEP?

TRUVADA for PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is a prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex, when taken every day and used together with safer sex practices. This use is only for people who weigh at least 77 pounds and are HIV-negative and at risk of getting HIV-1.

Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP if you:  Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status. If you are HIV-1 positive, you need to take other medicines with TRUVADA to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat over time.

To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health.

What are the other possible side effects of TRUVADA for PrEP?

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about TRUVADA for PrEP? Before and while taking TRUVADA for PrEP:  You must be HIV-negative before you start and while taking TRUVADA for PrEP. Do not take TRUVADA to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-negative.  Get tested for HIV-1 immediately before and at least every 3 months while taking TRUVADA.  If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away.  Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. If you have flu-like symptoms, you could have recently become infected with HIV-1. Tell your healthcare provider if you had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting or at any time while taking TRUVADA.  Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin.  You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1.  Do not miss any doses of TRUVADA. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.  To further help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1:  Know your HIV status and the HIV status of your partners. If your partner is living with HIV, your risk of getting HIV is lower if your partner consistently takes HIV treatment every day.  Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections. Other infections make it easier for HIV to infect you.  Practice safer sex by using latex or polyurethane condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids.  Talk to your healthcare provider about all the ways to help reduce HIV risk.  If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. TRUVADA by itself is not a complete treatment for HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat now and in the future. TRUVADA can cause serious side effects:  Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. Your healthcare provider will test you for HBV. If you have HBV and stop taking TRUVADA, your HBV may suddenly get worse. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

Serious side effects of TRUVADA may also include:  Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with TRUVADA. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking TRUVADA.  Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.  Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.  Bone problems, including bone pain, softening, or thinning, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones. Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP are headache, stomach-area (abdomen) pain, and decreased weight. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or do not go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking TRUVADA for PrEP?  All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis.  If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if TRUVADA can harm your unborn baby. If you become pregnant while taking TRUVADA for PrEP, tell your healthcare provider.  If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you think you may have recently become infected with HIV. HIV can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Talk to your healthcare provider about the risks and benefits of breastfeeding while taking TRUVADA for PrEP.  All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. TRUVADA may interact with other medicines. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine.  If you take certain other medicines with TRUVADA, your healthcare provider may need to check you more often or change your dose. These medicines include certain medicines to treat hepatitis B or C infection. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088. Want to find out more about the pill? Talk to your healthcare provider and visit truvada.com.

Please see Important Facts about TRUVADA for PrEP including important warnings on the following page.

We're on the pill. It’s not birth control, it’s TRUVADA for PrEP®—a once-daily prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex, when taken every day and used together with safer sex practices.  TRUVADA for PrEP is only for people who are at risk of getting HIV-1 and weigh at least 77 pounds.  You must be HIV-negative before you start and while taking TRUVADA for PrEP.  TRUVADA for PrEP does not prevent other sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy.

Ask your doctor about your risk of getting HIV-1 and if TRUVADA for PrEP may be right for you. Find out more about the pill at truvada.com Actor portrayals

IMPORTANT FACTS This is only a brief summary of important information about taking TRUVADA for PrEP® (pre-exposure prophylaxis) to help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection. This does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your medicine.

(tru-VAH-dah) MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP Before starting and while taking TRUVADA for PrEP: • You must be HIV-1 negative. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1. Do not take TRUVADA for PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 unless you are confirmed to be HIV-1 negative. Get tested for HIV-1 immediately before and at least every 3 months while taking TRUVADA. • Many HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include tiredness, fever, joint or muscle aches, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, night sweats, and/or enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin. Tell your healthcare provider if you have had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting or while taking TRUVADA. • You must continue to use safer sex practices. Just taking TRUVADA for PrEP may not keep you from getting HIV-1.

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF TRUVADA FOR PrEP TRUVADA can cause serious side effects, including: • Those in the “Most Important Information About TRUVADA for PrEP” section. • New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. • Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat. • Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain. • Bone problems.

• If you do become HIV-1 positive, you need more medicine than TRUVADA alone to treat HIV-1. If you have HIV-1 and take only TRUVADA, your HIV-1 may become harder to treat now and in the future.

Common side effects in people taking TRUVADA for PrEP include headache, stomach-area (abdomen) pain, and decreased weight.

TRUVADA may cause serious side effects, including:

These are not all the possible side effects of TRUVADA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

• Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. Your healthcare provider will test you for HBV. If you have HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking TRUVADA. Do not stop taking TRUVADA without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months.

Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with TRUVADA for PrEP.

HOW TO TAKE TRUVADA FOR PrEP

ABOUT TRUVADA FOR PrEP

• Take 1 tablet once a day, every day, not just when you think you have been exposed to HIV-1.

TRUVADA for PrEP is a prescription medicine that can help reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 through sex, when taken every day and used together with safer sex practices. This use is only for people who weigh at least 77 pounds and are HIV-negative and at risk of getting HIV-1.

• Do not miss any doses. Missing doses may increase your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.

• To help determine your risk of getting HIV-1, talk openly with your healthcare provider about your sexual health. Do NOT take TRUVADA for PrEP if you: • Already have HIV-1 infection or if you do not know your HIV-1 status.

BEFORE TAKING TRUVADA FOR PrEP Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Have or have had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis. • Have any other medical conditions. • Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. • Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed if you think you may have recently become infected with HIV. HIV can pass to the baby in breast milk. Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take: • Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. • Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist about medicines that should not be taken with TRUVADA for PrEP.

• Use TRUVADA for PrEP together with safer sex practices. • Get tested for HIV-1 at least every 3 months. You must stay HIV-negative to keep taking TRUVADA for PrEP.

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GET MORE INFORMATION • This is only a brief summary of important information about TRUVADA for PrEP. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more, including how to prevent HIV infection. • Go to TRUVADA.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5 • If you need help paying for your medicine, visit TRUVADA.com for program information.

TRUVADA, the TRUVADA Logo, TRUVADA FOR PREP, GILEAD, and the GILEAD Logo are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. All other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Version date: May 2018 ©2018 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. TVDC0245 06/18

The Mix MY STYLE 11

Anne-Marie’s ’90s Flashback R ISING BRITISH pop star Anne-Marie has spent the past year and a half opening shows for her friend Ed Sheeran. But she probably won’t be a warm-up act for long; her nostalgic stomper “2002” — which quotes classic lyrics by Britney Spears, ’NSync and Jay-Z — has earned more than 166 million Spotify streams. And her debut LP, Speak Your Mind, packed with sensitively swagged-out dance pop, is a Top 40 hit. Like “2002,” Anne-Marie’s wardrobe also romanticizes the pre-social-media era, favoring colorful Nineties baggy outits, plus accessories like fanny packs and bucket hats that she hunts down herself on Etsy and eBay. “It’s a problem,” she admits. “I’m trying to cut back!” DANIELA TIJERINA

Anne-Marie in July

1

ROAD ESSENTIALS

2

I’ve got a really dirty mouth. I love swearing. I wear these socks with skirts or shorts so you can really see what they say.

1. Cartier tiny oval sunglasses. “I love to experiment with sunglasses,” says Anne-Marie. “That’s my biggest addiction.” 2. Florence Lamy jacket: “Everyone needs a leather jacket in their wardrobe.” 3. Revolve socks. 4. Balenciaga sneakers ($895): “The most expensive thing I’ve bought.” 5. Kangol bucket hat. 6. A Supreme suit she customized by cutting the top shorter: “I love high-waisted stuf.” 7. Eyelash curler: “I like to do my own hair and makeup. It’s relaxing before the show.” 8. Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: “I stole it from my tour manager. It’s changing my life.” 9. ASOS fanny pack. 10. Big Babol gum: “It takes me back to my childhood.” 11. “Hello!” hair clip.

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S

HEEP . . . sheep . . . Axl. You can see some amazing things out the window of this mansion-turned-hotel in rural England, where Slash is currently hanging out in a backward Thrasher cap and talking up his new album, Living the Dream, with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. But he and his other bandmates have traveled to this vast green estate because he’s playing the nearby Download Festival tomorrow with Guns N’ Roses — and he hasn’t, until this interview, talked much about their fantastically successful reunion. He doesn’t want to detail exactly how he and Rose mended their relationship after two decades of estrangement, and he snaps when I mention how punctual Guns N’ Roses have become. “All right,” he says, “I’m getting sick and tired of talking about this shit.” But he keeps talking. Your first solo LP was a sign of doom for the original GNR. This time, were you just finishing something you’d started? I started preproduction on this new material, and then I went back on the road [solo]. At some point, Axl and I hooked up on the phone, and then we met for a little bit and started talking about doing Coachella. Just for the fun of it, because we were sort of back on friendly ground again. That turned into a whole fucking extended tour, which is still going. So all that material sat on the back burner. On our last big break, I got back together with Myles and everybody, and we revisited those songs. How does it feel to be trying to write big rock rifs with the genre so far out of the mainstream? You have to ind ideas that turn yourself on, because no one out there is putting stuf out that turns you on like when you irst started. Or anywhere close. It makes you work really hard — you’re still sort of kicking your own ass to do something good. Did you really think that Coachella could’ve been it for this reunion?

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Slash The Guns N’ Roses guitarist on his new solo album and the band’s wildly successful reunion By BRIAN HIATT Originally, it was just to do those irst couple of shows, and that was a gas. I missed being on a stage with Axl and Duf [McKagan]. I missed that combination. It whet the appetite to do more. So are you in Guns N’ Roses, or are you just playing with Guns N’ Roses? Oh, that’s an interesting question. From the moment we started playing together and embarking on this journey, I would consider it being in Guns N’ Roses, not

September 2018

just being hired to play Guns N’ Roses songs. So technically, legally, is it a band again? I’m in the band — there is no contractual anything at this point. So however you want to look at it. What’s it like playing the Chinese Democracy tracks? Um . . . I mean, it’s fun playing them. There’s nothing weird about it. It’s not like I’m playing something out of my comfort zone. I’m very conscious of maintaining the

integrity of the recording, but still doing it the way that I would approach it. And you’re still adding to the set list, which suggests this is an active collaboration. We work really well together, and we work really hard since we’ve gotten this thing going. We put a lot of heart and soul into it. We’re not just phoning it in. Axl said you and Duf might play on new Guns material. True?

I’m not lighting that fuse. If something happens, it happens. Are these the only Guns shows you’ve played sober? From ’86 to ’94, there was deinitely not a day or a show that I was sober. The interesting thing, and I talk to Ax about this too, is there haven’t been any moments onstage that take me back to the past. It’s the same people, for the most part, and a lot of the same songs, and it still seems like a new experience. Which is probably a testament to the frame of mind I was in back then. Your mom was African-American and your dad is English. You joked that “it’s weird to be a rock musician who’s black and British, because a lot of British rockers want to be black.” But what does your background mean to you? It’s never been part of my makeup, to be able to diferentiate myself from anybody else because of color. I went through a lot of that as a kid — in school you’re pigeonholed into being more aware of your background. When I started doing my own thing, especially playing guitar, it wasn’t so much of a thing. I never really cared to have to identify one way or another. It was always confusing on school questionnaires. [Laughs] You know, “other.” You had a hard time with him, but how did you react to Scott Weiland’s death? As crazed as that whole period was, I was still shocked to hear about Scott. But yeah, Velvet Revolver was no fun. I have nothing positive to say about that experience except that we did write some cool stuf. Your mom dated David Bowie, and you guys developed an adult relationship. Did you get to say goodbye? No, not at all. A year or so before [his death], I was trying to get him into a horror movie I was working on [laughs]. And that was the last time I spoke to him. He was a very cool fuckin’ character. He’s somebody that you really could look up to. He was an icon that really deserved that moniker.

GENE KIRKLAND

The Mix

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give a chewy mi t, JHWDVWRU RR HZLŹEHOLHYH

4HYZVY(SPH[LZ

Travis Scott Blasts Of When Travis Scott played Lollapalooza in 2015, he was arrested after inciting a riot. This year, the rapper made a triumphant return the same night he released his excellent LP Astroworld. “This is where my mind is at,” Scott, pictured backstage at Lolla, said recently. “I feel like I’m pushing music 100 billion steps forward.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY Koury Angelo

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POST DELIVERS Post Malone drew the festival’s biggest crowd, who got to see him smash a guitar to pieces before singing “Rockstar.”

WEEKND WARRIOR The Weeknd broke out some uncharacteristically animated dance moves for brooding pop hits like “Can’t Feel My Face.”

Over the years, Lollapalooza has evolved from a traveling alt-rock circus to a weekend-long party that reflects the entire pop universe. Among this year’s highlights in Chicago: Lil Pump leading thousands in a “Fuck Trump” chant; Bruno Mars channeling Prince and James Brown under a blazing fireworks display; and the Weeknd turning it up at one of his only U.S. shows this year. “Sucks we have to play against the Weeknd,” said Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, whose band’s set coincided with the Weeknd’s headlining gig. “We’d go see that guy. You can’t have Weeknd versus Weekend.”

LIPA FAITH Dua Lipa got the crowd jumping not long after an all-night video shoot for her new single, with Mark Ronson and Diplo. “It wasn’t at the Louvre, unfortunately,” she says. “It was in New Jersey.” Dua is currently recording the follow-up to her hit 2017 debut.

SUPER TROOPERS Superorganism started as a fun art project, its members sending one another tracks from diferent continents. But lately they’ve become a festival mainstay. The group woke up an early-Sunday crowd with its avant-garde bubblegum pop. “Lollapalooza was a bucket-list festival for us ever since we saw it on The Simpsons,” they say.

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BACK IN BLACK Swedish star Lykke Li struck a pose at Lolla, where she delivered moody pop anthems from her new album, so sad so sexy. “Only thing I was thinking was, ‘Try not to set yourself on fire in the heat,’ “ she says.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BOBBY TALAMINE; KOURY ANGELO, 5

Pop’s Biggest Block Party Lights Up

BØRN WINNER Indie-pop star Børns opted for a Jack Whitemeets-Magic Mike look before a set that included a solo version of his Lana Del Rey duet “God Save Our Young Blood.”

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE Smashing Pumpkins threw themselves a 30thbirthday party in New Jersey that included guests like the Killers and Mark McGrath. The highlight? Courtney Love, who belted “Malibu” and “Celebrity Skin,” two classics Billy Corgan co-wrote for her band Hole. “I love this man with all my soul,” Love said. “He wrote the songs that keep me sustained.”

STAN SHEERAN Ed Sheeran idolizes Eminem, so he was thrilled to hang with him in London, and posed for what Em called a “legendary” selfie.

Mars Attacks Brooklyn Phoenix promised something “speciale” for their five-night Brooklyn residency, and they delivered, decking out a cavernous venue with pastel posters, balloons and a gelato machine. Singer Thomas Mars even sung one tune from inside a phone booth.

BIEB BREAKS BREAD Justin Bieber and fiancee Hailey Baldwin hit up Frankel’s deli in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and made out in a local park.

“Lotta the time I’m laying awake at night thinking ’bout deep shit. Like Beyoncé’s Coachella performance.” GAGA’S MANHATTAN MYSTERY Lady Gaga was swarmed by fans as she left a photo studio in New York. The singer — who kicks of a Vegas residency on December 28th — has been cagey about whether she’s working on a new album. “Just making art and stuf,” she tweeted of her New York trip.

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—Halsey, who is currently wrapping the world tour for her second album, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom

DO STAND SO CLOSE TO ME Sting and Shaggy goofed of in Paris, where they performed songs from their joint LP. “We had a wicked, wicked time,” said Shaggy.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JEREMY DEPUTAT; MICHAEL KRAVETSKY; JAMES DEVANEY/GC IMAGES/ GETTY IMAGES; MARTIN KIERSZENBAUM; RAYMOND HALL/GC IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; SACHYN MITAL

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Grizzly is a registered trademark of Rosswil, LLC and is shown for comparative purposes only. Red Seal is a registered trademark of U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company LLC.

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SMOKELESS TOBACCO

Trump’s Judicial Takeover How conservative operatives and Senate Republicans are helping the president pack the courts at a record pace By ANDY KROLL ILLUSTRATION BY Victor Juhasz

National Affairs

TIMELINE

the most judicial vacancies since Bill Clinton — largely thanks to Republican ilibustering of Obama’s nominees — and his administration has illed those vacancies as fast as possible. As of this writing, Trump has put 24 new judges onto the appellate courts, more than any other chief executive at this point in the presidency. He has also nominated over 100 district-court judges and gotten 26 of those picks conirmed. These judges are overwhelmingly young, ideological and now set to serve lifetime appointments. And then, of course, there’s Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s irst pick for the Supreme Court, and Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s second Supreme Court nominee, who stands a strong chance of conirmation. “Whatever anyone wants to say about President Trump, he was very explicit about which judges he wanted, and he’s gone about appointing them,” says Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “He made a promise and they’re keeping it.” What unites these judges is the radical legal doctrine of originalism — that the text of the Constitution should be understood only as it was intended when written more than 230 years ago. Originalism was long seen as a fringe philosophy; taken to its logical extreme, an originalist reading of the Constitution could mean a country without same-sex marriage, federal child-labor laws or the Americans With Disabilities Act. Today, however, originalism is the dominant legal philosophy on the right and the litmus test for any judge appointed by President Trump. That’s in large part due to the inluence of Leonard Leo, who sat in the front row for McGahn’s speech. An owlish 52-year-old lawyer and operative, Leo is the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, where he has played a pivotal role grooming a generation of conservative lawyers and supplying dozens of names to the White House for judicial vacancies. (He has advised on the past three successful Republican picks for the Supreme

READERS’ POLL Did Donald Trump’s tax-reform bill benefit you personally?

Court.) “Our opponents of judicial nominees frequently claim the president has outsourced his selection of judges,” McGahn said. “That is completely false. I’ve been a member of the Federalist Society since law school, still am, so frankly it seems like it’s been in-sourced.” Behind all the chaos and upheaval of the Trump administration, McGahn, Leo and Republican leaders including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have steadily filled the courts with future Clarence Thomases and Antonin Scalias. In Donald Trump, they have found the perfect vehicle for executing a judicial takeover. “We’re now looking at the possibility of as many as three Supreme Court vacancies and more than 200 lower-court seats to ill just in these next few years,” Leo said last year. “We are at this unique point in history.”

I

27% Yes

73% No Go to Rolling Stone.com for next issue’s poll.

N THE PROCESS of illing the empty seats, McGahn and Co. have shown a willingness to look past extreme and inlammatory comments made by judicial nominees. Damien Schif, a Trump pick for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, blogged in 2007 that Justice Anthony Kennedy was a “judicial prostitute” because of his frequent swing votes. John Bush, an appointee to the Sixth Circuit, likened Roe v. Wade to the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to black people. Using an anonymous byline, Bush also promoted birther conspiracies about President Obama. Not surprisingly, many of Trump’s picks have championed hard-line conservative positions on LGBTQ equality, civil rights, environmental regulation, consumer protection and more. These are the kinds of judges who hesitate to say that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided, or rule that campaigninance laws are unconstitutional. They would almost certainly overturn Roe if given the chance. “These nominees appear to have been chosen because they check ideological boxes, rather than because they represent the best and the brightest,” says Sen. Dianne Feinstein,

FROM LEFT: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; AP IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK; ALEXANDER SHCHERBAK/TASS/GETTY IMAGES; MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/TASS/GETTY IMAGES; SAUL LOEB/AFP/ GETTY IMAGES; BULLIT MARQUEZ/AP IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK; APA IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK

O

NE EVENING LAST November, Don McGahn, the top lawyer in the Trump White House, walked onstage in an opulent ballroom at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. He looked out at the audience of several hundred judges, lawyers, clerks and law students seated under a pair of glittering chandeliers that hung from a ceiling accented in gold. McGahn, who rarely gives interviews or speeches, had come to speak at the annual conference of the Federalist Society, the powerful network of conservative lawyers, and the occasion felt like a homecoming and a victory lap. Over the past two decades — including ive years serving on the Federal Election Commission — McGahn has become an ideological warrior battling what he sees as the tyranny of the federal government. He parlayed his campaign-finance expertise into a job as Donald Trump’s lawyer. After the election, Trump rewarded McGahn with the job of White House counsel, a perch from which McGahn has spearheaded the administration’s unprecedented campaign to reshape the American judicial system, illing courts with judges who share Trump’s goals of dismantling environmental protection, rolling back civil and reproductive rights, and gutting labor laws — in other words, destroying the so-called administrative state. “These eforts to reform the regulatory state begin with Congress and the executive branch,” McGahn said in his speech, “but they ultimately depend on courts.” On the campaign trail, Trump told evangelicals and other wavering Republicans they had no choice but to vote for him: “You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges.” He talked about judges nonstop and even released a list of 21 potential Supreme Court picks that he had gathered with the help of the Federalist Society and the archconservative Heritage Foundation. He would enter oice with

THE LONG VIEW: TRUMP’S FOREIGN-POLICY BLUNDERS

FEB. 2017

M AY

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JUNE 2017 Withdrawal from Paris Agreement

PARDON ME

AL-FRESCO NATIONAL SECURITY

Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe turn Mar-a-Lago into a situation room, plotting a response to a North Korean missile test in full view of dinner guests, who post pictures on social media. Trump also shakes Abe’s hand for 19 seconds on the visit.

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Trump’s alienation of NATO allies approaches full steam when footage of him shoving past Montenegro’s prime minister at a Brussels summit goes viral.

TOP SECRET

Trump welcomes Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the Oval Ofice and reportedly lets slip highly classified information about an intelligence source.

CYBER HERO

The world collectively face-palms after Trump tweets he wants to form an “impenetrable Cyber security unit” — with Vladimir Putin — to fight election meddling.

‘ROCKET MAN’

DRUG TRADE

Trump tweet-sabotages his own secretary of state’s nuclear talks with Kim Jong-un. Terrifying tweets ensue, with Trump bragging about the size of his nuclear button.

Trump boasts of his “great relationship” with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose brutal drug war has authorized the killing of thousands of civilians.

PEACE PROBLEM

Trump abruptly reverses 70 years of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which later sparks violent protests.

TOP: MARK PETERSON/REDUX. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES; MORRY GASH/ AP IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK; ADAM SCOTTI/PMO-CPM; SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; “THE SUN”; JESCO DENZEL/GERMAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT; SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD/THE WHITE HOUSE

the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “This is a clear strategy to stack our courts for generations.” It has taken brute force and legislative cunning to engineer an overhaul of the courts. During the Obama years, Senate Republicans — led by McConnell — ilibustered so many picks for the bench that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the “nuclear option” to abolish the 60-vote threshold for lower-court nominees. Reid said McConnell’s tactics had left him a choice: “Continue like we are or have democracy?” Obama rushed through a slew of conirmations, but Republicans won back the Senate in 2014. McConnell, a master tactician and consummate cynic, was running the show. He not only denied Obama the chance to ill a Supreme Court seat after Scalia’s death, but the Senate conirmed just 22 judicial nominees in Obama’s inal two years, reportedly the lowest number since the end of Harry Truman’s second term, leaving 112 vacancies for Trump. A week after Trump’s victory, McConnell gave McGahn a call to say the new president had a chance to make history. “The impact that this administration could have on the courts,” McConnell later told Time, “is the most long-lasting impact we could have.” McConnell and Senate Republicans have tossed out one norm after another to whisk Trump’s nominees through the conirmation process. They eliminated the ilibuster for Supreme Court picks, paving the way for Gorsuch’s confirmation. They’ve held confirmation hearings for two nominees at the same time, limiting how long each senator can question them. They have disregarded the blueslip tradition of seeking the approval of both home-state senators before conirming a nominee. And with the exception of George W. Bush, Trump is the only president to dismiss the role of the American Bar Association, which typically interviews and rates the quality of judicial picks. The ABA rated four of Trump’s nominees “not qualiied,” two of them by a unanimous

THE COURT MARSHAL

Leonard Leo, executive VP of the Federalist Society, has helped the White House appoint an unprecedented number of federal judges.

decision. (That represented 25 percent of all “not qualiied” ratings for the past ive presidencies.) Trump has also sufered some setbacks. One pick for the U.S. District Court of D.C., Matthew Petersen, withdrew his nomination after failing at his conirmation hearing to answer questions a irst-year law student should know. Another nominee for appellate court, Ryan Bounds, went up in smoke when Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., vowed to oppose him due to past writings that were widely seen as racist. And then there was Brett Talley. A 36-year-old lawyer, horror novelist, and ghost hunter with scant courtroom experience, Talley joined the Trump administration in early 2017 working in the Justice Department oice that selects and vets judicial nominees. Trump nominated him later that year for a district-court opening in Alabama, but journalists soon discovered that Talley had written comments on a sports-fan message board trashing Muslims, making light of statutory rape and defending the irst grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Talley withdrew his nomination — only to land a plush job as an as-

JUNE

MARCH 2018

sistant U.S. attorney in northern Virginia. But at the appellate-court level — the “de facto Supreme Court to the vast majority” of Americans, as Feinstein once put it — Trump appointed more judges in his irst year than any previous president since the appeals courts were created in 1891. Appellate courts hear 59,000 cases a year, compared with just 70 or 80 for the Supreme Court. Trump is on pace to lip three of the 13 appellate courts from liberal to conservative in his irst term alone. “These are the judges that have the greatest influence,” says John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation. “The buck stops at the courts of appeals.” It is too soon to say how inluential Trump’s dozens of judicial picks will be, but the early returns are what you’d expect. Judge Amul Thapar, a Trump appointee on the Sixth Circuit, helped uphold Ohio’s controversial lethal-injection program and a Michigan county’s tradition of beginning government meetings with Christian prayer. Recently appointed Judge James Ho on the Fifth Circuit issued iery opinions in two Texas cases, about campaigninance limits and a law concerning the burial of fetal remains. Ho’s opinion on the latter case — at one point he refers to the “moral tragedy of abortion” — left no doubt about his opposition to Roe. “It is hard to imagine,” he wrote, “a better example of how far we have strayed from the text and original understanding of the Constitution than this case.” If Republicans retain control of the Senate this fall — to say nothing of Trump in 2020 — McGahn and Leo and McConnell could have as much as 20 percent of the American judicial system to ill. As Heritage’s Malcolm puts it, “This is the president’s legacy.”

J U LY

MAY 2018 Withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal

WELL-WISHER

HOG WARS

SORRY, CANADA!

NO DEAL

MAYDAY, MAYDAY

Trump calls Putin and congratulates him on his lessthan-above-board re-election, despite an advisory brief that explicitly says ”Do Not Congratulate.”

Trump kicks of a trade war with China (and others): Prices on goods are expected to rise; $12 billion is needed to bail out soybean farmers; and not all Harleys will be made in the USA.

Even Republicans are stunned when Trump picks a fight with Canada, calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak” after Trudeau objects to U.S. tarifs.

Trump declares, “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” after meeting with Kim Jong-un, despite making no deal and conceding to halt military exercises in the South.

Trump nearly torpedoes his first oficial visit to the U.K. by mouthing of to a British tabloid about Prime Minister Theresa May‘s handling of Brexit. And he (gasp) turned his back on the queen.

HELSINKI SYNDROME

Trump humiliates America and takes Putin‘s word over that of his own intelligence services. We don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t.

CHEAP SHOT

At a NATO summit in Brussels, Trump inexplicably says Germany is “totally controlled” by Russia — a slight improvement over his performance at the G7 a month before, where he reportedly threw Starbursts at German Prime Minister Angela Merkel. September 2018

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Stewart wraps himself in the Confederate flag — despite hailing from Minnesota.

OPINION

Corey Stewart: Donald Trump’s Favorite Nut Job THE FIRST THING to understand about Corey Stewart, Virginia’s long-shot Republican Senate candidate and perhaps America’s purest political distillation of Donald Trump, is that he’s crazy. I found out when I sent a routine e-mail to his press oice, in hopes of obtaining an event schedule. In the campaign version of dialing 411 and having the Verizon CEO pick up, an angry Stewart himself answered:

MATT TAIBBI

ROLLING STONE has been the most misleading left-leaning publication we’ve worked with. Is there any good reason for us to cooperate with you? COREY STEWART, Stewart for U.S. Senate, Inc. Politicians often get tough with the press, but even Donald Trump — whose former spokeswoman Hope Hicks was always cordial — never led of with “fuck you.” As a Mini-Me version of the president, Stewart is running a key symbolic race against former Hillary Clinton running mate and establishment centerfold Tim Kaine. Stewart is perhaps also an answer to a question hanging over American politics: Will there be such a thing as Trumpism after Trump? A jowly, anus-faced character in a crew cut who looks like a margarine-fattened version of

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Sean Spicer, Stewart is something like the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the GOP — the vanguard of a clearly unwanted internal uprising. The movement led by the likes of Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders has a speciic, consistent ideology. But the analogous movement of Trump-aligned pols unseating traditional Republicans, led by Stewart, seems more about sheer blunt rudeness than ideas. Ian Sams, campaign spokesman for Kaine, tells a story about his candidate’s irst debate with the Trump acolyte. In the July 21st debate, Stewart — whose big campaign issues have been preserving Confederate monuments and accusing a New York Times reporter of breaking into the house of one of his aides — denounced Kaine for voting against Trump’s $716 billion military budget. “[Kaine] has the nerve to say that he supports our military,” Stewart hissed. “But yet he even voted against giving more money to our men and women who are in the military.” Stewart here pulled of a wrongness double-axel that would have been tough even for his idol Trump. Not only did Kaine actually vote for the bill in question, but Stewart himself had encouraged Trump to veto it. Stewart lobbed this and other loony accusations at Kaine during the debate, many of them as factually absurd as his claim that he’s a “proud Southerner” (he grew up in Duluth, Minnesota). All the same, in the post-debate gaggle, Sams found himself surrounded by reporters demanding comment, leading to a lash of insight.

FRINGE TAKEOVER Like Trump, Stewart has a penchant for saying provocatively stupid things: The Civil War was not “fought over the issue of slavery,” and he likes to call rival GOP’ers “cuckservatives.”

RYAN M. KELLY/“THE DAILY PROGRESS”

SOUTHERN MAN

“In this kind of politics,” Sams said, “there’s a fundamental imbalance that is shifted toward the lying person.” If anyone were to try to articulate a political theory of Donald Trump, this might be it: lying-ism. It’s not so much about policy — Stewart runs to both the left and right of traditional Republicans, depending on the issue — as it is about using aggression as an electoral strategy. You turn everything into a ight, renouncing decorum as a trick of the establishment (Stewart actually promised to run a “vicious, ruthless” race). Then, court voters’ secret resentments by relentlessly ripping your opponent as the Fucker Responsible for Everything, using accusations that are true, not true, doesn’t matter, just make sure you never stop. Stewart seems to be the irst from-scratch attempt to re-create this uniquely vile electoral brand. Trump has had allies before, but they’ve mostly been either craven opportunists like Chris Christie or scandal-tinged converts from traditional Republicanism, like Jef Sessions and Jim Jordan. Stewart is diferent, a true strategic apostle. “Corey is the most analogous Republican to Donald Trump running,” says Sams. Like Trump, Stewart has a penchant for saying things that are provocatively stupid (the Civil War was not “fought over the issue of slavery”) and for obliterating even the possibility of compromise through pointless rudeness (Stewart once called Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie a “cuckservative”). Stewart’s race-baiting politics have caused him to be frozen out by the Republican establishment. It’s not just his humping of Robert E. Lee and the Confederate lag (“It’s what makes us Virginia”), or the fact that he’s got a stafer who in a perfect Trumpian echo described predominantly black cities as “shitholes.” Stewart has also been photographed in smiley-pol pose with Jason Kessler, the “prowhite” blogger who helped organize the infamous “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville in 2017. Kessler described slain protester Heather Heyer as a “fat disgusting communist.” Though Stewart has repudiated such characters, he hasn’t been convincing. But if Stewart is the less-campy incarnation of Trump, Kaine is the ultimate incarnation of insuferably dull centrism. This means he’s a politician vulnerable to be fooled by all the wrong metrics: party endorsements, press adulation, fundraising dollars, even love from pollsters (he’s up by as much as 18 points). In the age of widespread discontent, Trumpism wears the absence of all these things as a badge of honor. Fortunately, Stewart is too dumb to hit Kaine on his worst votes, like his recent support of Trump’s Dodd-Frank rollbacks. And like Trump, Stewart’s not at all believable when he plays labor messiah, lamenting the damage measures such as NAFTA have done to cities like Danville, which he described as a dystopia of “boarded-up shops” befouled with suicide and opiate addiction. Kaine is vulnerable there, and this is America, remember. Bullshit always has a chance.

DISPATCH

Gavin Newsom’s California Dream The front-runner for governor on the state’s economic power and what it takes to stay tough against Trump By NEIL STR AUSS

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OURTEEN PEOPLE CAME up to me and said you should be president,” says Melissa Murray, the interim dean of the Berkeley Law School. She is talking to Gavin Newsom, who just delivered the school’s commencement address. Newsom has been the mayor of San Francisco, and he’s currently lieutenant governor of California, an elected position that’s basically a gloriied understudy for governor. Yet to see the mob scene of cooing law students around the 50-year-old candidate for governor — who stands six feet three with a full head of hair swept of a strong forehead and a toothpaste-commercial smile — one would assume he’s the second coming of John F. Kennedy. “They called me before this speech and said they really liked what I did with gay marriage,” Newsom says. He is referring to his most famous political act, when, as San Francisco mayor, 11 years before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, he louted state law and ordered the county clerk to start issuing samesex marriage licenses. “I thought, ‘This is something I never talk about.’ Now they tell me I talked about it the last time I spoke here. So I spent all this time on a speech I already gave.” This is Newsom’s big year, one that will seal his political fate. With California in a warm war with the Trump White House, Newsom has tirelessly campaigned under the banner of “resistance with results.” He trolls Trump more regularly on his Twitter feed (to resplendent likes) than he discusses state policy. And having won the Democratic primary for California governor in June, Newsom is heading into a very Trump-centric election against Republican challenger John Cox, a businessman whom the president has supported and would obviously love to see in California’s highest oice. California has been a consistent thorn in the president’s side, particularly when it comes to immigration and the environment. The state has iled (and joined) lawsuits against the federal government to keep it from building the promised border wall, leasing public lands to coal companies, banning transgender people from the military, allowing employers to deny birth-control coverage on religious or moral grounds and taking away rights and protections from undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department has countered with its own lawsuits, suing California for interfering with the sale of federal

PHOTOGRAPH BY Jake Stangel

lands and for its supposedly unconstitutional sanctuary-state laws. The administration has also threatened to halt certain funding and grants to California. This has naturally been accompanied by a full blast of Trump rhetoric, accusing the Golden State of “sheltering dangerous criminals in a brazen and lawless attack

on our constitutional system of government.” “It’s economic suicide to attack California,” Newsom says, noting that the state accounts for more than one-eighth of the nation’s economy and 20 percent of the country’s economic growth since 2010. “Trump cannot succeed with any of his asserted priorities, particularly on economic growth, without California being a huge player in that.” Newsom is the opposite of Trump not only on policy but on personality — Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, refers to him as “the anti-Trump.” He can come of as uncertain, even goofy, leaning toward self-deprecation over braggadocio and curiosity over certainty. He carries around a satchel of books and legal pads, scrawling almost illegible notes for his stafers to decipher. “I have to prepare six hours for a 10-minute speech because of my dyslexia,” he conides. “I can’t just read it of paper, because if I look up, I lose my place and it all turns into squiggles.”

ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL “Trump cannot succeed with any of his economic priorities,” Newsom says, “without California being a huge player.”

The son of a state appellate judge, Newsom was born into California’s political elite. His father, William, was a close friend of the Getty family. When Newsom was three, his parents separated. His mother, Tessa, who was in her early twenties at the time, began working multiple jobs to support the family, so Newsom led a solitary life. “A lot of people talk in colorful three dimensions about their childhood,” he says. “For me, so much of it is blocked out. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s just blocked.” Newsom originally entered the business world, starting and investing in wineries, restaurants and nightspots. His political career began with his support for Willie Brown’s San Francisco mayoral campaign in 1995. Two years later, he was appointed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he spent six years. In 2004, he won his irst of two terms as mayor of San Francisco before becoming California’s lieutenant governor in 2011 — and now, the front-runner for governor. And he’s done all this amid scandals that might sink a lesser candidate — going to counseling for a drinking problem after getting caught in a romance with his appointments secretary, who also happened to be the wife of his campaign manager. (He was then separated from his irst wife, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, and is now married to the actress and director Jennifer Siebel Newsom.) “For the rest of my life I’ll regret that,” he says of the afair. “But it’s the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of my personal development.” In his oice, there is a whiteboard emblazoned with three major issues: immigration, marijuana and energy. He has been an outspoken opponent of federal immigration raids, an early supporter of marijuana for recreational use, and has promised to put “California on a clear path to 100 percent renewable energy.” But, he says, it takes more than comprehensive policy to win elections. “I’m a policy guy,” he says. “I ran [for mayor] on 23 policy positions. I bored everybody, and I almost lost. I’ll never forget it.” On his computer-free desk, there’s a stack of letters he’s writing and signing. Whenever he meets someone and gets a business card, he pens a thank-you note. He says he learned this from his mother; then, a few seconds later, he wonders if maybe he learned it from someone else. In any case, it’s a polite throwback that illustrates an attribute Newsom says matters more to voters than policy: “Values,” he says. “It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you care. It’s how you make someone feel.” The feeling he seems to believe the next California election hinges on is toughness, particularly with Trump. “Bullies only respond to strength,” he says before heading of to a meeting with climate scientists on the natural disasters threatening California. “This guy will leece us if we just roll over and play footsies.” September 2018

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ON THE BORDER

Scenes From an American Tragedy An award-winning illustrator travels to Texas to document families emerging from the trauma and turmoil of the border crisis By MOLLY CR ABAPPLE

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ORE THAN 2,300 children were separated from their parents through Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy before it was suspended on June 20th. When I visited the border city of McAllen, Texas, in July, children were no longer being ripped from their parents; families were incarcerated together, sleeping on bare concrete in packed processing centers, nicknamed hieleras, or “iceboxes.” Photography is banned anywhere immigrants are in custody, so I sketched the scenes I witnessed over ive days at the detention centers and courtrooms that “process” humans crossing the border. In the evenings, I went to the bus station, a squat building where hopeful but exhausted families are dropped of after an often traumatic initiation into the U.S. immigration system. Few parents were willing to share their names for fear of the gangs they’d led back home and that talking to the press would anger immigration authorities. “They shout at us,” a mother from Guatemala says of the guards. “With a stick, they hit the metal bars to wake the children. If the children cry, they go after us,” she says. “They humiliate us.”

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In Limbo Most parents at the bus station (above) wore electronic ankle monitors, which ICE uses to keep track of asylum seekers through its “Intensive Supervision Appearance Program,” run by a private-prison company. A woman from Honduras (left) sat tethered to an outlet by her monitor, which needs to be plugged in every 12 hours. “I bought shoes with white soles, so I could write down my brother’s phone number,” one mother says, knowing Border Patrol threw out immigrants’ possessions. “They didn’t catch it.”

Mass Trials Just 10 miles from the Rio Grande and home to a huge Border Patrol facility, McAllen became ground zero of the familyseparation crisis. Every weekday migrants pack the immigration court (left), their feet shackled together while headphones feed them translations (bottom). Many have crossed repeatedly to see family in the U.S., and prosecutors argue for more jail time with each crossing.

Filth and Abuse Some 10,000 kids who have crossed the border alone are in federal custody, in privately run facilities with records of abuse. Even kids who’ve been detained with their parents (above) face traumatic conditions. A father from Honduras tells me his six-year-old has been sick since staying in a cell where human waste overflowed from the toilet: “My boy bathed and brushed his teeth only once in six days.”

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The Triumph of Stephen Colbert THE TV ISSUE

The Rolling Stone Interview B y BR I A N H I ATT

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P H O T O G R A P H S

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P E T E R

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THE TV ISSUE control-freak tendencies and belatedly hiring a showrunner, CBS News vet Chris Licht, was just the start. Colbert is 54 years old — “a little old for this job,” he says. But it’s hard to imagine pulling of his turnaround without the layers of craft he built over 11 years on The Daily Show and nearly 1,500 episodes’ worth of the highwire comedic feat that was The Colbert Report. This past season, The Late Show was the mostwatched show in late night, with segments going viral again and again. And if there has been some anxiety along the way, the solution is simple, he says: “You keep working.”

Senior writer BRIAN HIATT wrote the Jack White cover story in March.

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“Trump is a heretic against reality. He lives in this fantasy where only his emotions count.”

A while ago, you ended a segment on conspiracy theories by saying everyone needs to grow the fuck up. I don’t think you can say “grow up” without saying “grow the fuck up.” The word just slips in there. You do come of as a grown-up. It only took 54 years. More so, it occurred to me, than the current president of the United States. I’ve never been older than a president. But more emotionally mature, I’ll take. There are moments in my day when I’m not the only thing I think about. I also bet you had more meetings today than he did. I didn’t play golf. I don’t tweet until the show’s over. I don’t tweet until the work is done, how about that? Tweeting is a sometimes treat. I have to earn it at the end of the day. Even in the early days of The Daily Show you were a dad, living in the suburbs, right? Yeah, I wear khakis, y’know? I have a button-down shirt, I go to church —not that that’s a sign of adulthood. I’m a midcentury normative male. When people say, “I wish there was a grown-up in the room,” they generally mean somebody who hews to a very average American experience. This is an extraordinary American experience and privilege to have a show like this, but I’m pretty average otherwise. It’s almost a cliché to bring it up talking to creative people, but there’s a Flaubert quote, “Be regular and orderly in your life so you may be violent and original in your work.” Oh, I’ve never heard that. I love that. But knowingly or not, hasn’t that been your approach? I totally agree. Because the first show that I hosted by myself was pure artifice, I have a healthy bifurcation of my life and my work. I’m all in on the show, but I’m also all in on my life. I really love being just a suburban dad, y’know, driving to the dry cleaners to pick up my khakis. I don’t ind those two things mutually exclusive. And I remember thinking when I was younger that the further aield I went in terms of my behavior onstage or my behavior on camera, the more I would need something stable in my home life. I remember very distinctly, right

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ime to stand,” says Stephen Colbert, responding to a cue from his Apple Watch. He duly gets up from his desk and stretches. “Ahh,” says Colbert. “Now I’ll never die!” That, plus an interlude during which he grooves in silence to Sting’s melancholy 1991 jam “All This Time,” and a 10-minute pause to eat “tuna with some sort of sesame thing drizzled on it,” are Colbert’s only breaks on this show day in July. Colbert’s mammoth oice is several loors above the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, formerly home to David Letterman, who probably didn’t have a Lord of the Rings blanket on his couch. As writers and producers stream in and out, Colbert sits behind his desk, making decisions. Should today’s show open with a laughing German newscaster, a fake Charlie Brown cartoon about Donald Trump’s “Space Force,” or a faux State Department advisory about Americans disguising themselves as Brits to stay safe during Trump’s U.K. visit? In the current, topical, time-slot-conquering version of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the answer always comes down to “What’s the day’s biggest story?” (So, no Space Force.) He’s wearing a Montclair Film Festival baseball cap, a remnant of his suburban weekend self, along with a blue button-up, khakis and Allbirds sneakers. The suit doesn’t arrive until showtime, or at least rehearsal time. Throughout the day, Colbert radiates calm and command, like the CEO of a mid-20th-century company that actually makes something, albeit one who greets male employees with “Hey, baby” and “Let’s hit it, baby doll.” But he’s less relaxed than he seems. “As soon as I come back into this building, I’m in a Pavlovian response,” he says between bites of tuna. “I want to eat at all times, and my whole body gets clenched up. You learn how to cope with it.” Not long ago, Colbert made it through one of the biggest artistic challenges of his life. The Colbert Report had seen 10 years of steady success, but his new show stumbled hard in its initial months, earning skeptical reviews and falling well behind Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show in the ratings. As Colbert explains over two hours of conversation the following day, he managed to turn the ship around midcourse, but not without some pain. Dampening his

before I got married, thinking, “Well, how good that I’m getting married. That there’ll be something constant in my life.” You had your first child before your career took of, which seems to have prompted some anxiety. There’s an old audition tape where you’re holding your baby and begging for help, wondering why you’d gone into acting when your brothers were lawyers. It wasn’t really a joke, was it? I’m kidding on the square in that audition, just making a joke out of my actual feelings. I needed to be medicated when I was younger to deal with my anxiety that I had thrown my life away by attempting to do something that so few people actually get away with, or succeed at. Were you really medicated? I was actually medicated. I mean, in the most common, prosaic way. Xanax was just lovely. Y’know, for a while. And then I realized that the gears were still smoking. I just couldn’t hear them anymore. But I could feel them, I could feel the gearbox heating up and smoke pouring out of me, but I was no longer walking around a couch. I had a bit of a nervous breakdown after I got married — kind of panic attacks. My wife would go of to work and she’d come home — because I worked at night — and I’d be walking around the couch. And she’s like, “How was your day?” And I’d say, “You’re looking at it.” Just tight circles around the couch. Can you put that in a career chronology? I’m 29. I’m still at Second City in Chicago. My friends Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, who were my closest artistic chums — we spoke every day for 15 years — had moved to New York. And I was left onstage with a show that we had created together. I did a year of that show. And I was in such a weird panic that I would never create anything new again. So how did that manifest itself? I would go to the show, and I would curl up in a ball on the couch backstage and I would wait to hear my cue lines. Then I would uncurl and go onstage and I’d feel ine. Which occurred to me at the time: Like, “Oh, you feel ine when you’re out here.” And then as soon as I got ofstage, I’d just crumble into a ball again. Nobody ever asked me what was wrong! [Laughs] It went on for months. What stopped it? I stopped the Xanax after, like, nine days. I went, “This isn’t helping.” So I just sufered through it. I’d sometimes hold the bottle, to go like, “I could stop this feeling if I wanted, but I’m not going to. Because I know if I stop the feeling, somehow I’m not working through it, like I have got to go through the tunnel with the spiders in it.” And then one morning I woke up and my skin wasn’t on ire, and it took me a while to igure out what it was. I wake up the next morning, I’m perfectly ine, to the point

where my body’s still humming. I’m a bell that’s been rung so hard that I can still feel myself vibrating. But the actual sound was gone [because] I was starting rehearsal that day to create a new show. And then I went, “Oh, my God, I can never stop performing.” Creating something is what helped me from just spinning apart like an unweighted lywheel. And I haven’t stopped since. Even when I was a writer I always had to be in front of a camera a little bit. I have to perform. The spooky thing to consider is a world in which you never figured that out. Yeah, without a doubt. Because who knows why someone becomes a performer? Who knows why somebody becomes a comedian? I don’t know why, because people have similar backgrounds to mine, similar childhood experiences to mine and didn’t become comedians. I don’t know what does it. I’m so grateful. Comedy was my savior as a child. And still [is]. Last night, I went home and murdered a pint of ice

cream and I watched three episodes of Veep. Season Two. It was fantastic. Your first big job was on The Dana Carvey Show, which was canceled after seven episodes. What did you learn from that? Oh, that the most talented people in the world don’t necessarily come up with a hit. And that it is not necessarily the fault of the creators, though it can be. And it’s not the fault of the audience. It’s about the match of the two. I got hired at The Daily Show about a year after that. After a very tough year. Very tough. Like, no income, with a baby . . . I do not recommend that. Then when I got to Comedy Central, we got paid a dollar twenty-ive to work there. I worked there for years and years. For no money. But you really were given the opportunity to fail there. As opposed to you having to it in to a network at 8:30 on a Tuesday. Louis C.K. was one of your bosses on The Dana Carvey Show. How have you processed the revelations about his abusive behavior?

“Xanax was just lovely. Y’know, for a while. And then I realized that the gears were still smoking.”

Louis is a brilliant comedian. And it probably is a diferent experience for a fan. Because I knew him when nobody knew him. So, it’s just being brokenhearted to see somebody who lied to his friends and mistreated other people. You’re as disappointed as you would be in any person. But inding out about Bill Cosby? That’s heartbreaking on a level that completely changes your view of their work. I don’t have an intimate relationship with Louis’ work. I knew him 20 years ago, for ive months, and I consider him a friend, and we kept up with each other occasionally. But Cosby, that was deeply heartbreaking, and that really changes formative memories of your life. Did you have general thoughts about, perhaps, men being worse than you imagined? I imagine men to be pretty bad, so that’s not that shocking. I never had a great expectation for the sexual behavior of men, but this has certainly lowered the bar even further. Speaking of things being worse than you imagined, we got to watch you react in real time to Trump’s election on your Showtime special. How deeply shocked were you? I know nothing, so I tend to believe the number-crunchers. I was shocked, and I was dismayed, but I will say this: There is nothing that has happened since Trump became president that wasn’t in my fear matrix about him. Now, all the horrors that you can see dawning on my face on that Showtime special have only been borne out. Nothing about Trump and Putin, nothing about his caging children, nothing about him saying, “There’s good people on both sides.” Nothing about his handing the reins of power over to just a rogues’ gallery of anti-regulation, pro-pollution, anti-union, anti-women [oicials] in any way surprises me. It’s all what I thought would happen. Which is why I was truly horriied. Oh, but the next day I said, “Well, you got a half hour to feel bad about it.” We all got together, and we felt bad about it for a half hour, and we said get it out and that’s it. And then we’re like, “OK, now, what are the jokes?” That’s it. You said in an interview before the election that America seemed less angry than when you started The Colbert Report. Do you have a sense of how you —and everyone else — got that wrong? Maybe wishful thinking. I said that we had moved beyond the constant cycle of anger. And I was hoping that was true. But it might just have been complacency. And now there’s no denying that we’re still in the constant cycle of anger, and we’re at an emotional 10 at all times. You once said that The Colbert Report was a 10-year confession. Could you elaborate on that idea a little more? It’s two things: It was a confession and it was a question at the same time. It had a thesis statement about what feels right to you, as opposed to what is supported by fact. That’s the thesis statement of the entire 10 years. But the question was, why am I, Stephen Colbert — white, male, straight, Christian, American — a hegemonic igure? In my life, I don’t just mean in character. Why do I, in American orthodoxy, get to say what’s real? And that’s the feeling September 2018

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THE TV ISSUE that we had strongly during the Bush administration, that I get to say what’s real, or the white male Christian, speciically non-Muslim, gets to. So, that’s the question, but the confession is: I am those things. I’m not not those things. And to that regard, I am not detached from my character. I’m passionately attached to some of the things that he talked about. It was really important that you not know what those were. Because it just robs the performance of the question mark. But really, the confession is a confession of the appetite to eat that meal. Meaning there’s an itch to scratch. I’m like, “Yeah, fuck yeah, me, me. Me, white male Christian, American, straight. Number one!” That is a dark feeling, because it is indulging in an appetite for yourself, it’s very possessive, it’s very consumptive, it’s pornographic, and so the confession is: Yes, I have these feelings as well. But the question is: Why are those feelings indulged in America? You also had the fear that if you kept doing it, you’d hurt someone. What does that mean? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. The metaphor that my executive producer, Tom Purcell, has had is, “We, all of us, but I speciically, are carbon rods that get lowered into the radioactive pool of what’s happening today, and our job is to absorb all the radiation and then to radiate it back to the audience, at a much lower rad-level.” I used to think I was running down a light of stairs with an armload of wineglasses, you know, like I’m a busboy who’s late to the banquet. As I’m running down the thing, I’m thinking, “At some point, I’m going to slip and I’m gonna drop the show and shatter all this glass.” Because it was a delicate balloon to keep in the air all the time. It was diicult — the show was hard, how about that? And this show? This show is hard too, but you also had the character on top of that, you had to do your best to maintain in a speciic way. Since then, I think that my metaphor is totally wrong. I used to think I would drop the show, that I would hurt the show, but I started thinking that the show would hurt me. Hurt you how? I don’t entirely know. I’ve only now come to that realization. Maybe damage your core in some way? I think the speed at which you do the show — and I thought we used to do the old show really fast, but this is four times as fast — the speed requires a lot of discipline so you don’t become lippant. Or don’t lose sight of your intention and execution. The thing I said about Trump and Putin [he referred to Trump’s mouth as “Putin’s cock holder”], the thing that caused so much hurt when it was perceived as being homophobic? That’s an example of moving so fast that I hurt the intention of the work with the execution. In ways that are undeniable. If someone thought that was homophobic, who am I to say that it wasn’t? Especially to any community whose concerns have been brushed aside as being, “Oh, you’re just sensitive.” That happened all the time at the old show, because I was in character and I would say really extreme

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things with a very clear intention. So it was clear to the audience that what you’re hearing was a concept, and not the content. The ultimate example of that was the #cancelcolbert incident. You mocked Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder’s foundation for Native Americans, and you said, ”I am willing to show the Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong DingDong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.” The show’s account tweeted out just the line and all hell broke loose. That’s when I knew I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Because I had lost control of the context of my joke. I was getting in a car to go home, and I saw that it exploded. And I went, “Uh-oh.” What happened was, just that one line, absent any context, was tweeted out by someone who the week before had been an intern. There was nothing I could do; I wasn’t on the air for three days. And I went, “I’ve lost complete control of the context of my joke, and maybe I’ve lost a 25-year career with a single line.” You were that worried? Oh, I thought it was absolutely terrible. It was the only time I ever really got mad at the network. Because they took the tweet down, and I go, “What’re you thinking? Now you’ve apologized before I can contextualize my response, and now I’m 100 percent fucked. By putting that thing up there without the context of the character — and the story being that the Redskins were starting the [Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation] — without that context, you’ve given people who really would like to stick a knife in me a place to stand, and an 11-inch bowie knife.” And I had no control, and because I did the show in character, I couldn’t respond out of character. I had to wait till 11:30 on Monday to create the response. That’s when I thought, “Oh, well, it’s been a good career.” Did the character itself feel like a trap? It was just that this was the sort of thing that could happen. It could happen to any performer, but because I was in character, and part of the game was how much could you get away with in character — trying to make a pure expression of something that you disagree with and having that intention come through. I began to doubt my ability to do that, and not that this actual moment had been my fault; the lack of context was the fault. But that deinitely reinforced my sense that I had to stop. Even in context, even understanding that it’s an anti-racist joke, have you considered that the young woman who started #cancelcolbert might have had a point — that it’s too easy to target Asian-Americans that way? That young woman’s feelings about that joke, in context or out of context, are perfectly valid, even if I don’t agree. I didn’t apologize for what I said about the president and Mr. Putin. It

doesn’t mean that people’s feelings about it are not valid. All you can do is control your intention, not people’s interpretations. Everyone’s feelings are valid, especially from any community that has been marginalized and has been told habitually their concerns are not valid. So I hold nothing against anybody who is ofended by what I say. In the period between shows there was this public doubt, “Can he carry a show out of character?” Which, as you said, was ironic because people had earlier wondered the opposite: “How is this guy going to host a whole show in character?” The first months of the old show were like, “You can’t sustain this in character.” And then they said, “You can’t do it out of character.” I thought, “That’s insane, I can’t win.” There’s a consensus out there that Stephen Colbert can’t do anything. But I would say by Christmas I was thinking, “Oh, maybe they’re right!” [Laughs hard] So what was that process of learning and adjustment like for you? Interestingly enough, our instincts were very good, I think. We were highly political and news-centered when the show irst started. We didn’t do a lot of monologue, but we did a lot of long desk pieces and stuf like that. And then it wasn’t what the old show used to be, and I think people were a little disappointed, yet it wasn’t a traditional monologue. People didn’t know what to make of it. So I think we misinterpreted the initial reactions and went away from the news cycle. We got all supersilly, which we love doing. We still like getting stupid. And you were doing everything yourself. I could not ind the voice, I could not ind the time to ind the voice because I couldn’t ind a showrunner, and I was losing my mind. I just didn’t sleep at night. I was having meetings in my mind, not dreams. I’d wake up in the morning and realize I had been having meetings all night about what we’re gonna attempt this week. And I went, “This has got to end.” That’s when I inally went to the network and said, “OK, you’re absolutely right, I need a showrunner. Who do ya got?” Finding the voice was a matter of Chris Licht giving us room and saying, “Everything that’s not the jokes, I’m gonna take away. Now you igure it out. You’re really good at responding to things really quickly, what if you did that?” It was that simple, and we went, “OK, so we sort of steer our laser back to: What is the big story today? We will talk about that, no matter how late it happened.” Is there something internal that might drive you toward being a control freak? I don’t know. My sister Mary says, “Colbert men have double-dominant pride genes. That they have to be the inal word on everything.” And she’s probably right. She’s right about most things. She’s the reason I took this job. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted this job. ’Cause I knew

“Don’t let anybody say you’re crazy. This is not what America is meant to be about.”

how hard it would be. And I also didn’t have much of a hunger to create something new after my mom died. And this ofer came not that long after Mom died. So I just didn’t know what to do. So I called my sister Mary and said, “Would you come up to New York and just talk to me?” So she sat across from me, in my living room, and she goes, “What’s on your mind?” And I told her that I had gotten the ofer, and she just burst into a huge smile. And I went, “OK, I’ll do it” [laughs]. And she said, “What?” I said, “Yup. Because you smiled, I’ll Colbert do it.” interviewed Was there ever a genuine candidate concern that they’d flip time Trump in 2015. slots with James Corden, as rumor had it? That was all just . . . no. I never believed it, but I was also speciically told that that wasn’t the case. I never sincerely believed that that was a thing. I did worry that I wasn’t gonna ind a voice, though. I did think, to this degree, I am not the hero of my own story. I think it was Spalding Gray who said, “Oh, maybe life won’t be a constant series of triumphs” [laughs]. And because I love fixing problems, I said, “Oh, maybe I’m the problem. Maybe that’s why I can’t ix it.” It’s a testament to the power of years of craft that you were able to fix it. That could very well be. I don’t think I could’ve gone for the irst six months of this show not having done 20 years of work beforehand. Because I wouldn’t have had the right frame of mind to accept that struggle as a gift. I would’ve seen it as a punishment. I remember looking in the mirror in September 2016 and going, “God, I wouldn’t trade anything in for this past year.” And going, “Wow, that’s kind of surprising, I think you mean that.” And then going, “Yeah, because we found it, we had to find it in public [laughs very hard].” We had to ind it on air, y’know? And I thought, “What a dummy. You really thought you could make that big of a change in who you are as a performer without it being painful? How dumb are you? What made you think this wouldn’t be agonizing?” And that was about three months before people noticed. The writer Allison Silverman said in a Daily Show oral history that you work best in service to a person or an idea. Does that sound right? I think that’s entirely true. She’s right. That’s why I really liked being a waiter and that’s why I liked working for Jon [Stewart]. He was worth serving. At the correspondents’ dinner [in 2006] I told this joke: “The guy’s poll numbers may be, like, 32 percent or something. You

can’t listen to numbers. Reality, as we all know, has a well-known liberal bias.” And I don’t think reality has a liberal bias these days. Reality has a bias against the world our president wants us to receive. I remember it was at Christmas of 2016, I was talking to Jay Katsir, one of my writers, and I said, “Oh, [Trump’s] left us a very interesting place to stand: reality.” All we have to do is go, no, that’s not true or that’s not a fact, this is a fact. Here’s what we all know to be true, and here’s the insanity they’d like us to accept. And the jokes are all in the arc between those. Like, y’know, what people say and what they do — satirical jokes are often in the arc of that hypocrisy. So what’s the precise idea you’re serving? The thing is that you’re not crazy. We’re serving the audience in a way, while [Trump’s] gaslighting the audience. As a Catholic, I was taught that the worst thing was heresy because not only are you sinning, you’re also dragging somebody else into your sinful state. Well, Donald Trump is a heretic against reality; he lives in this fantasy world where only his emotions count and therefore only his reality is real. But he’s also saying, “Everybody else, your reality isn’t real.” And so all you have to do is go, like, “Hey, you’re not crazy.” That’s the thesis statement. Your reactions, your emotions are valid — you actually feel that way. The world is as you perceive it. Don’t let anybody say you’re crazy. This is not what America is meant to be about. Last night, you accused the president of the United States of treason. I don’t think Johnny Carson ever did that. [Laughs] I would only add that I was piggybacking on the behavior modeled by a sitting Republican senator and the former head of the CIA. I wasn’t pulling that out of my ass. And that’s important. I’m relecting the conversation that’s

JEFFREY R. STAAB/CBS

“It’s an extraordinary privilege to have this show, but I’m pretty average otherwise.”

already happening. And making a joke out of it. Not that I’m not saying what I’m saying, but I’m not getting it out of nowhere. Again, we are radiating at the audience what’s in the pool. You had Trump on before the election. How do you see that interview now? I’m ine with it. There was this odd legend, that wasn’t necessarily true, about The Colbert Report that I always had the knives out, politically. I didn’t actually. If you actually watch my in-studio interviews, I was a pussycat. And so I was determined when the show started to be inviting to everyone. I wanted a Republican candidate the irst night. Remember Jeb? I wanted Jeb. What was your approach to Trump? I don’t know how to get him to open up, I don’t know how to have him not shut down. Because I’ve seen him drop the whole Trump routine on interviews, and that’s no fun. So my exec producer goes, “He never apologizes for anything. What if you apologize for the things you used to say in character and say, ‘Now I invite you. Is there anything you’d like to apologize for?’ ” Just to point out that he never apologizes for anything. I was determined when the show began to lay down my sword and shield by the riverside, to see whether there was some way to have a public conversation that didn’t end up in ighting — and there might still be. But I was determined to not stick a knife in. Make fun of him, question some of the things he’s promised, imply that he might be insane. So I’m very happy with what we did. I’m not sure if I’d ever want another bite of that apple, though. Talk about sipping poison. Because I’m not sure if there’s any way for you to bite that apple and not get his disease. Do you feel that Jimmy Fallon got unfairly beaten for the hair-rufling? I think that’s a completely unfair critique of Jimmy Fallon’s show. You do not go to Jimmy Fallon’s show for political satire or even political discussion. He’s an entertainer and he’s brilliant. People blame his ratings on that. But I think people just have a different appetite right now for political comedy. I think it’s highly overblown, that hair-ruling thing. Back to the idea of laying down your sword. Would it be fair to say you picked that sword back up again? [Laughs] Oh, fuck, I knew when I used that analogy you would say that. I’m hesitant to agree that I picked up the sword again — because I don’t think there’s anything heroic about this job. And swords are associated with knighthood, and I am not a knight. One reason why I wanted to put the sword down is that I’m a comedian. It’s a highly sharpened butter knife, I’ll say that. It’s a butter knife that we’ve put a razor-sharp edge on. So, y’know, satire’s got an edge. You can say, “Oh, you’re out near the edge, you’re gonna fall over.” [Cont. on 94] September 2018

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THE TV ISSUE

THE FIRST

MAYANS MC

MANIAC

Mayans MC SEPTEMBER 4TH, FX

10 Shows We’re Excited to See Sean Penn heads to Mars, Jim Carrey loses his mind, Julia Roberts supports the troops, Jonah Hill and Emma Stone get crazy on hallucinogenic drugs, and Lena Dunham returns to TV to go ‘Camping’ — our picks for the fall’s can’t-miss shows

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September 2018

After the failure of his fantasy epic, The Bastard Executioner, Kurt Sutter revs back into familiar territory courtesy of this Sons of Anarchy spinof about a Latino motorcycle club, with a cast fronted by J.D. Pardo and Edward James Olmos. If Sutter’s ever going to get back that Sons Season Two fastball, this would be the place. ALAN SEPINWALL

Kidding SEPT. 9TH, Showtime

When Jim Carrey and director Michel Gondry reunite 14 years after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, attention must be paid. The star, in his irst regular TV job since In Living Color, plays a beloved Mr.

Rogers-esque children’s-show host whose sanity starts to fall apart. The supporting cast includes Catherine Keener, Judy Greer and Frank Langella. A.S.

The First SEPTEMBER 14TH, Hulu

Beau Willimon has a knack for getting twotime Oscar winners to come to TV, following up on House of Cards with this sci-i drama starring Sean Penn as an astronaut on a mission to colonize Mars, alongside Natascha McElhone and Lisa Gay Hamilton. Kevin Spacey, no; space exploration, yes! A.S.

Fukunaga returns to TV with Superbad alums Jonah Hill and Emma Stone! They’re caught in a mind-altering drug experiment that blurs the lines between reality and hallucination — well-traveled turf for their castmate Justin Theroux (The Leftovers). Based on a Norwegian original, Maniac has all 10 episodes directed by Fukunaga and written by novelist Patrick Somerville. The cast includes Sonoya Mizuno (Stone’s roommate from La La Land!) along with Girls star Jemima Kirke and the legendary Sally Field. ROB SHEFFIELD

Mr Inbetween Maniac SEPTEMBER 21ST, Netflix

Now, this is the real True Detective Season Two — director Cary

SEPTEMBER 25TH, FX

Ray Shoesmith (Scott Ryan) is the kind of lowlife thug that prestige TV loves: a troubled dad who takes on dirty

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PAUL SCHRIMALDI/HULU; PRASHANT GUPTA/FX; ANNE MARIE FOX/HBO; MICHELE K. SHORT/NETFLIX

CAMPING

Take center stage. Introducing the all-new 2019 Mercedes-Benz CLS. With a bold stance and a spotlight-grabbing silhouette, it’s a breathtaking statement of aerodynamic elegance. And while the exterior of the CLS sees a simplified reduction in lines and edges, the interior gains a comfortable fifth seat. A reminder that innovation really does lead to beauty. MBUSA.com/CLS

2019 CLS 450 Edition 1 shown in Graphite Grey paint. European model shown. Vehicle available fall 2018. ©2018 Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC

For more information, call 1-800-FOR-MERCEDES, or visit MBUSA.com.

HOMECOMING

Escape at Dannemora NOV. 18TH, Showtime

A real-life prison break from 2015: Two killers bust out of a maximum-security clink in upstate New York, with a little help from a lovelorn prison employee. Ben Stiller directs this prestige miniseries with an Oscar-heavy cast, including Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano as the killers and Patricia Arquette as the employee. Plus, in a perfect casting coup, Michael Imperioli is Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s currently running for re-election against another HBO alum. It’s a touch that could have been scripted by Christopher Moltisanti himself. R.S.

KIDDING

MR INBETWEEN

My Brilliant Friend

ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA

jobs outside the law, juggling his various paternal and criminal duties. (It’s the same character he created for his highly praised 2005 mockumentary, The Magician.) All six episodes are directed by fellow Australian Nash Edgerton, who’s done everything from helming Bob Dylan videos to stunt-doubling for Ewan McGregor in the Star Wars prequel Revenge of the Sith. R.S.

The Romanofs OCTOBER 12TH, Amazon

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner returns with an international anthology series in which each episode tells a diferent story of people (played by Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, Diane Lane, Isabelle Huppert, Amanda Peet, Andrew Rannells and Aaron Eckhart) who

The Deuce Three Returning Favorites From porn drama to musical comedy, what happens next for this trio of shows

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believe themselves to be descended from Russian royalty. Can Weiner (who was recently accused of some ugly, Sterling Cooper-esque workplace behavior) recapture the magic of one of TV’s greatest dramas? A.S.

Camping OCTOBER 14TH, HBO

In this limited series from Girls’ Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, Jennifer Garner plays a controlling wife and mom whose weekend

birthday-getaway plans with husband David Tennant quickly go awry when friends, family and strangers tag along. Seeing Sydney Bristow back on TV is exciting enough, but teeth-gnashing in comic marital crisis with the 10th Doctor Who? Even better.A.S.

Homecoming NOV. 5TH, Amazon

Penn’s not the only Oscar winner taking a irst regular TV job. Julia Roberts stars in this

thriller, from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, as a caseworker at a support center helping a soldier (Stephan James) who wants to re-enter civilian life. Will the greatest movie-star smile of them all it as comfortably on the small screen, or will her fundamental Robertsness — particularly with her My Best Friend’s Wedding co-star Dermot Mulroney on board — overwhelm the story? If nothing else, it’s part of the welcome Peak TV timesaving wave of new half-hour dramas. A.S.

Is it possible to adapt Italian novelist and controversy magnet Elena Ferrante’s coming-of-age stories for the small screen? Based on the irst of her four fanatically adored Neapolitan epics, this series details the long-running love-hate bond between two women, Elena and Lila, who meet as little girls in Naples in the grim postwar squalor of 1950. It’s a lush-looking period drama — and in a irst for the cable channel, all eight episodes are in Italian (and subtitled in English). R.S.

Big Mouth

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

SEPTEMBER 9TH, HBO

OCTOBER 5TH, Netflix

OCTOBER 12TH, CW

David Simon and George Pelecanos’ birthof-porn drama will jump to the late Seventies for Season Two. There’s real-life awkwardness surrounding leading man James Franco, but the greatness of Maggie Gyllenhaal and the female ensemble is undeniable.

Nick Kroll’s animated middle-school comedy is simultaneously the filthiest and sweetest show possible about puberty, as kids are torn between decent impulses and the terrible advice of their respective Hormone Monsters, voiced by Kroll and Maya Rudolph.

Season Three of the musical comedy ended with Rebecca pleading guilty to attempted murder in hopes of furthering her emotional growth. Where can the show go from there? As long as the infectious pop-song parodies remain, in Rachel Bloom we trust. A.S.

September 2018

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ERICA PARISE/SHOWTIME; AMAZON STUDIOS; MARK ROGERS/FX; CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS/SHOWTIME

FALL, HBO

Hi, cruel world

O

VER THE PAST year, Lena Dunham has been through a lot: an elective hysterectomy following a decade of sufering from endometriosis, and two big breakups — one with longtime boyfriend Jack Antonof, the other with Jenni Konner, her writing partner on Girls and the new HBO show Camping (October 14th). Centered on Walt and Kathryn (David Tennant and Jennifer Garner, who lauds Dunham’s “freedom and openness”), a married couple spending an uncomfortable desert weekend with friends, the series seems to be her irst foray into nonautobiographical work. But appearances are deceiving. “I’ve essentially been married and divorced, and been through menopause, so it was not a wild leap,” Dunham says. “It was a very soothing use of my own experience.” Camping was originally a British show. Why remake it? [I] wanted to dive headirst into this universe of people’s unmitigated neuroses in a natural environment. My favorite episodes of Girls were the bottle episodes, where we could really submerge people in an isolated climate, and this entire show was one of those. And it was an amazing world against which to do what we love to do, which is write about women behaving badly. Are they as outrageous as the women of Girls? These characters are slightly more tethered by human decency than the characters on Girls were. They’re trying, even if it’s not always working. So trying to write people who are acting out in more subtle and speciic ways, rather than misiring all over the place, was a whole new shade and shadow of human behavior. And when it’s Jennifer Garner doing the bad stuf, you forgive a lot. Oh, yeah. She’s the most charming person in American history. It’s shocking. She could walk right up to me and go, “I’ve killed your mom and I’ve taken your boyfriend,” and I’d be like, “Well, that’s your right.”

Lena Dunham Grows Up The Girls creator returns to HBO with a brand-new show and a fresh, if hard-won, outlook B y A L A N S E PI N WA L L

You live your life very publicly, while she’s a private person who has had much of her life made public against her will. She is, and I feel like I learned from watching her that there’s a way of going about this fame thing that’s less about proving [something]. I tend to go around being, “Guys, I’m really not as bad as everybody thinks I am!” And it seems her philosophy is, “I don’t need everybody to acknowledge my whole deal because I know what my deal is.” What was it like writing for middleaged characters? It’s funny to have accidentally become the face of millennial ennui. I actually feel not even middle-aged but elderly in my disposition: “Do I still have anything left to ofer this world? Is that all there is? Am I over the hill?” The British version of Kathryn is obsessed with her menopause and her body, so this was a natural extension. When we started writing, I was facing down the barrel of my hysterectomy, and when we inished, I had just had my hysterectomy. Is it therapeutic to put your struggles into your characters? It’s the only way I know how to process. It almost feels like things haven’t happened to me until they’ve happened to another character before my eyes. What do you want to do now? Experiencing so much personal loss over the last few years has made me realize I’m an incredible weirdo who needs a lot of time alone. As fucking dopey as it sounds, I just want to be an artist. And frankly, the experience of losing my fertility, of not necessarily having the family structure I thought I was going to have — the one gift that’s come out of that is I don’t have anyone to support but myself. Besides being a decent person who takes good emotional care of the people I love, my only other obligation is to myself and my work, and I need to feel free to go to a women’s sci-i convention, or write poems, or write a movie no one will ever see, or maybe write a movie lots of people will see. But the open space of it is the only good result of a lot of personal turmoil.

From the Horse’s Mouth BoJack Horseman’s creator reveals the hit show’s ive most important influences NETFLIX’S ANIMATED comedy about a miser-

able former sitcom star who happens to be an anthropomorphized horse (returns September 14th) is either an explosively funny satire of showbiz and society, or a startlingly sad portrait of depression. Usually, it’s both. We asked showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg which animated works left the biggest imprint on its DNA. A.S.

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2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit OF TOONS AND MEN

“The connection is easy to see: What if cartoons were real and interacted with humans? But also the movie is a love letter to the power of comedy — and to how getting so invested in being funny can limit you.”

1. The Simpsons THE GAME-CHANGER

“A titan of the format. My favorite episode is ‘Marge Be Not Proud,’ where Bart steals a video game. It’s sincere and heartbreaking. A great compliment I got was BoJack ‘felt like a long, sad episode of The Simpsons.’”

TOP: NATHAN BAJAR/“THE NEW YORK TIMES”/REDUX. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: NETFLIX; TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; WALT DISNEY PICTURES

THE TV ISSUE

A Peak-TV Cheat Sheet

TOP, FROM LEFT: HELEN SLOAN/HBO; GUY D’ALEMA/FX; RON BATZDORFF/NBC; COLLEEN HAYES/NBC; NICK BRIGGS/BBC AMERICA. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: FX; WARNER BROS. ANIMATION; MTV

Haven’t seen it? No problem. Here’s how to talk about the hottest shows without watching them. Spoilers guaranteed!

Game of Thrones

Atlanta

This Is Us

The Good Place

Killing Eve

HBO, final season airs 2019

FX , Season Three airs 2019

NBC, Season Three premieres September 25th

NBC, Season Three premieres September 27th

BBC AMERICA , Season Two airs spring 2019

In a Nutshell

In a Nutshell

The one with the dragons

Twin Peaks with rappers

In a Nutshell

In a Nutshell

In a Nutshell

Mom and Dad’s cry time

Kristen Bell dies and goes to heaven.

James Bond meets Carol.

What’s Going On

What’s Going On

Set in a fantasy world called Westeros, with kings and queens vying for the Iron Throne, it’s more epic than The Iliad times The Aeneid. In the upcoming battle royal, Daenerys Stormborn (Emilia Clarke), Mother of Dragons, and Jon Snow (Kit Harington), the King in the North — related, but also boning — will join forces with Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) against his sister Cersei (Lena Headey) for Winterfell.

Donald Glover is Princeton dropout Earn Marks, who moves home to Atlanta and gets into the hip-hop game by managing his cousin Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry). This surrealist comedy got even better last season, amping up the violence and terror — especially the insta-legend “Teddy Perkins” episode, featuring Glover in whiteface as a deranged showbiz recluse who hides in his mansion, keeping his piano-playing brother in the basement.

What’s Going On Last season we found out how Pearson patriarch Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) died back in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Big Three, Jack’s triplets with wife Rebecca (Mandy Moore), had issues: actor Kevin ( Justin Hartley) went to rehab, singer Kate (Chrissy Metz) nearly blew of her wedding, and do-gooder Randall (Sterling K. Brown), the adopted black son, and his wife, Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson), struggled with their own foster daughter.

Say This “It started out great, then got moronic in Season Five, then got good again, then they lost me with the dragon incest.”

What’s Going On What’s Going On In Season One, Bell’s Eleanor, a dreadful human, is surprised to ind herself in heaven, where Ted Danson is her afterlife guide. She and some other weirdos (professor Chidi, socialite Tahani, DJ Jason) learn to live up to their new home, until a doozy of a twist: They were in the Bad Place all along. Season Two continued the genius: Surprise! They didn’t die at all!

Say This Say This

Say This

“When Earn made that decision at the airport, I thought, ‘What if he is the gun?’ ”

“Beth is way too cool for the Pearsons. Her marrying into this crew is like Beyoncé joining Wilson Phillips.”

“I was so shocked by that big reveal, I can’t even talk about it right now.” (For this show, easily applies to at least half the episodes.)

Sandra Oh plays Eve, the British spy who’s bored with her desk job until a charming assassin shows up. Jodie Comer is Villanelle, the wily Russian hitwoman who leads Eve on a cat-and-mouse game across the globe. As bodies pile up, the pair’s erotic chemistry turns the woman-hunt into an elaborate lirtation.

Say This “At irst I thought Villanelle was seducing Eve. Then I decided Eve was seducing Villanelle. But what if they’re just in love with a game that has seduced them both?” ROB SHEFFIELD

3. Archer

5. Daria

STORY MATTERS

A COMPLEX HERO

“The caustic style was on my mind at first — perhaps too much! There’s a gag where [Archer’s] having sex and his mother calls, and he takes the call and doesn’t stop having sex; there’s a similar joke in the first episode of BoJack. Then in the second season, Archer got breast cancer, and in the next episode was in chemo. It had been episodic until that point. That was a big influence on BoJack: Can this be more serialized?”

“As a teen, I really related to that character: the smartest person in the room who has disdain for everybody. But she was really well-developed, and that was cool. It did a good job of showing that smart people aren’t always right and stupid people aren’t always bad. I want to give my characters nuance. You think you have these archetypes, but then when you start exploring the character, you go into their nooks and crannies.”

4. Animaniacs

WEIRD IS WONDERFUL

“I’m a fan of aspirational references. It’s boring if I watch [a show] and get everything. I want to be challenged by the humor. And Animaniacs did it. I think of a song about the weird buzzwords Hollywood people use to describe box-ofice numbers. Looking back, who was that for? It was a bizarre thing, and I loved it.”

September 2018

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THE TV ISSUE

Who’s Afraid of Tom Arnold? On his new show, Roseanne Barr’s ex-husband is hunting for evidence to take down Trump. Inside a Hollywood outcast’s manic quest B y BR I A N H I ATT PHO T O G R A PH BY PE T E R YA NG 64

W

HEN TOM ARNOLD opens the big wooden door of his house in Beverly Hills on a Tuesday in late spring, he’s wearing a blue T-shirt with a Superman “S” logo on it. On the loor behind him is a pink, toddler-size Minnie Mouse car, property of his two-year-old daughter, Quinn. “Hey, buddy,” he says, out of breath from his light down the stairs, and still sweaty, post-shower, from his morning cardio. He lost 90 pounds ive years ago, when his son, Jax, was born, aiming to stick around for the family he’s built with his very patient fourth wife, Ashley. Since then, he’s gained enough back to land at a football-coach burliness — still not bad for a 59-year-old who once blew a $10 million Jenny Craig sponsorship by gaining more weight than he was supposed to lose. (Or maybe it was SlimFast — he tells the story both ways.) ¶ We were supposed to be headed over to a taping of his friend Jim Jefferies’ Comedy Central show around now, but not for the irst time in the world of Tom Arnold, something went wrong. “I did a bad tweet,” he says, walking through his kitchen toward his memorabilia-packed man cave of an oice. It was, indeed, not good: He used the words “suck racist dick” in connection with black conservative igure Candace Owens. The right-wing press pounced. Arnold apologized, but

THE TV ISSUE he’s still too radioactive for Comedy Central. “Which made me laugh,” he says, “because Trump fuckin’ wins again on racism.” Arnold parks himself at his desk, facing a TV tuned to CNN. Behind him is an Al Hirschfeld caricature of his younger self; on an opposite wall is a self-portrait drawn by Howard Stern, with a note thanking Arnold for being a good guest. In one corner is a framed tie David Letterman gave him when he showed up without one; in another, a cel from The Rosey & Buddy Show, a short-lived cartoon he and his ex-wife Roseanne Barr made. “None of it means too much to me except the pictures of my kids,” he says, his voice a familiar sandpaper rumble. He can hardly sit down without sending a leg into twitchy overdrive: “Shaky Tom,” Barr called him. He says he’s “on the spectrum” (he’s not big on eye contact) and has ADHD. The Ritalin his parents snuck into his food calmed him as a kid; cocaine did the same for him as an adult. He’s done an awful lot of drugs, was in rehab just last year. He is, in all, a frantic, lovable, weirdly charismatic mess, “a crazy person,” by his own half-joking description. He’s having some inancial problems, had to reinance his house, sell his Warhol. He doesn’t always get his facts straight. His anecdotes can, at times, be hard to follow, and harder to verify. His acting career, fueled for many years by the triumph of 1994’s True Lies, is not at its peak, though he does have a recurring role on NCIS: New Orleans (he’s currently wearing black khakis purloined from the set: “They it!”). Again, he once married Roseanne Barr. (When they split, Letterman held up a fake book on-air: “I’m Pretty Much Screwed, by Tom Arnold.”) These days, in between stand-up gigs, Arnold is on a reckless, friendship-straining, marriage-testing, one-man mission to save the world from a former acquaintance who is now president of the United States, at whom he’s leveled a long and growing series of wild accusations. His claims of seeing Apprentice outtakes where Trump allegedly uses a racial slur were just the beginning. In September, Viceland will debut The Hunt for the Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold, a gonzo reality show about Arnold’s quest: Each episode will focus on a different alleged “tape,” from pee to Apprentice. It’s not just a show. Arnold is consumed with his hunt, fueled by an apparent mix of moral outrage, general obsessiveness and a fair amount of free time. Longtime friend Arnold Schwarzenegger has a simpler explanation, though: He told Politico that Tom is just trying to reclaim his past “notoriety.” Tom really did once know Trump a bit, really did run in some of the same showbiz circles. They were, after all, Arnold says, at the same “level of Hollywood.” But the anomaly that is the Trump White House has upended our cultural cosmos, pulling unlikely igures closer to the center of events than a saner timeline might allow. So amid the madness of 2018, the idea of Tom Arnold as a igure of destiny, a man of consequence, begins to seem plausible. Plausible enough for basic cable, anyway. Another unlikely igure back in the spotlight, of course, is Arnold’s ex-wife, who embraced

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MAGA-dom with the same fervor she once applied to radical feminism. Barr had her own rise and fall earlier this year with a revamped, ratings-topping, vaguely Trumpist reboot of her show, which earned her a congratulatory phone call from the president before she self-immolated with a racist tweet. (“Turns out this whole election was an elaborate proxy war between Tom Arnold and Roseanne,” a podcaster named Jesse Case tweeted.) At the start of their 1994 divorce battle, Barr accused Arnold of domestic abuse. She retracted the accusation, then made it again. He’s always denied it. Their union ended after Barr became convinced, correctly, that Arnold was attracted to their young assistant. Barr set up a fake three-way marriage ceremony on Letterman, and even Arnold wasn’t sure what was going on: “Is Roseanne fucking with me?” There was, Arnold claims, at least one actual three-way encounter. When Arnold got word last year that Barr was reviving Roseanne, he was somehow naive enough to imagine he might be able to participate — after all, she had invited him to her roast in 2012. Instead, he says he learned that his agent had signed Barr as a client without telling him — effectively leaving him with no agent at all. He also began to get the distinct sense that he was unwelcome on any ABC show as long as Roseanne was running. But when it all comes crashing down, he sends an e-mail to the agent, cc’ing me. It was just a subject line: “Want me back yet?”

When I push Arnold for the full context of the alleged Apprentice slur, he claims that Trump was asked on the set about heading to Sammy’s Roumanian for dinner, and that Trump responded, “I don’t want to go uptown with all those n------.” (White House representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) It came out casually, Arnold claims, “like he’s said it a billion times before.” Later, I realize that Sammy’s Roumanian has only one location, way downtown, and I press Arnold on the maddening discrepancy. He corrects himself: It was the Harlem Italian restaurant Rao’s, he says, and Trump was asked about meeting Bo Dietl up there. (It is true that Dietl, the former-NYPD-detective-turned-media-figure, is a Rao’s devotee, and Trump has reportedly been there at least once.) Arnold also alleges that Trump calls his son Eric a “retard” in the tape, and that he uses the “c-word,” which, if ever proved, would probably be of interest to Samantha Bee. By June, Arnold is feuding with the Trump Tapes producers, even as filming chugs along. “They’re fucking idiots,” he tells me casually, more than once. He adds that they’ve all grown to “fucking hate” him, and cheerfully shares tales of screaming matches with his showrunner. By August, they’re not on speaking terms, after a backstage argument at the Television Critics Association. “Get the fuck out of my face,” Arnold says he told him, just before their press conference to launch the show. As Arnold becomes estranged from the people behind the show, even wondering whether “they are just stupid or complicit,” he sends more and more information my way. (Tensions do eventually ease to the point where he can inish the show.) “It’s down to me & you,” he texts at one point. I try to protest that I’m proiling him, not joining the investigation. But Arnold’s gravitational ield is strong. I stay skeptical but get sucked in, spending late nights sifting through Apprentice crew credits.

“If that loser can become president,” Arnold says, “this loser can take him down.”

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O: IS TOM Arnold the madman hero we didn’t know we needed, a Trump-derangement-syndrome cautionary tale, or some confounding mix of both? Over the months we stay in touch, he supplies evidence to support all three scenarios. Arnold first got to know Trump in 1990, taping an HBO comedy special with Barr at Trump’s Castle in Atlantic City. Arnold was the opening act, leading one critic to accuse Barr of “shoehorning her thin-skinned, fat-bodied husband” into the show. Trump himself cameoed, apparently at his own suggestion, chaufeuring Barr onstage in a Duesenberg. Trump and Arnold would cross paths again over the next couple of decades — including an evening when, Arnold says, they visited the Playboy Mansion together, where Trump allegedly met with a girlfriend and also lost a shoe in the pool. In 2010, the future president and his producer Mark Burnett tried unsuccessfully to get Arnold to come on board for Trump’s reality show. “I really want you on Celebrity Apprentice,” Burnett wrote in an e-mail Arnold shared with me; Arnold says Burnett and Trump also called his house. “It’s not a compliment,” says Arnold, “to myself or Donald Trump that we know the same people.”

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S WITH SO many moments in his big, weird life, it started with some stuf he did while he was high. On October 10th, 2016, three days after The Washington Post published the Access Hollywood tape that introduced the world to the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy,” Arnold tweeted the following: “Some R voting 4 him because he really is like that & worse. A man who casually uses the ‘N’ word, mic-ed up, on camera. Ask Apprentice crew.” In another tweet, an hour later, he made it clear that he was referring to outtakes from the show. At that point, all hell failed to break loose. Similar, near-contemporaneous claims from Bill Pruitt, a former Apprentice producer, got more attention — including a White House denial — before izzling out. (A source once involved with the show told me

PREVIOUS SPREAD: GROOMING BY CHERIE COMBS. THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: RON GALELLA, LTD./WIREIMAGE; BRIAN HIATT

that Pruitt got death threats at the time. Pruitt has had little further to say on the matter and didn’t respond to interview requests.) Arnold’s tale slowly began to draw more notice. He says that shortly before the election, he got a call from a Hollywood agent who told him he was “sitting next to Hillary Clinton” and that “the fate of the free world” was in his hands, if only he could produce the footage. But Arnold didn’t have it. All he ever had, if you believe him, was a long-expired temporary online link to a three-minute highlight reel of unflattering outtakes, allegedly circulated back in 2015. “It was like somebody put together a ‘fuck this guy’ [compilation],” Arnold says. “Everyone has one, on every show.” He got more specific about the supposed outtakes in a radio interview soon after the election; this time, the story was picked up everywhere, and he had to explain again, over and over, that he didn’t have the tapes. As Arnold continued to kick up a fuss about Trump, some heavy-duty journalists slipped into his orbit — even Carl Bernstein, who left him an irked voicemail after Arnold let slip on Twitter that “Watergate-level” journalists were on the case. Along the way, Arnold became a repository for oft-unveriiable Trump rumors, of which there are no shortage. He may have been the irst, for instance, to publicly mention a supposed “Trump elevator tape,” well before the Daily Beast conirmed that TMZ had discussed buying such a thing; the gossip site reportedly dropped the matter after learning that Trump Tower elevators don’t have security cameras. Arnold says they had the wrong building, and is still after the tape. The whole time, Arnold — who had irst gotten sober in 1989 after a nasty coke and alcohol habit — was addicted to Xanax and falling apart. As a teenager in his native Iowa, Arnold had a reputation among his friends as a fearless badass: He got into istights with cops, more than once, which was a thing you could survive if you were white and an Iowan in the Eighties. But he wasn’t really fearless. He just didn’t care if he died. His dad threw him out of the house at age 17, never wondering why Arnold was behaving so badly. The answer, Arnold says, was as simple as it was awful: From ages four to seven, he had been subjected to sexual abuse by a neighbor who threatened to kill his family if he ever told anyone. Trapped in his neighbor’s house, Arnold would imagine someone coming to save him — Superman, maybe. As Arnold’s son, Jax, approached his fourth birthday, the milestone triggered something in Arnold’s psyche, overwhelming him with anxi-

ODD COUPLES Top: Arnold and Barr in 1991 at the height of their marriage — they divorced in 1994. Above: With Cohen in New York this summer, as Arnold searched for the alleged Trump tapes.

ety. For victims, he was told, it’s a reaction both common and perilous. A doctor prescribed him Xanax, and his intake got out of control. In the spring of 2017, Arnold’s friends held an intervention, and he shipped of to rehab at Crossroads. After learning that Chris Cornell, whom he’d gotten to know in certain meetings, died while taking similar drugs, he got all the more serious about his recovery. “My whole thing,” says Arnold, “was getting back to my kids.” When he did return, “I did a little inventory,” he says, sitting under the sun at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge restaurant. “I went through everything I said in the fall about Trump. Everything I said publicly and privately, just to make sure that it wasn’t the benzos talking. It was all true. Sadly.” The anxiety hasn’t fully subsided. Even in the past year, sober, he says, “I’ve had moments where I felt like running out a window. Just running.” But at Crossroads, he began trauma therapy, which continues to this day. The therapist takes him back to that room, and then helps him get out. “You just don’t have this fucking wild animal stalking you anymore,” says Arnold. “This dark feeling that you could be mauled. You’re walking around lighter.” On some subconscious level, he says, Trump reminds him of his abuser, which makes him all the more embarrassed by his behavior around the future president. “You feel special when he likes you,” he says, “because that fucker doesn’t like a lot of people.” Arnold has been public about a painkiller addiction after a nasty 2008 motorcycle accident, but he has one more drug story to tell. In 2015, he spent a couple of months in Moscow, shooting a movie called Maximum Impact. He stayed at the same Ritz-Carlton where Trump spent a famous night, and Arnold presumes there were cameras. So he’d like to pre-emptively reveal the story of “three bad days.” He was lonely and in pain from his latest hair transplant. (He’s had a bunch of them, and may be the only celebrity to admit it. His hair looks great.) He kept trying to get painkillers, and a guy on set would say, “No pain pills. Want pot or cocaine?” In the end, Arnold embarked on an epic coke bender, somehow making it home on the plane despite carrying some 15 grams of cocaine on an international light. “I’m not making light of how traumatic it was for Ashley,” Arnold says in an e-mail, “and my life is a living amends to my

wife and children, but how frightened am I supposed to be of the Apprentice guy or his shirtless pony-riding man-crush when I’ve woken up from a 90-hour international cocaine psychosis eyeball-to-eyeball with the woman who has given me everything?” Fair enough.

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N GENERAL, ARNOLD’S crusade hasn’t been good for his relationships. “Nobody wants to have their name associated with me, believe me,” he says. It’s even strained his friendship with Schwarzenegger, which began on the set of True Lies. Arnold had a rough night in December 2016 at Schwarzenegger’s Christmas party, where the attendees included “all these fuckin’ conservative Republicans that voted for Trump. I had one friend say, ‘We’re from Austria, Tom, and we know Hitler, and [Hillary is] worse,’ ” he recalls. “I swear to God. I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ I got into almost a istight because somebody I love said that to me.” Then, Arnold says, a longtime Trump associate stood up and called Trump “the worst human being I’ve ever met in my life.” At that point, Arnold claims, he turned to Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, who was in attendance, and begged him for access to the show’s archives. “He goes, ‘Nothing is going to be worse than the grab-’em-by-the-pussy thing,’ ” says Arnold. “He goes, ‘Michael Cohen calls me every day. He wants all the tape. I won’t let him have it. I won’t let you have it.’ He holds up a picture of his kid as Trump’s ringbearer. ‘I can’t, mate.’ ” (Burnett’s representative said he was unavailable for comment.) Around that point, Arnold made an uncomfortable exit from the party and found himself waiting at the valet stand next to Clint Eastwood. “ ‘Oh, Tom,’ ” Arnold says Eastwood told him, “ ‘Trump is a bonehead. You know the worst part about runnin’ for mayor? If you win, then you gotta be mayor.’ ” Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, was at that point feeling optimistic about taking over for Trump as host of The Apprentice. “He’s gonna fuck you,” Arnold warned him, accurately. In June, Arnold playfully ambushed Schwarzenegger near his gym, camera crew in tow, to get him to appear on his show. In footage shared with me, Schwarzenegger is taken aback but can’t help being amused at Arnold’s audacity. He shifts into politician mode, chiding Arnold that he needs to root for Trump’s success. But he does ask, “Have you found the tapes?” “No,” Arnold admits. Schwarzenegger roars with laughter. “How long have you been trying to go after those tapes?” he says. “You are not a good spy!”

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N LATE JUNE, Arnold and I run into Michael Cohen, and things get weird. I meet Arnold one evening in New York’s Regency Hotel, where he’s staying while conducting interviews for his Vice show. We’re chatting on a banquette in the luxe lobby when we come to the topic of Cohen, who was known to be staying at the hotel. At that moment, Arnold’s eyes bug out. “He’s literally right fucking there,” he says, bolting up. [Cont. on 94] September 2018

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THE TV ISSUE

RS STYLE

The Saints & Sinners The Archie revival has turned a 75-year-old comic into a ratingsbusting guilty pleasure — and made these actors TV’s hottest stars PHO T O G R A PH S BY

PE G GY S I RO TA

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MENDES: HAIR BY KYLEE HEATH AT STARWORKS ARTISTS, MAKEUP BY KAYLEENPHOTO MCADAMS AT STARWORKS ARTISTS. REINHART: HAIR BY KRISTIN GUTTER CREDIT ESS, MAKEUP BY ADAM BREUCHAUD. PETSCH: HAIR BY MICHAEL KANYON AT CELESTINE AGENCY, MAKEUP BY ELIE MAALOUF. APA AND SPROUSE: GROOMING BY DAVID COX AT CELESTINE AGENCY

of ‘Riverdale’

AVE FOR THE main characters’ Crayola-classic hair color — and Jughead’s signature jaunty hat — people with even a passing knowledge of the 1940s-era comic Archie might not recognize its latest incarnation, Riverdale, the TV revival entering Season Three on the CW on October 10th. While the kids of modern-day Riverdale still stress about prom dates and football practice, life in their picturesque town has gotten a little more complicated in the 76 years since the cartoon’s irst run. For starters, there’s a street gang (the Southside Serpents), a drug crisis (all of Riverdale is hooked on “jingle-jangle”) and murder. Lots of it. All of the melodrama can be tough to handle for the show’s young cast of mostly newcomers. After taping the Season One inale — in which Archie and his crew pull suicidal pal Cheryl Blossom out of the icy Sweetwater River — KJ Apa, who plays Archie, headed to the hospital to treat the hand he’d broken punching fake ice, while the rest “went and grabbed a drink because it was so insane and intense,” says Madelaine Petsch, who plays Cheryl. “We were like, ‘Welcome to Riverdale!’ We say that all the time.” Indeed, for the core group that includes Apa, FROM LEFT Petsch, Lili Lili Reinhart Reinhart (Betty Sweater by Toga from Cooper), Camila Nordstrom, T-shirt by Givenchy, shorts by Topshop Mendes (Veronica Lodge) and former Madelaine Petsch Sweater by Veronica Beard, Disney darling pants by Maggie Marilyn Cole Sprouse Camila Mendes ( Jughead Jones), Shirt by John Varvatos, pants by Topshop, hat by H&M life since the show’s 2016 debut Cole Sprouse Sweater by Calvin Klein, has been equally pants by Topman surreal, if thankKJ Apa fully a lot less Sweatshirt by Dsquared2, jeans by Hudson dark. The highly stylized take on the illustrated classic has become such a sensation that its stars have been adulated and accosted everywhere from Paris to Brazil to Vancouver, where the show ilms. (Last season, Apa says, a fan living above him in a high-rise building there left a Post-it note on his window: “They must have used a broomstick or something to put it out their window and stick it on mine. I was so weirded out, I knocked on their door and said, ‘Never do that again.’ ”) Luckily, they have one another. Reinhart has shared apartments with both Petsch and Mendes. Apa and Sprouse go camping together every year after shooting wraps. “Only two years ago, our lives were completely diferent,” says Reinhart. “It’s been wonderful to do this side by side, to have someone with you in a very extraordinary circumstance that not a lot of people can relate to.” MARIA FONTOURA

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KJ Apa AGE: 21 HOMETOWN: Auckland,

New Zealand CHARACTER:

Archie Andrews

In addition to being a talented actor and honer of abs (check Instagram), the Kiwi is a skilled guitarist — so much so, he was asked to play with Kygo at Coachella in April. (He jammed on the Norwegian DJ’s hit “It Ain’t Me.”) “Being on that stage was probably the best feeling I’ve ever had,” Apa says. “I was real nervous playing in front of 100,000 people, but I just had a couple beers and it was all good.”

Cole Sprouse AGE: 26 HOMETOWN: Los Angeles CHARACTER: Jughead Jones

In the unlikely event that the roles dry up, Sprouse has a solid plan B: The New York University grad will return to his work in archaeology. “For about ive years, I was traveling the world [on digs]. I absolutely loved it. I’ve excavated raw mammoth ivory, a bas relief of an auroch. . . . At a Hellenistic site in Bulgaria, we pulled out ceramic theatrical masks. It’s a truly humbling experience.”

Madelaine Petsch AGE: 24 HOMETOWN: Port Orchard,

Washington CHARACTER:

Cheryl Blossom

Before Riverdale, Petsch was living out the quintessential L.A. story, working three jobs as a barista, an assistant and a hostess. A low point: “I was exhausted at this audition. I was supposed to sit in a chair, and I missed the mark, just sat straight on the loor. I started laughing hysterically, but they were like, ‘Get out.’ ”

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Lili Reinhart AGE: 21 HOMETOWN: Cleveland CHARACTER: Betty Cooper

You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but becoming a globe-trotting star has done nothing to dull Reinhart’s down-toearth outlook. A recent day of from shooting entailed a visit to Walgreens to buy hangers and a trip to get — wait for it — a new library card. “I don’t have an assistant, nor do I want one,” she says. “I look forward to running errands like a normal person. I enjoy it.”

Camila Mendes AGE: 24 HOMETOWN: Miami CHARACTER:

Veronica Lodge

There are tons of ways for fans to express their love for their favorite stars. Giving out cold, hard cash isn’t usually one of them. But such is the degree of devotion Mendes inspires that an admirer once just sent her money. “I had a fan Venmo me $100 on my birthday,” she says. “Usually people do a thing like that because they want you to interact with them, to respond. But I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. I’m not gonna lie, though, I cashed it. My best friend didn’t even give me $100 for my birthday!”

FROM LEFT

KJ Apa Shirt by Topman, jeans by Rag and Bone, shoes by Converse

Cole Sprouse Sweater by Vince, vintage belt, jeans by Topman, boots by Kenneth Cole

Madelaine Petsch Tuxedo dress by Styland, heels by Via Spiga

Lili Reinhart Gown by Rhea Costa, shoes by Sam Edelman

Camila Mendes Top by August Getty, jeans by Rosetta Getty, earrings by Jagger and Co., shoes by Giuseppe Zanotti

THE TV ISSUE

“Between takes we’re always gooing around — it never ends. We tease each other a lot, like siblings. We’re very much family.” CA MILA MENDES

FROM LEFT

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Madelaine Petsch

Camila Mendes

Dress by August Getty, shoes by Tory Burch

Dress by Maria Lucia Hohan, shoes by Topshop

KJ Apa

Cole Sprouse

Lili Reinhart

T-shirt by John Varvatos, jeans by All Saints from Nordstrom, boots by Kenneth Cole

T-shirt by John Varvatos, jeans by Rag and Bone, trench by the Kooples, shoes by Reschia

Corset by Atelier Michalsky, tuxedo pant by Styland, shoes by Kenneth Cole

How Before she could have a career unlike any other pop star, she had to learn how to live

Saved

BY HILLEL ARON Illustration by Nigel Buchanan

Herself

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IA FURLER IS LOOKING for love. This being 2018, that means using apps like Tinder and Bumble. She doesn’t use her real name, but she does post real photos of herself on the apps. Not that anyone recognizes her; although she’s scored hits like “Chandelier” (1.9 billion YouTube views and counting) and “Cheap Thrills” (which made her one of only a handful of women in their forties to have a Number One hit), she has for years obscured her face with an oversize blond wig whenever she performs. When a potential date asks what she does for a living, she’ll say she’s a writer. Eventually, she might say, “I’m actually also a pop star called Sia.” “I went on a couple of dates, and they were nice,” says Sia, who grew up in Australia but has lived in Los Angeles for about seven years. “It was very funny, and it was great practice. I’m trying to practice intimacy. ’Cause we don’t date in Australia. We just get together.” In the past, Sia has been trusting to a fault, jumping feet-irst into love. She dated filmmaker Erik Lang for two weeks before they got engaged in 2014. Two years later, they were divorced. She’s trying to date with the same measured control she applies to her professional life. “I probably go on two or three dates before I say, ‘Hmm, I don’t think this is my person,’ ” she says. “It’s an interesting process, dating at 42.” Most nights, Sia would just as soon be in bed by eight, watching TV with her dogs, Lick-Lick, Pantera and Cereal. She goes to 12-step meetings and hangs out with friends, most of whom she’s known since before she became a star. (I count myself among that group.) She’s made a few celebrity buddies as well, like Katy Perry, who serves as Sia’s unoicial “popstar concierge.” “She gave me the doctor that comes to your house, the nutritionist,” Sia says. “I’ve inherited all my new pop-star ways from her.”

Stardom may not have come naturally to Sia, but she’s built a career that’s unique in modern pop. She’s a songwriter and singer in equal measure, a famous hitmaker who’s more comfortable behind the scenes. She has a huge, raw voice that creaks and breaks as if teetering on the edge of a clif, or her sanity. She’s penned more than 100 pop songs for artists like Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Perry and Rihanna, whose “Diamonds” hit Number One. And she’s overcome more than her share of hurdles to get where she is today, including alcoholism, bipolar disorder, an autoimmune disorder and a suicide attempt (more on all that in a minute). Today, things are pretty good. Stable. Her life no longer hangs in the balance. But years of therapy and medication and 12-step meetings have not entirely quieted the internal monologue that helped drive her to drink and drugs. What does that monologue sound like today? “Um, mostly, ‘Fat fuck, fat fuck, fat fuck. Tree trunk, tree trunk, fat fuck, fat fuck, tree trunk, tree trunk, loser, loser, fat fuck, loser, fat fuck, fat fuck.’ “I have dieted like crazy over the last 10 years,” she explains, “trying to it into the stereotype of, like, ‘hot pop star.’ Somebody did say, ‘You don’t have to be a model. You’re actually an artist. . . . It literally doesn’t matter what you look like.’ ” I irst met Sia early in 2011. We were both sober, both living on the same block in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park. She had an efervescent personality, a sort of childlike enthusiasm that could obscure a quick wit. I assumed she was something of a has-been. She’d had a brief moment of fame years earlier, after her song “Breathe Me” was used during the inale of HBO’s Six Feet Under. But when I met her, she was living in a studio apartment with a Murphy bed and furniture she’d found on the street. A few years later, after she cowrote and sang “Titanium,” a hit for the French DJ David Guetta, her career surged and she bought a house in a nicer part of Echo Park. I remember standing in the kitchen as she told me her new plan: She was putting out an album, but she was never going to show her face; instead, she’d hide it behind a giant bob wig. She’d had a taste of fame and decided it wasn’t for her, didn’t want to be recognized in the supermarket. And I remember thinking, “What a dumb idea.” How could you make it as a pop star without showing your face? Weren’t there already photos of her online? Wasn’t this plan a bit . . . pretentious? It worked better than she could have imagined. In the era of Instagram stories, where the audience has unfettered access to their favorite celebrities, her refusal to show her face felt almost transgressive. The wig, along with some extremely catchy hits, helped make Sia an icon. In September, LSD, a supergroup she formed with Diplo and singer-producer Labrinth, will release their debut album. And Sia has also just taken on her most diicult project yet: directing her irst feature ilm, Music, due out sometime next year. It’s a musical that stars 15-year-old Maddie Ziegler, the dancer from the “Chandelier” video, as an autistic child

“Unfortunately, you can only commit sleep on Valium,” Sia says of a suicide attempt early in her career. “Or should I say fortunately.”

HILLEL ARON is a reporter living in Los Angeles. This is his irst piece for the magazine.

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who comes under the care of her sober drug-dealing sister, played by Kate Hudson. It’s about inding your voice and creating your own family, two big themes in Sia’s life. She knows it’s a gamble — a massive undertaking that could be seen as a vanity project, even though it’s a story she desperately wants to tell. Part of her already regrets it. But part of her also feels like she has no choice but to take the risk. “A lot of people in my industry have to do the same things over and over because it’s what people want,” she says. “I’ve tried to work out ways to make this fun and to see what I can get away with, essentially.”

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IA HOPS OUT of an SUV in front of the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills and is greeted by her manager, her personal assistant and two production assistants. She’s sufering from a migraine, but still talks cheerfully as she breezes through the lobby. Upstairs, a production assistant leads her down a long hallway, which the crew has covered in a plastic ilm that pops and groans as we walk across it. “Excuse you,” Sia says quietly. “What?” asks the production assistant nervously. “Oh, I was making a fart joke,” Sia says. A doctor is waiting in her dressing room to give her a shot of Tramadol — “my bum shot!” she says — for the migraine. Feeling lighter, she’s taken to meet the director. “Do you want to know what’s going on?” he asks. “Not really,” she says. “Just tell me what lines to learn.” She’s ilming a commercial for Google Assistant, and there are only a handful of lines plus facial expressions — or, rather, mouth expressions, since everything above will be covered by a beach-ball-size wig, half black and half blond. When Sia’s manager asked Google representatives if they wanted Sia with or without the wig, they were adamant: “Oh, it has to be with the wig,” they said. “The wig is famous!” For less than six hours of work, she tells me, the wig will make a million dollars. There was a time when Sia wanted to be an actor. She was accepted into the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Australia (alumni include Cate Blanchett and Baz Luhrmann), but decided she wanted to travel instead. Her dad, Phil Colson, was a blues guitarist; her mom, Loene Furler, was an artist and teacher at the local college in Adelaide (they never married, and split when Sia was 10). Sia grew up watching arthouse movies and putting on plays, talking in funny voices, pretending to be other people, dancing and singing. “That’s what got respect and love in my house,” she says. “Entertaining.” At 17, she got a job singing for Crisp, a sort of acid-jazz-funk band in Adelaide, her hometown. The irst night she performed with them, she was terriied. Someone handed her a glass of wine, her irst ever. For years afterward, she hardly went a day without a drink. Her irst love was a waiter named Dan Pontifex. The relationship lasted only a year and a half, but they remained friends, and were planning a trip to Thailand in 1997 when Pontifex was killed by a hitand-run taxicab on his 24th birthday. “It was my irst big loss, you know?” she says. “So I drank a lot and did a lot of drugs with all of his grieving friends.” Pontifex had been living in a three-bedroom house in London with a dozen other Australians.

FROM TOP: THEO WARGO/GETTY IMAGES; JIM DYSON/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES

Most had never met Sia, but welcomed her with open arms. They grieved, drank, got high, and in short order she’d moved into the house. She got a job bartending, but was ired for giving away too many drinks. She sang backup on some unreleased Jamiroquai tracks, and recorded two solo albums: 1997’s OnlySee, which sold roughly 1,200 copies, and 2001’s Healing Is Diicult. A critic for the BBC raved, “It’s not really a question of drawing parallels with other vocalists; rather that in years to come it is others that will be compared to her.” But even though the album’s lead single hit the Top 10 in the U.K., sales were middling, and she was dropped by her label. Sia moved to the south of England, in with her alpaca-farmer boyfriend. One morning she woke up to a volley of e-mails from friends in the U.S. about “Breathe Me” being used in Six Feet Under. All of a sudden, the song was all over KCRW and other indie stations. The success was hardearned: The night she had written “Breathe Me,” she’d tried to kill herself by washing down 22 Valium with a bottle of vodka. “Unfortunately,” she says, “you can only commit sleep on Valium — or should I say fortunately.” Her next two albums were moderate successes, charting in the Top 40 but failing to produce hits outside Australia. And by late 2010, there was an even bigger problem to face: She still wanted to die. She was bottoming out again, drinking too much vodka, taking Xanax and OxyContin, watching too much TV, living in near-isolation. She decided to check into the hotel around the corner from her apartment and take all the pills she had. She wrote letters to the hotel manager and the maid, hoping to spare them the trauma of inding her cold, dead body: “Please do not come in. I am dead inside. Please call an ambulance.” Before she could leave for the hotel, her phone rang. Sia answered it and heard an old friend say, “Squiddly-diddly-doo!” That was how Sia used to answer, back when she still had a spark. “There must have been a part of me that really wanted to live,” she recalls, “because in that moment, I thought, ‘There’s a world out there and I’m not a part of it. But I might like to be.’ ” Instead of checking into the hotel, she called her dog-walker, who was sober. The next day, she went to her irst 12-step meeting.

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IA IS HOPING to be out of the Google shoot by 9 p.m. — she’s been invited to Kanye West’s house, in Hidden Hills, for a party. But the shoot is dragging on, as they tend to. In her dressing room, she dons a white robe and sits down with her manager, Jonathan Daniel (whom everyone calls J.D.), to listen to a few tracks she recently cut with LSD. Daniel taps both feet to the irst song, “Genius,” a sort of back-and-forth between Sia and Labrinth, with references to Einstein and Stephen Hawking

BEHIND THE WIG

motion. She’d been diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an auLEFT Onstage with Maddie Ziegler, who has become toimmune disorder brought Sia’s recurring avatar. “I about, in part, by stress. “The feel like we’re the same age music business was essentialsometimes,” Ziegler says of ly killing her,” J.D. says. By Sia. “She has the qualities then, Sia knew exactly what of a 15-year-old.” BELOW Sia she wanted. She wanted to with bottle in hand, 2001. She got sober around 2011. be a pop songwriter: invisBOTTOM With Katy Perry, ible, behind the scenes and 2016. Sia has co-written rich. “Well, do you like pop three songs for Perry, music?” asked J.D. who has become Sia’s “I like Beyoncé,” Sia said. “pop-star concierge.” ”She Sia had written four songs gave me the doctor that comes to your house, the for Christina Aguilera. None nutritionist,” Sia says. “I’ve were hits, and subsequent atinherited all my new poptempts at songwriting went star ways from her.” unsold. Daniel explained that most pop hits nowadays were hung on a single concept or metaphor — something precise and Googleable. Like Perry’s “Firework.” “So, like, ‘Piggy Bank’?” Sia asked. “As in, ‘I ain’t no piggy bank.’ ” “Exactly!” said J.D. “Titanium,” her track for Guetta, took less than an hour. Most of the lyrics simply restated the central concept: “You shoot me down but I won’t fall. I am titanium.” It was like “Eye of the Tiger,” but for not being a doormat. When she sent the demo to Daniel, he knew instantly: “This is a hit song.” But Sia was adamant: “I’m not and a chorus singing this kind of song,” she said. that goes, “Only In part, she was nervous about being seen as a a genius could sellout. Besides, she hated house music, and didn’t love a woman feel the lyrics were true to her perspective — she like me.” certainly didn’t feel bulletproof. Perry passed on Sia likes “Geit, thinking it was too much like “Firework.” Mary J. nius,” but says, Blige recorded a version that went unused. Sia didn’t “It’s still missing that amazing hook.” She turns to know her vocals were on the song until a fan tweetaddress Labrinth, who’s on speakerphone: “It’s shit ed at her, “You’re singing on the next David Guetlyrics, babe. It’s fun, but it’s shit. If you want, you ta album?” could do way better. You can do better than ‘lock She was furious. “I had worked so hard to be this your heart’ or whatever.” cool, credible artist,” she says. “And then inally, “I like ‘You’re the lock and I’m the key,’ ” says I’ve retired to just work behind the scenes, and then Labrinth. I’m on, like, a cheesy pop house song.” In the end, “I agree it’s pop,” interjects Daniel. though, it was hard to stay mad. The song went dou“We did get Hawking in there,” she says. “And ble-platinum and paid for the house in Echo Park. Galileo.” Several hits later, Sia usually gets 50 percent of Next they listen to what J.D. wants to be the secthe publishing proits for any song she writes, a deal ond single, “Audio,” a slower song with a muted known in the industry as an “urban split.” (As opbeat. Sia makes a vomit motion with her hands. posed to a “pop split,” where proits are split equal“It’s not your inest lyrics,” J.D. says with a smirk. ly among the songwriters and all the producers.) A “It’s like I can’t steal any more from Grace Jones,” producer once asked why she deserved that kind of says Sia (who, by the way, never makes it to Kanye’s deal. “Because I don’t think I should have to pay for house, opting instead for her bed and the company the fact that you need two people to do your job,” of Lick-Lick, Pantera and Cereal). Sia said. These days, Sia doesn’t listen to pop music. Her The producer replied, “But it takes you, like, 20 iPhone is practically barren; all she has on iTunes is minutes to write and sing the song. Then I have to Keith Jarrett’s Köln live album, a Madness song and go away and spend two or three weeks producing it.” “The Macarena.” And she can be harshly critical of “Yeah,” Sia said, “but it took me 15 years to take her own work. Of her biggest hit, “Cheap Thrills,” 20 minutes.” she says, “That one’s not cheesy, that’s straight luf.” Actually, she wrote “Diamonds,” Rihanna’s NumWhen Sia met J.D. in 2010, she was desperate for a ber One hit, in 14 minutes. She was [Cont. on 97] change — sick of touring, sick of interviews and proSeptember 2018

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Blood and I Oil By Seth Harp Illustration by MIKE McQUADE

Mexico’s drug cartels are moving into the gasoline industry and waging open war with the military. Can the country’s new populist president contain the chaos? 78 |

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N HIS WHITE SWEATSHIRT and hot-pink Nikes, the man sitting on a park bench in front of the cathedral in Orizaba looks like an ordinary 32-year-old, but he’s talking about murdering people. He tells me he’s done it eight times and explains the sort of thing that, in his line of work, gets a person killed. “Being a wiseguy,” he says. “Acting tough. Going around like a badass. That obligates you to break them.” He details his methods: “First, you give them an ass-kicking,” he says. “Then, you inish them with a head shot. Or you torture them, so they sing what they know, who they’ve been talking to. You use knives, an ax, whatever you have at hand. A machete. This business we’re in obligates you to do that. That’s the life we live.” ¶ It’s not the life of a narcotraicker he’s describing, though this part of Mexico is dominated by organized crime. He does not produce or transport drugs, and he’s never smuggled anything across the border. He’s the field boss of a gasolinestealing maia, one of perhaps half a dozen based here in the lawless Eastern Sierra Madre. His gang of 25 fuel thieves rides around in ive pickup trucks with 1,000liter pallet tanks and a pile of tools, drilling illegal taps in underground pipelines. They sell the stolen product to taxi drivers, bus companies and long-haul truckers at a signiicant discount to the price at gas stations run by Petroleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex, the national oil company. On a good day, he says, he can gross more than $10,000. “The way I look at it, this

is my town,” he says. “The gasoline lowing through here is mine.” Fuel thieves, known in Spanish as huachicoleros (pronounced “watchy-coh-leh-rohs”), have always been around in Mexico, a country with vast oil wealth and a rich tradition of social banditry. In the past, your typical huachicoleros were small bands of grimy outlaws, largely harmless Robin Hoods who operated quietly and earned the goodwill of the people by handing out free buckets of gasoline and sponsoring parades and festivals in poor villages. Accordion ballads celebrated the huachicolero lifestyle, and huachicoleros even got their own patron saint, El Santo Niño Huachicol, a kind of Christ child depicted holding a siphon and a jerrycan. All that has changed over the past few years, as Mexico’s drug-trafficking cartels have moved to monopolize all forms of crime, including fuel theft, muscling out smaller operators with paramilitary tactics honed in the drug war. Black-market gasoline is now a billion-dollar economy, and free-standing gasoline maias are gaining power in their own right, throwing a volatile accelerant onto the dirty mix of drugs and guns that has already killed some 200,000 Mexicans over the past decade. The most violent year in Mexico’s recorded history was 2017, and some observers now say the conlict has as much to do with petroleum as it does with narcotics. Pemex is one of the world’s biggest oil companies, a sprawling nationwide power complex with gross revenues of more than $100 billion. Legally, the country’s oil wealth is the property of the people; for decades, Pemex was a government cash cow, funding infrastructure investment and generous social programs even as taxes were kept low. But with production on the decline since 2010 and fuel theft on the rise, Pemex is now a net drain on the federal treasury. “We’ve had to pour 110 billion pesos [about $6 billion] per year from the central bank into the oil company for the last four years,” says Manuel Jose Molano Ruiz, an economist at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. “It’s serious damage to the treasury, money out of every Mexican’s pocket.” In response, a political coalition led by outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto recently ended the company’s monopoly and opened the energy industry to private foreign investment. For the irst time in modern history, multinational oil corporations are moving in, risking the unstable security situation for a chance to get a piece of Mexico’s reserves — an estimated 9 billion barrels of crude oil and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The need to protect the nation’s energy infrastructure has handed the Mexican government a second security crisis parallel to the ongoing drug war. Last December, Peña Nieto signed the Internal Security Law, which gives the Mexican military the authority to police the country, a measure that can fairly be described as martial law. SETH HARP wrote about America’s secret war in Syria last September.

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Both policies have proved extremely unpopular, with something like 80 percent of Mexicans opposing foreign control over what they consider their national patrimony. In a historic presidential election held July 1st, Mexicans overwhelmingly voted for a crusading outsider named Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a sort of Mexican Bernie Sanders: a white-haired socialist who has spent his entire political career railing against the influence of money in politics. He lives in a drab townhouse, drives an old car and walks the streets without bodyguards — a gesture that galls even his supporters, as more than 100 politicians were assassinated in Mexico during the 2018 election cycle. Mexico’s last three presidents were business-friendly centrists who promoted free trade and close military cooperation with the United States. López Obrador has criticized the privatization of Pemex and wants to decouple Mexico’s security from the U.S.-led drug war. He has also pledged to deal with crime by addressing the root causes, which he says are poverty and government corruption. In one campaign video, López Obrador stands in front of a Pemex station, which he says is run by a “power maia,” and claims that for every barrel of gasoline that huachicoleros steal, 10 barrels are stolen by high-level officials in Pemex and the government. “We need to punish the low-level huachicoleros,” he says, “but also the white-collar huachicoleros up top.” The man in pink Nikes has met me in this quaint but dangerous mountain town to give an insider’s account of the gangland petro-

Black-Market Merchandise Above: A woman sells gasoline stolen from pipelines on the black market in Veracruz, Mexico. Opposite page: Members of the army transport fuel seized from huachicoleros in Juarez.

leum wars. He says he has informants inside Pemex and has bought of the cops in all ive municipalities around Orizaba. Roving military patrols, though, are a constant threat. Not long ago, he says, two truckloads of Mexican marines surprised him and his gang near Maltrata, a village in the mountains west of Orizaba. “Thirteen of my guys died, along with two marines,” he says. “We got out of there, but we lost the cargo.” As we talk, he keeps an eye on our surroundings from under the brim of his ball cap, falling silent every time someone walks past. “In the beginning, you’re afraid,” he says. “But you end up losing all fear, and you start to like it, especially after surviving a gunight.” His gang doesn’t have a name, and he doesn’t belong to Los Zetas, the cartel that dominates this state, but once a month he pays a $10,000 tribute to steal gasoline. The heart of the huachicolero economy is about an hour’s drive west, a region of central Puebla known as the Red Triangle, where dozens of pipelines intersect. Los Zetas used to control the Red Triangle, but lately the ascendant powerhouse in Mexico, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, has been taking over. Every few days mutilated bodies turn up in the Red Triangle towns of Acajete, Acatzingo, Quecholac, Tepeaca and Palmar de Bravo, the corpses beaten and dismembered, sometimes with their faces peeled of — a signature of the CJNG. On March 29th, police found a man’s body alongside the Puebla-Orizaba highway with a note stuck in his back with a dagger. They would only disclose that the note contained a threat against local

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Blood and Oil

huachicoleros and was signed by the CJNG. “Puebla was one of the most peaceful places in Mexico until the CJNG arrived,” says Claudia Lemuz Hernández, the editorial director of Municipios Puebla. “Now when you go out in the morning, the police can’t guarantee you won’t be caught in a ireight.” Most analysts consider the CJNG, under its secretive leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias El Mencho, to be the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico — and the country’s reserves of oil and gas represent a potential source of wealth far greater than illegal narcotics could ever yield. The CJNG has been expanding into the state of Guanajuato, another pipeline-dense territory, but the independent gasoline maia there doesn’t seem intimidated. Last fall, the local huachicolero

ico since they were kicked out in the wake of the populist Revolution of 1910, having engendered deep resentment for pushing around government oicials and unions, paying Mexican workers lower wages than Anglos, and expatriating their proits to London and New York. Pemex was founded on the nationalist idea that Mexicans would themselves be responsible for developing Mexico’s oil wealth, and the proits would be used to beneit the country as a whole. It eventually grew bigger than Gazprom, the Russian state oil company, but it has always had a problem with internal malfeasance and featherbedding. “Corporate governance is poor,” says Duncan Wood, head of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center. “It’s disorganized. There are little iefdoms within it.

Mexico’s national oil company, Pemex, has always had a problem

Where there is pipeline theft, there are ires and spills. The huachicolero I meet in Orizaba tells me that once, when his crew couldn’t igure out how to shut of a drilled tap, they just disconnected the hose and left it gushing gasoline onto the ground. “It’s very risky,” he says. “At any time there can be a spark, an explosion.” In July 2017, an illegal tap northwest of Mexico City ruptured and shot up a 30-foot gusher of gasoline, soaking houses and ields before Pemex workers controlled it, though not before the Aculco River was badly contaminated. In March 2016, 20 people died after a tanker truck rolled over during a botched hijacking and exploded. One of the worst pipeline ires on record occurred in December 2010, in the huachicolero hotbed of San Martín Texmelucan. After torrents of gasoline looded the town, a spark turned the streets into rivers of ire. The cloud of toxic

with internal malfeasance: “It’s disorganized,” says an expert.

ARIEL OJEDA/RCC/”EL UNIVERSAL”/AP IMAGES

“There are little fiefdoms within it. They strike deals with organized crime and turn a blind eye.” boss, known as El Marro, or the Sledgehammer, posted a video on YouTube in which he brazenly threatens El Mencho’s henchmen. “We’re going to take out the trash with you in this state,” the Sledgehammer says in the video. Behind him nearly a hundred huachicoleros all dressed in black with body armor

They strike deals with organized crime and turn a blind eye.” Patrick Corcoran, an analyst at InSight Crime, puts it even more succinctly: “Pemex is a massive cash cow, riddled with corruption.” Estimates vary, but thieves are currently making of with about 23,500 barrels of fuel

and ski masks whoop and whistle, brandishing an arsenal of military weaponry. “Whenever you sons of bitches want it, here we are,” he shouts over the sound of dozens of guns emptying into the air.

every day. Molano Ruiz says gasoline theft on that scale isn’t technically possible without assistance from Pemex insiders, who supply huachicoleros with maps of pipeline networks, tip-ofs on when to expect fuel to be lowing, and the necessary tools and parts, including specialized valves. “It’s not like you can buy that stuf in hardware stores,” he says. Between 2006 and 2015, 135 Pemex employees were arrested in connection with fuel theft. One engineer charged $1,250 for every illegal extraction he oversaw.

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INCE ITS FOUNDING 80 years ago, Pemex has been a national symbol of oil sovereignty, its red-whiteand-green logo as familiar a sight as the Mexican lag. British and American oil companies haven’t been welcome in Mex-

smoke was so big that NASA photographed it from space. Twenty-nine people died, including 13 children. The government blamed Los Zetas. Peña Nieto’s solution was to end Pemex’s monopoly and open the energy industry to foreign corporations, which he and his allies consider inherently more eicient and less susceptible to corruption than a state-owned enterprise. It took them ive years to amend the constitution and implement a free-market framework — “the mother of all reforms,” as Wood puts it; an opportunity American irms have been “drooling over for 80 years,” says Corcoran — but privatization is now a done deal. Even as violence spiked in 2017, multinational giants like Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell were moving in; hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was booming on the shale-rock formations south of Texas; and the government was auctioning deepwater exploration rights to Wall Street consortia. The reforms were supposed to lower costs at the pumps but ended up doing the opposite. Public anger at the price hikes occasionally boiled over into riots, and contributed to the election of López Obrador. It’s diicult to know what goes on inside Pemex, but there are two important numbers to consider. The irst is $1.5 billion. That’s the estimated amount of product huachicoleros are stealing annually. The second is $19 billion. That’s how much Pemex has lost, on average, per year, since 2013. Ineiciencies certainly contribute, but government auditors have lagged more than a hundred contracts that Pemex has issued in recent years, amounting to more than $11 billion in suspected fraud. Losses that large lend credence to López Obrador’s accusations that, as bad as the problem of gasoline theft looks at street level, the wild gun battles may be only a supericial symptom of a free-for-all that mostly takes place in air-conditioned boardrooms. “Everyone has their hand in the cookie jar,” says one former Pemex oicial September 2018

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Blood and Oil

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N THE CORNER of a quiet cafe in Puebla, a 49-year-old native of Veracruz whom I will call Ernesto Navarro relates a story about Los Zetas’ entry into the gasolinestealing business. Navarro, who recently retired, enlisted in the Mexican army out of high school and spent his adult life serving in elite units, including a special-forces corps that was trained in counterinsurgency at the U.S. military program known as the School of the Americas. In 2011, while working for state security in Veracruz, he was assigned by the governor to a task force investigating a Zetas cell in a stretch of the Eastern Sierra Madre that is well-known bandit country and of-limits to government security forces. Navarro assembled a small team of military operatives, all of them authentic jarochos who

ally a drug cartel,” Correa-Cabrera tells me. The original Zetas were special-forces veterans, and she describes the organization as a “criminal paramilitary in transnational business” like a hybrid of Halliburton and Blackwater. As she explains it, Los Zetas’ competitive advantage was not in growing marijuana and poppy or coming up with innovative ways to sneak drugs across the border — it was in taking control of strategic territory with overt military force. Once in control of a city or state, Los Zetas would diversify, branching out into criminal activities including pimping, extortion, kidnapping for ransom, gunrunning and even digital piracy, but nothing proved so proitable as stealing gasoline. Los Zetas have lost a lot of ground in the past decade, but the paramilitary model they pioneered are now standard among Mexico’s major cartels, which have also followed

But when it comes to the illegal trade of oil and gas, “there is no nuclear option.”

“Theoretically, you could legalize drugs,” says one analyst who studies fuel theft, but with cartels now entering the oil and gas industry, “there is no nuclear option” to ease the violence. could speak the lingo and blend in with locals. They dressed in old, muddy clothing and drove a beat-up truck loaded with vegetables into the sierra, where they spent two weeks living among the people, drifting from village to village, passing themselves of as vegetable sellers while collecting information, drawing up maps and taking photos with a hidden camera. One day, in a dirt-road village called La Guadalupe, Navarro and his team were eating beans and tortillas at a cantina, eavesdropping on a handful of criminals drinking beer at the bar, when a truckload of marines pulled up to the bodega across the street. Navarro was confused. “It was not possible,” he says. Los Zetas had the whole zone under surveillance; if their “falcons” had spotted a marine patrol approaching, all the narcos would have disappeared into the mountains. Taking a closer look, he saw the “marines” were of-loading containers of gasoline to be sold at the bodega. Their weapons were real, but their uniforms and vehicle were counterfeit, “cloned,” as Navarro puts it. “These guys were pure huachicoleros,” he says. “They had just gotten done ‘milking’ a pipeline.” It was the irst time he’d seen Los Zetas dealing in stolen gasoline. In her book Los Zetas Inc., the Mexican-American academic Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera documents the many ways the cartel has invaded the energy industry in northeastern Mexico. “They were never re-

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Los Zetas’ lead in exploiting extractive industries: La Familia Michoacána has illegally exported millions of tons of iron ore from the Lázaro Cardenas port; the Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos cartels prey on the Los Filos gold mine in Guerrero; and the Gulf Cartel is stealing natural gas from the Burgos Basin. According to Correa-Cabrera, the drug war has morphed into a broader armed conlict for control of natural resources, with multiple criminal militias and a weak central state vying over mines, ports and oil ields. It’s a dangerous escalation that only makes the cartels more entrenched because they no longer rely on a single income stream. “Theoretically, you could legalize drugs,” says Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, an academic who has long studied fuel theft in Mexico.

The Home of a Hired Killer An ex-assassin for Los Zetas, seated at his kitchen table, shows of his military disguise. He says the sale of stolen gasoline is now “as profitable as drugs” for the cartel.

LATE ONE NIGHT last December, I arrive at a small brick house in a dingy suburb not far from the Texas border. Most of the lawns on the block are lit up with Christmas decorations, but this house is dark, with scraggly rosebushes under the windows. The man who lives here used to be a sicario, an assassin for Los Zetas, whom I have agreed to identify only by his alias, El Polkas. He’s tall, looks to be in his forties and cuts an ogrelike igure with a pointy head and a distended stomach. He lets me in the front door and disappears into a back bedroom, giving me a chance to look around. There are two women on the couch, one of whom is bottlefeeding an infant. There’s a Christmas tree with presents under it and a sign above a sliding glass door that says Dios bendiga esta casa: God bless this home. It smells faintly of moldy carpet. From the back bedroom I hear the unmistakable sound of an assault rile being loaded and racked, like stomping on a beer can. El Polkas comes out and lays two loaded weapons on the kitchen table, an AR-15 with a scope and collapsible stock, and a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. He has changed into the pixelated camoulage uniform of La Marina, Mexico’s naval infantry; he also has uniforms of the federal, state, municipal and judicial police, all of them authentic, he says, including identiication cards. Like a lot of hit men, El Polkas was working as a police oficer when the cartel recruited him. While a sicario, his only job was to carry out kidnappings and executions. He was kept well supplied with weapons and ammunition as well as Buchanan’s whiskey and large quantities of cocaine. He would only receive information on a target — a name or a photograph texted to his phone — on the way to a location. Interrogations were done on a ranch or at a secure safe house. Bodies were buried in a clandestine grave. He says he personally killed 32 people before he got out of Los Zetas by special dispensation of the boss, Heriberto Lazcano. (Incidentally, Lazcano, an ex-paratrooper who led Los Zetas from 2006 until his death in a 2012 ireight, came up in the same special-forces unit as Navarro.) Lazcano allowed El Polkas to leave the cartel on condition he go into hiding. El Polkas says Los Zetas began selling stolen gasoline around 2010, a time when the cartel was roundly besieged by rivals and the military. “Everyone had started ighting,” he says. “We were losing money.” The irst robberies were opportunistic hijackings of tanker trucks, but soon they got into tapping

SETH HARP

who asked not to be named. “You’re touching the Achilles’ heel of Mexico.”

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From Drug War to Civil War?

Oil and Gas Reserves

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The majority of Mexico’s reserves, an estimated 9 billion barrels of oil and 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, lies on the Gulf Coast and in the shale rock formations south of Texas.

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An abundance of mineral wealth combined with a weak central state is a recipe for civil war. In Mexico, the regions richest in oil and gas have also seen the highest levels of violence. Cartels that once competed over drug-smuggling routes are now also battling for control of natural resources and energy infrastructure.

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COAHUILA Reynosa NUEVO LEON

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Reynosa, Tamaulipas

Palmarito, Puebla

More than 500 people were killed in the past year during fighting between Gulf Cartel factions in Reynosa, a major pipeline hub and refinery town.

Mexican soldiers were seen on surveillance footage executing a gasoline thief after a May 2017 gun battle that left 10 people dead.

Cárdenas, Tabasco

Matamoros, Coahuila

Thirty Pemex workers were injured after a stolen tanker truck crashed into a pipeline and exploded in December 2015.

In 2017, authorities discovered the incinerated remains of 3,000 people at a cartel extermination camp in Coahuila, where Los Zetas are known to operate coal mines.

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Mexico City, Federal District 3

In January 2017, four people died and hundreds were arrested during nationwide protests against the government’s energy reforms, which have caused a spike in gasoline prices.

San Martín Texmelucan, Puebla 6

In December 2010, Los Zetas caused a gigantic pipeline explosion that killed 29 people and burned 115 homes.

Tamaulipas Guanajuato Puebla

G U L F O F M E X I C O

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Tamaulipas

ZACATECAS Mazatlán SAN LUIS POTOSI

Tepic

Guanajuato The state of Guanajuato has become a battleground between the CJNG and the local gasoline mafia, led by a crime boss known as the Sledgehammer.

Veracruz

There are more than 3,500 active gas wells in Tamaulipas’ Burgos Basin, where competition between Gulf Cartel factions and splinter elements of Los Zetas is driving extreme violence.

M E X I C O

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Veracruz

Brownsville, TEXAS

Matamoros

Flashpoints of Violence

Oil and gas regions

Some of the richest oil and gas deposits in the Americas are around the port of Veracruz, a longtime stronghold of Los Zetas that has come under repeated attacks by the CJNG. Cancûn YUCATÁN

HIDALGO

QUINTANA ROO

Mexico City 3

JALISCO

TABASCO

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San Martin Texmelucan

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CAMPECHE

Palmarito 2

Cardenas

BELIZE Acapulco

CHIAPAS

OAXACA

G UAT E M A L A Puebla P A C I F I C O C E A N

H O N D U R AS

Numerous pipelines bringing oil and gas from the Gulf Coast toward Mexico City intersect in a region of central Puebla known as the “Red Triangle,” which has been rocked by fighting between Los Zetas and the CJNG.

E L SA LVA D O R

300 MILES

Gasoline mafias are throwing accelerant onto the mix of drugs and pipelines directly. They found it extremely proitable, with no need to smuggle the product across the increasingly militarized U.S. border, and with a much broader market than illegal drugs. “Everybody needs gasoline,” El Polkas says. “You’re always going to have customers. Especially when it’s cheap.” In a typical arrangement, he says, Los Zetas designate a low-level police oicer or traic cop on the cartel’s payroll to oversee a crew of huachicoleros, who get paid 500 to 1,000 pesos a day to do the dirty, dangerous work of tapping pipelines. That’s about $40, a good wage for manual labor in Mexico, but if they commit an error, like losing gasoline to the military or accidentally starting a ire, the punishment is death. On the day of the jale, or pull, they set out in a leet of stolen pickup trucks carrying their trademark 1,000-liter pallet tanks. The target location is usually based on a tip from a Pemex employee, an unpatrolled spot where a batch of fuel is expected to be passing through. If the pipeline is buried, they dig it up. If it’s been sealed in concrete, they chisel it out. “Hot-tapping,” the process of perforating the

guns that’s killed some 200,000 people in the past decade – 2017 was the most violent year in Mexico’s history. pipe, is the most delicate operation. First they solder a valve with a threaded nipple onto the surface, then use an auger to drill a hole through it. With high-pressure gasoline spewing in their faces, they screw a hose onto the nipple and use the valve to get the low under control. Once the hose is hooked up, it takes less than a minute to ill an entire pallet tank, a square plastic container that its in the bed of a half-ton pickup. Much of the stolen fuel is offloaded at communal farms known as ejidos, El Polkas says, where farmworkers are forced to buy the gasoline whether they want it or not. On stretches of highway far from Pemex stations, it’s common to see people reselling bottles and jugs of huachicol on the side of the road, carrying funnels and siphons, wearing bandannas or paper face masks against the fumes. “I don’t earn anything from this,” says a 27-year-old woman from Orizaba, who sells stolen gas from her house

on behalf of Los Zetas. She explains the arrangement as a sort of protection racket. In exchange for fencing the stuf, Los Zetas let you live otherwise normally. In the meantime, you’re stuck with the toxic, lammable liquid. “This stuf is horrible,” she says. “It smells, it’s ugly, it’s corrosive, it burns your hands, and I’m afraid it will blow up the house.” “It’s good business,” El Polkas says with a shrug. “It makes a lot of money.” When I ask how gasoline compares to narcotics, in terms of overall revenue to Los Zetas, he rubs his index ingers together. “Fifty-ifty,” he says. “It’s approximately as proitable as drugs.”

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HE ARMED CONFLICT between the cartels and Mexico’s military, which has dragged on for 12 years, now ranks as the deadliest war in the world apart from Syria. The lack of security, especially in the north and east of the

Map by Emily Pettit and Meghan Kelly, University of Wisconsin Cartography Lab | 83

Blood and Oil ed. As for security, he has called for a national guard that would merge military and police functions; job programs and scholarships to entice children away from cartels; limited decriminalization of drug possession; and some form of amnesty for low-level, nonviolent cartel workers like farmers and lookouts. But he has not answered the fundamental question of whether, under his leadership, Mexico’s military will continue to hunt down and take out one cartel boss after another, in close cooperation with the DEA and CIA. “You can’t ight ire with ire,” López Obrador said during his campaign. Another of his slogans was “abrazos no balazos,” meaning “hugs not guns.” At the same time, he has failed to speak out against the controversial Internal Security Law, which the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all denounced as unbeitting a democratic society. “The military isn’t trained for policing,” says Daniel Wilkinson, a Latin America expert at Human Rights Watch. “It’s trained for combat.”

los militares.” When I ask what the marines would want with a bale of marijuana, the sicario’s oaish face lights up with a childlike smile. “For the platoon to smoke,” he says.

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N THE RED Triangle region of Puebla, a number of armed groups are competing over access to the Minatitlán-Mexico City pipeline. Some are direct cartel subsidiaries, others are only loosely allied, and some are completely independent, causing a cross-multiplication of potential conlicts. Up until last year, the two most dominant huachicolero bosses were said to be Zetas: Jesús Martín Mirón López, alias El Kalimba, a swaggering 27-year-old ex-cop; and Roberto de los Santos de Jesús, 37, also a former police oicer, nicknamed El Bukanans, presumably for Buchanan’s whiskey, the preferred beverage of Mexico’s criminal class. They were notorious for bullying men and boys into working for them, robbing houses, looting stores and stealing pickup trucks to carry their pallet tanks; at the sight of El Bukanans’ infamous yellow Corvette, people would lee indoors. Things started to change in early 2017, with the arrival of the CJNG “Once you pay, they give you a phone,” says a U.S.-based gas smuggler of in Puebla. As the CJNG the cartels. “If you have any problems, they’ll be there to fix it within two spreads, it is also waging a public-relations minutes. Four times I’ve had to call this number with a gun to my head.” campaign to present itself as a social-cleansAccording to a study by Paul Chevigny, a cates hired trained soldiers and invested in ing force, a cartel that smuggles drugs but retired New York University professor, the doesn’t rob and rape and kidnap like the arsenals and armored vehicles, evolving into far more powerful criminal militias like Los Mexican army kills eight enemies for every hated Zetas. CJNG was relatively unknown one it wounds, a highly unlikely ratio comuntil 2011, when it systematically massacred Zetas and the CJNG, which have a lot more than $2.5 billion to spend and easy access pared with other modern wars. That means nearly a hundred suspected Zetas over a period of 18 days in Veracruz. Something like to a booming irearms black market, thanks Mexican soldiers are either the best marksto lax regulations in the U.S. Nowadays, ire- men in the world, or they make a practice that is now happening in Puebla, where Zetas-backed huachicoleros have been turnfights between the cartels and the armed of summary executions. “When they ing up dead all year, some chopped to pieces forces can be outright urban infantry bat- catch them, they kill them,” El Polkas says, swiping his palms togethand left in plastic bags, some dismembered tles, with machine guns and rocket-propelled and left on public squares, some with their grenades and even helicopter gunships un- er. “It just happened to three friends faces layed of. loading on safe houses. In places like Reyno- of mine.” El Polkas says the men were emThe purge reached a climax in early Nosa and Tepic, people live in fear of the next vember 2017, when 20 people were killed in round of ighting, monitoring the situation ployed in stealing gasoline from the one week, including some of the most wellon social media and evacuating their chil- node of pipelines in northern Tamaulipas. Every time the police caught known huachicoleros. El Bukanans seems to dren from school as soon as the shooting them they bribed their way out of have escaped to the mountains around Acultstarts. zingo, his hometown, but El Kalimba made López Obrador got elected, in part, by jail, till a fresh contingent of marines from Mexico City caught them in the a fatal mistake. He went to a plastic surgeon showing a willingness to change course, in Puebla to have his ingerprints removed but he hasn’t laid out a detailed plan of ac- act of tapping a pipeline outside the and his facial features altered, presumably to tion. “Anybody who tells you they know village of San Germán. He takes out his phone and shows me photos of the afterevade the CJNG. While he was unconscious what he’s going to do is fooling you,” says The Incoming on the operating table, gunmen burst in and Lansberg-Rodriguez. While opponents try math: three men lying dead, their arms and President killed him along with his girlfriend and two to make López Obrador out as another Hugo necks deeply gashed by high-caliber bullets, André Manuel bodyguards. On their way out, the assassins Chavez, a leftist dictator who will ruin the their white truck splattered with blood. On López Obrador was took the security cameras and video moncountry, he has steadily tacked toward the top of the bodies are a couple of military ireelected in July and has promised to itors; the only witnesses were a nurse and center since narrowly losing the presiden- arms, including a Barrett M82, a .50-caliber root out crime and two little kids, ages ive and eight, who hid at cy in 2006 and again in 2012. And he only rile issued to government snipers. “The macorruption inside the irst sound of gunshots. won this year after amassing a broad coali- rines planted those,” El Polkas says. “It’s a the national oil But the CJNG hasn’t driven huachicoleros tion of allies that Lansberg-Rodriguez likens complete sham.” He says his friends would company Pemex. still be alive if they’d had money to negotifrom Puebla, only installed a new boss: Anto Noah’s ark; with such a mixed base to keep ate, and relates a recent incident in which tonio Martínez Fuentes, alias El Toñín, a forhappy, the 64-year-old president-elect can the marines captured the Gulf Cartel’s secmer carrot farmer in his ifties who is known only “make very broad, open-ended promises with a grandfatherly smile.” ond-in-command in Matamoros. “This guy for throwing big parties and handing out toys Though López Obrador opposed the pri- grabs his phone and dials up the general. to children. A corrido extolling his virtues was recently posted to YouTube: “There are vatization of Pemex, he has indicated that For $50,000 and 50 kilos of marijuana, they some heavy dudes in Palmarito . . . cars and he will not try to undo the free-market re- let him go. He also gave up 10,000 pesos he forms that have already been implement- had on his person. That’s how it works with bitchin’ trucks, plenty of money . . . They call

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CARLOS TISCHLER/GETTY IMAGES

country, was the main reason the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, didn’t stand a chance in July’s election. Neither did the National Action Party, or PAN, though it’s traditionally been the PRI’s only competitor. López Obrador dominated them both with the biggest margin of victory in 36 years. But winning the election will be easy compared with governing. When he takes oice on December 1st, he will assume high command over what Correa-Cabrera and other observers call a modern civil war. It was in 2006 that then-president Felipe Calderón, with the support and encouragement of George W. Bush, made the fateful decision to deploy Mexico’s army and navy around the country to ight organized crime. In 2008, the United States and Mexico signed the Mérida Initiative, under which the U.S. gave nearly $2.5 billion in military aid to the Mexican government. The idea was to crush the cartels by force, but it didn’t work out that way. The narcos responded by paramilitarizing: Underground drug-smuggling syndi-

FROM TOP: CESAR RODRIGUEZ; FRANCISCO GUASCO; CESAR RODRIGUEZ/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

them huachicoleros . . . guys with big balls . . . it’s the people of El Toñín.” One of the most intensely contested towns in the Red Triangle is Palmar de Bravo, where a diminutive grandmother named Benita (last name withheld for her safety) was born and raised. One evening in September 2017, on her way home from the workshop in Puebla where she’s employed as a seamstress, she stumbled upon a massacre. Her commute is an hour and a half, and after taking two buses, she got of at her usual stop in the middle of town. She was walking toward her house, a little old lady in Crocs 1 and a work shirt, when she heard people shouting, turned around and saw a group of men with machetes jump out of three armored trucks and attack four or ive people in the street. It was the most gruesome thing she ever saw. One of the victims was split wide open from the throat to his belly. Before the men with machetes saw her, she slipped into a tank of water that stood by the road, submerged herself up to her nose and waited until it was dark. Something awful was happening in Palmar de Bravo. She could hear gunire and screaming from points all over town, and big trucks were con2 tinually tearing past her hiding place. Thirty minutes after night fell she climbed out of the tank and padded home soaking wet, taking a roundabout way through the ields to her house, where she found her 20-odd family members locked inside, terriied. The rampage continued past midnight, the men in armored trucks marauding around town, “slaughtering people like animals,” she says, shooting up houses and ransacking businesses. Before leaving, the attackers gathered up most of the bodies and took them away. After it was over, the army 3 showed up, as did the municipal police, who collected the remaining corpses. When I ask if the killers were Zetas or CJNG, narcos or huachicoleros, Benita shrugs. “Who knows?” she says. “They’re the same.” This took place just as the CJNG’s purge was ramping up, but the people directly afected by violence in Mexico often have no idea who is behind a particular attack; at street level, it can look like pure mayhem. To her knowledge there was never any police investigation. The authorities said nothing. No journalists ever came to Palmar de Bravo, and the incident was never reported in any media. “For sure,” she says, “this is happening in other communities.” Palmar de Bravo remains extremely dangerous, with marauding convoys of sicarios regularly passing through. “Trucks full of

lic of more violence to come. The huachicoleros struck back a month later, leaving a plastic garbage bag illed with human remains alongside a banner threatening the CJNG. The cartel retaliated in July, gunning down another police commander and dumping more dismembered corpses alongside yet another threatening banner. The cycle of retribution has continued through the summer: stupid, brutal and seemingly endless — and now twice as hard to stop since the stakes have widened to include much of Mexico’s legitimate economy. “You can’t get rid of the cartels,” the Associated Press’ correspondent in Xalapa tells me. “They’re going to continue killing and stealing anything they can get their hands on. I don’t see any exit.”

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Fueling the Violence Gas theft has caused stations to post “no fuel” signs (1); a fire caused by pipeline tapping in the state of Puebla (2); a funeral for one of nine people killed in a gunfight between rival gangs in the town of Huehuetlán el Grande in Puebla (3).

armed men, robbing people, harassing girls, feeling them up, and no one can say anything,” Benita says. When night falls, people hurry home and lock their doors. As for Benita, she still has nightmares of seeing the man cut open by a machete. Every day on her way to work she passes the spot where it happened. There is still blood in the dirt. Meanwhile, in the once-peaceful state of Guanajuato, the CJNG seems to have accepted the Sledgehammer’s YouTube invitation to brawl. In one 12-hour spree in May, they killed 16 people supposedly allied to the locally based gasoline gang, including a mayoral candidate, a police captain and two other oicers. They hung banners declaring war on the Sledgehammer and warning the pub-

HEN IT COMES to organized crime, there is always a nexus with the border. At a junkyard just outside Brownsville, the southernmost city in Texas, a half dozen men stand around grilling meat and drinking beer, cutting up onions and pounding tomatoes in a stone molcajete. A bulldog sleeps on the oil-soaked dirt. The district attorney of Cameron County, Luis Saenz, is here visiting with constituents, and I tell him I’ve heard long-haul truckers in Texas are buying cheap diesel stolen from Mexico. “That would be very illegal,” he says. “It’s a crime to receive stolen property, even if the theft occurred in another country.” But he’s never seen a case like that, he says, and fuel theft is not a lawenforcement priority in his jurisdiction. I’ve come here with a colleague, a Brownsville journalist, and out of the DA’s earshot, one of the men at the barbecue tells us two addresses where we might ind what we’re looking for. The irst is near the intersection of North Minnesota Avenue and East 14th Street. A dozen semitrailers and tractor cabs sit in a gravel lot behind a taco stand. Parked where it can’t be seen from the road is a tanker truck with a nozzle and hose. We slouch down in the front of my truck, waiting to see if any customers come by, until a guy starts walking over with his hand in his pocket. I shift into gear, and we drive away. According to our informant, the second address is a Gulf Cartel stash house. It’s just of Paredes Line Road in what would be a prime location for smuggling, a stone’s throw from the international railroad known in Mexico as La Bestia, or the Beast. I park out of sight and we approach on foot, pretending to be looking for a lost dog. The property is a single-story house on about an acre of land. There is a padlocked chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and a KEEP OUT sign posted. In the side yard a man in a Bobcat skid loader is burying something, so we use a footpath to sneak around back and peer into the yard. Sitting in the tall grass are nine pallet tanks holding about 2,000 gallons — or $6,000 — of fuel. While most of Mexico’s stolen gasoline is sold domestically, plenty of it winds up in the U.S., especially when the variable price of fuel on the world market rises [Cont. on 96] September 2018

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Music

ANOTHER SIDE OF PAUL MCCARTNEY Whether evoking the Beatles or protesting Trump, his music sounds as fresh as ever By ROB SHEFFIELD

Paul McCartney Egypt Station CAPITOL

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AKE A list of all the songwriters who were composing great tunes in 1958. Now make an overlapping list of the ones who are still writing brilliant songs in 2018. Your lists read: Paul McCartney. Fifty-ive years after “Love Me Do,” his legend already inviolable, Macca keeps adding new gems to his songbook, with nothing to prove except he’s the only genius who can do this. Egypt Station, his irst LP in ive years, is a deeply eccentric song cycle in the mode of his 1971 solo LP, Ram, made with pop savant Greg Kurstin. The past 15 years have been a glorious time to be a Paul fanatic — the man has been on a songwriting roll, ever since the 2005 Nigel Godrich ILLUSTRATION BY

Alexander Wells

Reviews Music

jam Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. (And, oh yeah — in his spare time, he happens to still be the greatest live performer on Earth.) Egypt Station lows as a unit, structured like a long ride on a cosmic train, beginning and ending with ambient railway-station noise. It comes ive years after 2013’s New, where he stepped out with the psychedelic nugget “Queenie Eye,” one of his funniest and weirdest ever. (Real talk: “Queenie Eye” would have been a top-ive song on Magical Mystery Tour.) This time he mixes pastoral acoustic reveries like “Conidante” with intimate piano confessions like “Do It Now.” He spends most of the album singing in character, voicing sentiments people don’t usually expect from this guy. Case in point: “I Don’t Know,” a ballad of midlife doubt (“I got crows out my window, dogs at my door/I don’t think I can take anymore”). He’s also picked up a knack for silly sex songs like “Come on to Me” or the ridiculous “Fuh You,” which basically serves as a sequel to his 1972 shagathon “Hi, Hi, Hi.” With the Romantic Beatle slavering, “I just wanna fuh you,” it makes “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” sound subtle. This album’s masterpiece: “Dominoes,” one of those McCartney creations that feels both emotionally direct yet playfully enigmatic. An eerie acoustic-guitar hook, worthy of the White Album, builds for almost ive minutes, complete with an old-school backward guitar solo and the disarming farewell line “It’s been a blast.” “Dominoes” is one of his toughest solo moments ever — it has the unmistakable McCartney touch everybody else keeps failing to copy, yet it feels totally fresh and new. All of Egypt Station has that playful spirit. “Back in Brazil” is a surprisingly successful electro-samba detour, and “Do It Now” expresses the same sentiment as his classic John Lennon elegy “Here Today,” as an older-and-wiser Paul relects on the kind of emotional resolutions you seek when you realize how short life is. Even the timely anti-Trump protest “Despite Repeated Warnings” is a seven-minute minisuite in the style of Ram’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”: Even when he’s pissed of about political apocalypse, Paul gonna Paul. As he always should. And like Egypt Station suggests, as he always will.

SPACE IS THE PLACE Hip-hop’s high-end punk has elevated his game By CHR ISTOPHER R. W EINGARTEN

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UTSIZE AMBITIONS have never been a problem for Travis Scott. The Houston rapper’s album covers come courtesy of fashion icons like Nick Knight and David LaChapelle. His last tour featured a giant robotic bird. The guest list on his third studio album, Astroworld, includes Drake,

Travis Scott Astroworld EPIC

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Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, Pharrell Williams, two-thirds of Migos, John Mayer, James Blake, Tame Impala, Stevie Wonder and more. But what makes Astroworld worth caring about isn’t the boldfaced names, it’s the music inside. This is the irst time his sound has come close to living up to his art-

crunk bluster and rock-star self-image. Over the years, Scott has fallen into a signature-but-samey template, a regionless mix of Kanye West’s prestige textures, the boom of Atlanta trap and the slurred accents of Houston’s native screw scene, with a late-night emotional world

BREAKING

Amber Mark’s Sweet R&B Throwbacks SINGER AMBER MARK hasn’t released her debut album yet, but she’s already emerging

as one of R&B’s most distinctive new voices, with a vintage sound that combines Eighties-style balladry with rhythms that hint at Latin pop. On the front cover of her latest EP, Conexão, she sits poised on satin sheets, bathed in pink light, and the music inside is equally plush, especially the standout “Love Me Right,” a piano-soul plea complete with husky ad-libs and handsome backing vocals. No wonder she’s already received the seal of approval from Sade, whose “Love Is Stronger Than Pride” Mark covers masterfully. ELIAS LEIGHT

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+++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor

à la Drake and the Weeknd. Astroworld’s irst nine songs (and its excellent closer) show Scott entering the other side of morning, with newfound clarity and energy. Sure, he still talks about sex, drugs, swag and personal demons, but those confessions now come with the wisdom of songs like “Stop Trying to Be God,” where he ofers, “Stop tryna be God almighty/Fuck the money.” The big, brash “Stargazing” comes with lines like, “It ain’t a mosh pit if ain’t no injuries.” Opening up even more, the album’s inal track, “Cofee Bean,” is a jazz rap in the vein of Digable Planets or Gang Starr, where Scott details some of his relationship bumps with wife Kylie Jenner: “Shawty, we can be mad cool/Just hit me if anything past due/Your family told you I’m a bad move/Plus, I’m already a black dude.” Scott talks about light a lot here and, indeed, his big-tent vision seems to explode across North America: The album highlight, the hard-knocking “Sicko Mode,” features Canadian polyglot Drake and Atlanta party-starter Swae Lee, and includes samples from New York don Notorious B.I.G. and Miami bass kingpin Uncle Luke. At other points on the LP, he keeps it local, even sentimentally so, emphasizing his Houston roots (the album is named for a now-dormant hometown amusement park). That means references to local legends like Big Hawk, Fat Pat and Big Moe. Sonically, that means more classic boom and menace. Unfortunately, Scott doesn’t keep up the musical or personal envelope-pushing for the whole album: A seven-song stretch in the back end is vintage Scott, with its zoned-out, hypnotic throb. But by going outside his boundaries, he isn’t just looking the part of a great artist, he’s living it.

RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.

FROM TOP: KOURY ANGELO; JACK MCKAIN

PA U L M C C A R T N E Y

THE RELAUNCH presented by

IMAGES 1-5 AND 7-9: COURTESY OF PATRICK MACLEOD PHOTOGRAPHY; IMAGE 3, 6 : COURTESY OF JOE PAPEO FOR ARTISTS DEN ENTERTAINMENT © 2018

On Thursday, July 26th, Rolling Stone and 675 of its guests celebrated the relaunch of the iconic brand as well as the recent launch of YouTube Music in Brooklyn, New York. Featuring exclusive performances, an intimate artist Q&A, afterparty, and unique installations, the event united industry influencers and fans alike for a night filled with unforgettable moments.

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8 1 Brittany Spanos, writer at Rolling Stone, and Shawn Mendes during the intimate Q&A 2 Fans waiting by the stage inside 99 Scott Ave 3 Pop-rock band Picture This inside the YouTube Music listening pod 4 Winners of the Artist Den fan giveaway in line for entry 5 Shawn Mendes accepting his 10 million subscriber Diamond Play Button Award from YouTube 6 Lyor Cohen, Global Head of Music at YouTube, and Gus Wenner, president of Rolling Stone, onstage during opening remarks 7 Frederick “Toots” Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals jamming out onstage during the afterparty 8 Shawn Mendes performing one of his many numbers of the night

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9 Attendees enjoy the live performances inside the afterparty at 53 Scott Ave

Reviews Music UPDATE

Ten new albums you need to know about now

Troye Sivan

New country albums subtly mess with musical and political rules

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ARRIE UNDERWOOD is arena country’s mightiest voice, as Cry Pretty reairms. The architecture is often R&B at its core — listen to the slow-jam showpiece “Drinking Alone.” Most striking, though, are “The Bullet” and “Love Wins,” both addressing gun violence. She doesn’t advocate reforming our laws, but at least Underwood has the guts to engage the subject in the Nashville mainstream. A

Bloom Capitol

Blood Orange

Negro Swan Domino

Mariza

Mariza WMG

Waxahatchee

Great Thunder Merge

The Beths Carrie Underwood Cry Pretty

# Ruston Kelly Dying Star

Future Me Hates Me Carpark

Lenny Kravitz

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Raise Vibration

Various Artists King of the Road

BMG

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Paul Simon

In the Blue Light Legacy

Southern singer-songwriter who owes a debt to outlaw icon Kris Kristoferson, Ruston Kelly deserves to be known as more than “Kacey Musgraves’ husband.” Dying Star should ix that. He projects a beautiful-loser vibe, as song titles like “Faceplant” and “Blackout” suggest, while his writing is drumhead-tight. So are the songs of Roger Miller, a legend for whom genre wasn’t no thing. King of the Road pays tribute with a weird casting call. (Toad the Wet Sprocket, WTF?) But Musgraves owns “Kansas City Star,” and Eric Church turns the gibberish jam “Oo De Lally” into a swampy ramble. WILL HERMES

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Big Red Machine

Big Red Machine Jagjaguwar

Interpol

Marauder Matador

Iggy Azalea

Survive the Summer Island

SYNTH-POP SWEETS A breakout for the 23-year-old singer, delivering tenderly naive tales of teenage passion over soft synths and airy beats. He makes age-old themes seem fresh.

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SOUL REVOLUTION Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes frames heavy political themes with Quiet Storm soul and New Romantic drama (think Michael Jackson meets ABC). It’s a sly, surprisingly potent combo.

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PORTUGUESE POP GEM The Queen Bey of Portuguese fado doubles down on that bluesy tradition, backed by the steely soul of the guitarra portuguesa and a subtle modern undertow of Afro-diasporic beats.

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SOFT BOMBS Ace indie-rock singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield turns things down for a six-song EP of piano and acoustic tunes, beautifully mapping out desire, ambivalence and afliction as only she can.

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POWER-POP KICKS This New Zealand garage-pop band’s debut LP recalls Courtney Barnett in its crisp tracks and sharp lyrics — listen to the masterful, postbreakup hook-binge “Happy Unhappy.”

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LEFTY LENNY Kravitz gets political, adding a bite to his signature polyglot rock. He tackles U.S. foreign policy and gun violence between love songs that pay homage to Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye and Prince.

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DEEP CUTS REDONE Remakes of obscure songs from Simon’s solo albums. Some make you hear the tunes anew; others are so similar to the originals only a perfectionist like Simon can tell the diference.

3

SPACE JAMS Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) teams up with Aaron Dessner (the National). Beats, guitars, synths, strings and choral bits orbit Vernon’s robo-soul vocals. At times it jells; it’s better when it doesn’t.

3

POST-PUNK DÉJÀ VU Interpol were once black-clad heroes of the New York rock scene. Here they step outside their wheelhouse with pop rocker “Mountain Child” but try to relive old glory too often.

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AZALEA TANKS The title track to the “Fancy” rapper’s first oficial release since 2014 has a defiant energy, but corny bedroom boasts like the Toni Basil-referencing “Hey Iggy” make this another dud.

2

CONTRIBUTORS: DAVID BROWNE, JON DOLAN, KORY GROW, WILL HERMES, MAURA K. JOHNSTON AND BRITTANY SPANOS

Azalea

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Montana, circa 1960, who starts to unravel when her husband ( Jake Gyllenhaal) heads to the mountains to ight wildires and leaves her alone to raise their 14-year-old son (Ed Oxenbould). In a stunning directing debut, actor Paul Dano mines the smallest details in the Richard Ford novel to create a portrait of a woman both afraid of and exhilarated by the stirrings of personal empowerment.

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man

From superhero epics to Oscar hopefuls, here’s a preview of the season’s best

Bohemian Rhapsody November 2nd

Rami Malek, an Emmy winner for Mr. Robot, takes on the role of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen who died at 45 in 1991 of complications from AIDS and left a legacy of roof-raising stagecraft and hits. This biopic has had its share of backstage drama (original director Bryan Singer was ired due to “mysterious absences”). We still think it’s going to rock us.

Suspiria

and Venom gives us a hell of an antihero. Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock, a journalist who morphs into a toothy, bizarro version of Spider-Man known as Venom. The actor admits that the webslinger-hating character is all about “biting of heads.”

PETER TRAVERS

First Man October 12th

A Star Is Born October 5th

Bradley Cooper makes his directorial debut in the third remake of the venerable showbiz melodrama. Lady Gaga drops her usual lamboyance to play it raw and real as a country singer. “She’s a revelation,” says Cooper, who takes on the role of the has-been singer who loves and mentors her.

Venom October 5th

Nothing like a Marvel epic to liven up the season —

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Rolling Stone

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What do you do for a follow-up when your previous movie — the 2016 musical La La Land — made you, at 32, the youngest Best Director winner in Oscar history? If you’re Damien Chazelle, you make a biopic of Neil Armstrong and cast Ryan Gosling as the irst man to walk on the moon, on July 20th, 1969. Talk about the right stuf! At the CinemaCon convention in April, the ilmmaker said he just wants to take the audience on “an immersive journey.”

September 2018

Beautiful Boy

Halloween series. But director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride treat it as a sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 original. It’s four decades later, and Jamie Lee Curtis is still being terrorized by Michael Myers; cue lots of slasher-lick mayhem.

October 12th

Steve Carell excels as David Shef, a journalist coping with the meth addiction of his teen son Nic (Timothée Chalamet, an almost-certain Oscar contender). The dual perspective of father and son gives the ilm a shattering intimacy and power. It’s a real-life drama that’ll take a piece out of you.

Halloween October 19th

Technically, it’s the 11th chapter in the

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga sing their hearts out in a remake of A Star Is Born.

22 July October 19th

There’s always more to director Paul Greengrass than Bourne movies. His brilliant talent for docudrama, evidenced by Captain Phillips, United 93 and Bloody Sunday, comes to the fore in this harrowing tale of Anders Behring Breivik, convicted for a 2011 gun and bomb rampage that left 77 Norwegians dead.

Wildlife October 19th

Carey Mulligan is Oscar-worthy as a young housewife in

Why remake Dario Argento’s 1977 giallo horror classic? Because master sensualist Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) is behind the camera, with Dakota Johnson as a ballet dancer who uncovers some murderous secrets at a Berlin dance academy. Those who’ve seen the original know what they are. The rest of you will have to discover the scares and oh-so-spooky surprises on your own.

The Front Runner November 7th

Writer-director Jason Reitman takes a satirical look at the rise and fall of Sen. Gary Hart (Hugh Jackson), whose extramarital afair crushed his presidential chances in 1988. Based on political columnist Matt Bai’s book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid, this blistering look back shows us how far America

FROM TOP: UNIVERSAL PICTURES; NEAL PRESTON/WARNER BROS. PICTURES

November 2nd

The Girl in the Spider’s Web

Widows

November 9th

November 16th

Forget about the 2011 ilm David Fincher directed from Stieg Larsson’s bestselling The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In this follow-up, Fincher is out, along with Rooney Mara; director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) is in, as is the Emmy-nominated Claire Foy (The Crown) as Lisbeth Salander, the inked-up hacker who takes on a mysterious group of criminals known as “the Spider Society.”

When four armed robbers are killed in a heist, their widows step up to inish the job. Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) directs this big-screen adaptation of the 1983 British miniseries, with an all-star cast led by a powerhouse Viola Davis and co-starring Carrie Coon, Liam Neeson, Michelle Rodriguez and Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya.

Rami Malek plays Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.

FROM TOP: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; ALEX BAILEY/TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; WALT DISNEY STUDIOS

November 16th

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald November 16th

Eddie Redmayne is back as expelled Hogwarts magizoologist Newt Scamander to battle dark wizard Grindelwald ( Johnny Depp, who has his own crimes and misdemeanors to deal with). For those who still can’t get enough of the Potter-

Creed II November 21st

Sequels can be creativity-sappers, but anyone who saw Michael B. Jordan let it rip in 2015 as Adonis Creed is not going to resist watching him take on Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), whose daddy, Ivan (Dolph Lundgren, yes!), killed Apollo in the ring. It’s a bummer that the original’s Ryan Coogler is not back in the director’s seat. But Sly Stallone returns as Rocky Balboa, so we’ll see if he wins the Oscar he was robbed of last time.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Remember when Joel and Ethan Coen said they were doing a Western anthology series for Netlix? Not quite. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is now a fullscale six-chapter feature, starring Tim Blake Nelson as Buster. And since it’s the Coen brothers, there’s no way any true ilm buf will miss it.

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verse, this new prequel to J.K. Rowling’s YA-lit series should be spellbinding.

has — and hasn’t — come in the past 30 years.

Davis

er-director Adam McKay (The Big Short) calls “the most powerful political igure in modern American history”? Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney? Steve Carell (him again?) as Donald Rumsfeld? How could you not see this biopic?

Mary Poppins Returns December 19th

That’s Emily Blunt taking on the role that won Julie Andrews an Oscar. As Blunt proved in ilms like A Quiet Place, she does not run from a challenge. She has Hamilton genius Lin-Manuel Miranda as a lamplighter modeled on Dick Van Dyke’s Bert. Director Rob Marshall sets the story 25 years after the irst ilm and turns them loose to create a new kind of magic.

Aquaman December 21st

Emily Blunt shows her nanny cred and musical skills in Mary Poppins Returns.

Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse December 14th

In an animated universe where there can be more than one Spidey, Peter Parker mentors a mixed-race Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in his battle against the Kingpin. What’s better than one friendly neighborhood webslinger? How about two? Or three?

Untitled Adam McKay Dick Cheney Film December 14th

Christian Bale as Cheney, the evil genius whom writ-

Jason Momoa, who left us wanting more of his Aquaman after his toobrief scenes in Batman v Superman and Justice League, gets his star spot in a stand-alone epic, with Nicole Kidman, no less, as his mom, Queen Atlanna. Momoa vows that Aquaman will no longer be the joke of the DC universe: “No one’s seen an underwater world like this in live action.”

Welcome to Marwen December 21st

Steve Carell plays a victim of a violent assault who builds a miniature World War II village in his yard to speed his recovery. The director is Robert Zemeckis, the man behind both Forrest Gump and The Walk — so this one could go either way.

STEPHEN COLBERT [Cont. from 57] This is back to the issue of getting hurt, or hurting people. That’s why you put that knife down, for fear that you’re gonna cut the wrong thing. So, yeah, but at a certain point — it was right before one of the conventions — our ratings were going up, we had a lot attention, and Chris goes, “Why don’t you seem happy?” I said, “Because I gotta go do the thing now.” And he goes, “The thing?” I said, “Y’know [exhales hard].” I was really hoping to not always be in the arena. It’s dangerous to be in there because you can forget that you are and then you end up, as I said, cutting, shooting, stabbing something that you do believe in or did not intend to do because you’re down in there in the scule. Y’know, wrestle with pigs, get up muddy. Have you thought about a post-Trump version of the show, assuming the world still exists and we still have electricity? Nope. I haven’t thought about tomorrow’s version of the show. One of the things we learned is, the show is what’s happening right now. I don’t know what the jokes are gonna be tomorrow or next week. And God knows what it’s gonna be after Mr. Trump leaves. I’m curious, y’know? . . . I don’t think I’m making any news when I say history’s not gonna be kind to him. But in some ways it’ll be less kind to the people who defended him. What do you think will happen? There’s never gonna be a truth and reconciliation commission, because that’s not our nature as a nation. We tend to say, “Let’s go forward, let’s not look

TOM ARN O LD [Cont. from 67] Michael Cohen is, indeed, right fucking there, trailed by his bespectacled teenage son. Arnold strides over, shakes Cohen’s hand. Cohen comes of as soft-spoken — gentle, even, with a strong Brooklyn accent. If he was once the pit bull we saw on TV interviews (“Says who?”), he seems, for the moment, defanged. Arnold and Cohen chat amiably, mostly about Arnold’s friend Steve Tisch, whose family owns the hotel. “If you ever need anything . . .” Arnold says. “I appreciate it,” Cohen replies. Arnold asks him for a picture, and he happily agrees. Arnold hands me his phone, and I take a shot of them smiling together — the man seeking the tapes, and the man who knows where they are, assuming they exist. As Cohen prepares to leave, we could have asked about the supposed elevator tape. We could have asked anything. Instead: “Are you doing OK?” “Yeah,” Cohen replies. “It’s a rough gig. The country is very divided.” Within seconds, Arnold tweets the picture. Cohen will, in the following weeks, make it clear he’s turned on Trump, but posing with Arnold — who once received a legal warning from Cohen’s associate Keith Davidson — is an early, blatant message. Arnold realizes it right away, as do some savvy reporters. He ends up on CNN and MSNBC, in segments that have friends calling his wife to ask if he’s OK. He goofs around, staying silent for an agonizing 25 seconds of live television when CNN’s Poppy Harlow asks him if Cohen has lipped. (Someone posts it on YouTube as “The worst interview, ever!”) Arnold also exagger-

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September 2018

back.” But there’s gonna be crazy payback when this is over — when they’re not in power. It’s gonna be so ugly. Even within the ranks of the people who supported the president. It’s going to end poorly. My father was a coroner in the army of occupation in Germany after World War II, and he used to say, “People died in some pretty funny ways” after World War II. There was a lot of payback. He once had to do an autopsy on a man who came in in three pieces because he fell of a train, under the train. And he said to the men who brought in the body, “How do you fall of a train, under it?” And they said, “This is what happened.” And they gave him the body [laughs]. And I think there’s gonna be a lot of people falling of trains metaphorically, under metaphorical trains. How long do you want to do this? There are days, there are weeks, where I go, “That was fun, I could do this for 10 years.” And there are times when I’m like, “I won’t make it to next week.” But, y’know, there’s more of the 10-year ones than there are of the next-week ones. On average, I get more out of this, y’know? More calcium goes into my bones than comes out of it. As long as that’s the case. I’m a lucky guy to be able to do it. I never want to forget that. I never dreamed I’d be so lucky as to have my name out there on Broadway on the Ed Sullivan Theater. I’ll try very hard to not forget that this is a privilege. What has being a dad taught you? That’s a really big question. Did you see Lady Bird? There’s a moment in which the older nun is talking with Saoirse Ronan, and she says, “Oh, I so enjoyed your writing, you clearly love Sacramento.” And she

goes, “Oh, I don’t know if I love Sacramento.” And the nun goes, “Well, you write about it in such detail.” And she says, “Well, I guess it’s ’cause I just pay attention.” And the Lois Smith character says, “Don’t you think, perhaps, they’re the same thing? Love, attention?” Y’know, your children deserve your attention and that’s the purest way to love them. Because attention is not dictation. There’s a point in which you only pay attention to your children; you’re not instructing them anymore. And that makes sense to me as a parent and a child. And I’m not good at it. I want to stick my nose in somebody else’s business all the time. I’m a bit of a control freak, and that must not be easy [for my children]. Do you know Sweet Honey in the Rock? The singing group? Yeah. They adapted a poem on children in The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran. And it goes, “Your children are not your children, they’re the sons and daughters of life longing for itself. They come through you but they are not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You can give them your love but not your thoughts. They have their own thoughts. You can house their bodies but not their souls — for the souls are in a place of tomorrow that you cannot visit. Not even in your dreams. You can strive to be like them, but you cannot make them just like you.” Being a parent makes me hopeful. And as my father-in-law says, “I have no worries about the future, having seen these children.” And I feel the same way. I am extremely hopeful there is a large group of young people who are better than I am. Better than the generation that came before them. It gives me hope.

ates his association with Cohen, spinning that brief encounter into a plan to “spend the weekend with Michael Cohen.” It’s the irst time I catch him in a lie. Aghast, I ask Arnold if he’s somehow had more contact with Cohen since the evening we met. He tells me they’ve been texting, and I ask to see the texts. To his credit, Arnold shares them, and what they reveal manages to make me feel bad for Cohen: Pretty much every text I see consists of the lawyer begging Arnold to stop lying about him for the sake of his family. Arnold blames the whole thing on “trolling Trump” and says he’s always honest with me. Arnold’s tactics are, to say the least, unjournalistic: He’s willing to say things of dubious accuracy in the interests of bull-goring. He wants to move the story forward, to win, whatever it takes. In that moment, he reminds me of someone. All that said, given the increasing visibility of Arnold’s attacks, it seems notable — maybe even meaningful — that a president who always punches back has yet to mention his old acquaintance in a single tweet. And Arnold seems to come away from that weekend even more determined to prove his credibility. “I’m getting you a tape, fucker,” he texts.

source we both start talking to: “Tom is on to something,” the source tells me, before Arnold permanently alienates him with an overeager tweet. (“I fucked up,” says Arnold.) Another source, a longtime reality-show insider, tells me that well before Arnold’s tale of the outtakes, he heard talk of an identical-sounding highlight reel. Most of the Apprentice crew members I reach out to don’t respond, and those who do have never heard of the reel, or of Trump using racial slurs — though they don’t rule out the possibility. But producers for Arnold’s show apparently have better luck. According to a Viceland document I obtain, which doesn’t list names, the supposed Apprentice employees they spoke to bolstered reports of on-set sexism previously denied by Trump reps. (“Trump rated women on a number scale and by the size of their breasts.”) “Producers were in constant conversation about how to produce [sic] Trump away from race,” one says. Another, “crew member No. 7,” is quoted as saying, “Producers did everything they could to hide Trump’s racism. . . . I heard Trump say the n-word multiple times.” All seven purported sources allegedly got scared and never went on camera. Meanwhile, sources lead us to a former employee who, based on his position, could be key to the Apprentice mystery. Arnold’s sure that the guy has tapes, and it seems possible. The former staffer doesn’t respond to multiple messages (and makes his Instagram private), but Arnold is convinced he’ll get through someday. And if he does, he says, he’ll pass him on to a particular investigative journalist. “He can have the glory,” Arnold e-mails. “And everyone can still say I’m an asshole!!” He adds a smiley face.

S

POILER ALERT: AS of press time, no tape. But there are some tantalizing moments, even as Arnold keeps opening new investigative fronts. (“I igured out who ‘Q’ is!” he tells me in August, launching into a theory I don’t understand at all.) HufPost drops a report on the elevator-tape hunt, respectfully mentioning Arnold’s role. And his TV appearances, shambolic as they are, do draw people out — including a legitimate, very highly placed

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BLOOD AND OIL [Cont. from 85] above the ixed price in Mexico. In 2010, Pemex iled a series of lawsuits in U.S. federal court accusing dozens of Texas companies, including ailiates of Shell, ConocoPhillips and Sunoco, of knowingly purchasing natural gas stolen from Mexico. The companies deny it, but according to allegations Pemex presented in court, they sent tanker trucks illed with water but labeled as natural gas across the border, and brought them back reilled with stolen natural gas condensate, passing false documents and bribing customs oicials along the way. “The theft was pretty intense,” says Jerry Robinette, a retired Homeland Security Investigations agent who at the time was in charge of looking into the criminal side of Pemex’s allegations. “Pemex was losing somewhere around half their production in the Burgos Basin,” a huge natural-gas formation squarely in the Gulf Cartel’s territory. To prove the natural gas in question was actually stolen, HSI sent investigators in military helicopters to take samples, whose unique molecular composition they compared to product stored in Texas facilities. On the Texas side of the border, HSI used surveillance methods that Robinette declines to describe, though he does mention “firsthand knowledge” of certain phone conversations. Five Texas executives ended up pleading guilty to criminal charges, but Robinette says 30 more were under suspicion. “We know some folks got away with it,” he says. “Some may still be looking over their shoulder.” I sent several inquiries to Customs and Border Protection trying to understand how they prevent sto-

len fuel from entering the U.S. supply. A spokesman could not identify any standing measures that are in place to systematically check the provenance of oil and gas imports. In general, they will only investigate if there has been a complaint. At an empty Tex-Mex restaurant in Brownsville, I meet a Mexican-American businessman who has been importing and exporting oil and gas for the past 17 years. He’s middle-aged and wears a goatee, with a fat ring on one inger. He agrees to speak only on condition of anonymity, because his family still

Huachicoleros tapping pipelines is “kid stuff,” says an importer of oil and gas in Brownsville, Texas. “The real theft happens inside Pemex.” lives on the other side of the river, in Matamoros. According to him, all imports and exports at the border crossing are controlled by the Gulf Cartel, the original Mexican crime syndicate, which still has a tight grip on the northeast corner of the country. The businessman takes out a pen and sketches a grid on a napkin. “It’s like this,” he says, marking each corner of each square in the grid. “On every corner of every block, in every store, on every bridge, in every park on both sides of the river they have ‘falcons’ counting how many trucks are passing, who is driving them and what merchandise they’re carry-

The Complete Issue. Every Word. Every Photo.

ing.” He says the cartel charges a quota on every shipment that goes over the border. For gasoline and diesel, the current quota is one peso per liter, coming and going. “They even give you an invoice,” he says. “It can say whatever you want — transport, maintenance, construction, anything. They call it organized crime because it’s very organized.” He slips the protective cover of his phone. Stuck to the back is a yellow sticky note with a phone number on it. “Once you’ve paid, they give you a phone number. If you have any problems, they’ll be there to ix it within two minutes. Four times I’ve had to call this number with a gun to my head.” Over the next half hour, the businessman describes a dozen or more illegal schemes around the import and export of oil and gas between Texas and Mexico, everything from smuggling marine diesel in shrimp boats to passing gasoline of as unreined lubricant to evade customs. As for huachicoleros, he says tapping pipelines is “kid stuf.” He tells me far more fuel is stolen by people who don’t carry guns and never get their hands dirty. Paperwork authorizing a shipment of gasoline from a storage facility is simply copied 20 or 30 times, he says, and with each fake slip, a tanker truck carrying tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of product is simply driven of the premises. Men sitting at desks wearing white collars and ties cover up the discrepancies, and if any loss is too big to hide, they can always blame it on the grubby huachicoleros the military is working so hard to eradicate. “Why tap pipelines?” he says, holding up a blank napkin as a prop. “Here’s your paperwork right here.” It’s a refrain I’ve heard countless times by now, repeated by virtually every Mexican I spoke to for this story: “The real theft happens inside Pemex.”

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SIA [Cont. from 77] given a temporary instrumental track and started chanting along — singing nonsense words — and out of her mouth came the phrase “Like diamonds in the sky. . . .” “It doesn’t feel like I’m doing it, it feels like it’s happening to me. It’s really fucking weird!” she says. In part, she has learned to trust her instincts, learned to relax the critical part of her brain long enough to channel a melody from . . . somewhere. “I’ve never seen anyone write a melody and lyrics that fast,” says Greg Kurstin, producer for Adele and Paul McCartney, and Sia’s frequent collaborator. “She’ll sing it and write it and it happens in one motion, and then she’s revising. And then it’s one take. You’ve got to keep up with her, really.” Sometimes, she’ll write to a backing track. Other times, she’ll just conjure up the melody, starting from the beginning and working toward the chorus. Then a producer will start working on the chords as Sia writes the lyrics, starting with the hook, which is usually a single concept from which the whole song will be hung, a metaphor or speciic image: diamonds, titanium, a double rainbow. Later, she’ll shift into a less instinctual, more logical mode, illing out the rest of the song with lyrics that buttress the central concept, milking the metaphor for all it’s worth. “I used to overanalyze my lyrics,” she says. “I really wanted to be cool.” Her pop songs, meanwhile, are almost dashed of. She says she realized at a certain point that people didn’t listen to lyrics, and as far as the hook goes, they want something empowering — “victim to victory,” she has called it. Or they wanted “fun jams.” “Usually, I’m writing from a character’s point of view,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll write one that I relate to. Those are the ones I don’t give away.” The success of “Titanium” made Sia one of the most in-demand songwriters in the business. But she needed to put out one last album to get out of an old publishing deal. Sia said she’d do it, on the condition that she would have artistic control and do no promotion — no touring, no press, no media appearances. Sia didn’t expect much from the plan: “I thought I’d shit that album out and it wouldn’t do anything. And that I would be behind the scenes from now on.” And perhaps it would have gone that way, were it not for the “Chandelier” video. Co-directed by Sia, it was the irst of many times she would work with choreographer Ryan Heington and Maddie Ziegler, whom Sia irst spotted on Dance Moms (Sia is a reality-TV obsessive). The video featured Ziegler, then 11, in a blond bob wig, dancing in an abandoned building, a mad, broken-doll smile on her face. It was inscrutable, like the wig, allowing the audience to project its own meaning. It was also a sensation, becoming the 29th-most-watched music video ever on YouTube. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Sia says. “There’s no rise without the ‘Chandelier’ video,” adds Daniel. “We would’ve stopped. She was ine with not making records and just writing songs.” Ziegler has become Sia’s recurring avatar, donning a Sia wig in videos and in live performances, and the pair have become close. “She’s like my second mom,” Ziegler says — though, she adds, “I feel like we’re the same age sometimes. Even though we’re years apart, she has qualities of a 15-year-old.” By 2015, Sia’s proile had risen so sharply that she was invited to perform on SNL an unprecedented three times in one year, including an episode hosted

by Donald Trump. After the show, she says, she was walking back to her dressing room when she heard her name. She turned to ind the pudgy bronze face of our future president. “We’ve got to get a photo!” Trump said. Lurking behind him was Ivanka, camera in hand. Sia froze. A self-described co-dependent, Sia lives in fear of hurting people’s feelings. On the other hand, she could imagine the outrage over a photo of her and Trump, arms around each other, plastering the Internet. And so she managed to meekly reply, “Actually, do you mind if we don’t? I have a lot of queer and Mexican fans, and I don’t want them to think that I support your views.” After a beat, he said, “Oh, no problem. Then don’t.” He didn’t seem angry or hurt in the slightest. “It was as if he viewed me as protecting my brand,” says Sia. “He respected that. “I was like, ‘Thank you so much,’ ” she recalls, “and then I went into my dressing room and had crazy diarrhea.”

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BACKSTAGE PASS S P EC I A L O F F E R S A N D P R O M OT I O N S

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GENTLE RAIN FALLS onto Delino Studios, a production lot tucked away in the foothills of L.A.’s Sylmar neighborhood. Sia is reshooting various bits and bobs for her ilm, Music, like a cutaway shot of a ceiling fan that they’ll do 11 diferent times. The crew members have decided that the ceiling fan’s ceiling doesn’t look weathered enough and did a few touch-ups with a paintbrush; now, they are literally sitting around watching paint dry. For an eficiency enthusiast like Sia, it’s maddening. “My main goal in life is to save time,” she says. “So this . . . it’s extremely confronting. It’s challenged me to be much more patient than I really am.” At first, the film wasn’t going to be a musical. “Then I realized they’d give me loads more money if I made it a musical” — roughly $10 million more, she says, since the studio could make its money back on the soundtrack. Daniel wants to make sure it has a hit. That’s the biggest scene they’re shooting today — essentially a music video for a song Sia wrote a few weeks ago (it took her “maybe about an hour”) that will likely be the ilm’s ending. “Together” is a cheerful song that matches her personality much more than, say, “Chandelier.” The bridge goes, “I want love, I want to give it/I want love, please deliver it.” The “Together” scene, to be shot in one take, features the principal characters and a half-dozen kids decked out in brightly painted jumpsuits dancing around a circle of chairs, arranged like a 12-step meeting (choreographed by Heington, of course). It’s a long, complicated shot, a whirl of color, hugs and smiles, and if it is the ending of the ilm, it will be an exceedingly happy one. Sia watches the take breathlessly; it concludes with the camera panning up toward the ceiling. “Amazing,” Sia whispers. Then she shouts, “Amazing!” Months later, the ilm is nearly inished. “I think it might be good,” she tells me over the phone. “It’s not exceptional. . . . I’m a little bit ashamed I couldn’t make it exceptional. That was my dream, to make the irst movie an exceptional work. But what are you gonna do? I’m only human.” Sia is still struggling with a handful of physical ailments — thyroid problems, neck and back pain, migraines, fatigue. She has a projector pointed at her bedroom ceiling, so she can lie in bed with her dogs and watch TV while resting her neck. I worry her work is taking its toll again. But Sia isn’t ready to stop. “I’ve set up a model where I can age,” she says. “You know, the wig never gets old.”

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The Last Word What’s the best advice you ever received? When I was a young reporter, a smart journalist said to me, “Don’t be afraid to be a fool in the room.” As I got further into reporting I understood what he meant, which was there are no stupid questions, and there is nothing that you shouldn’t be willing to do to convince people to talk to you and explain their world. And if you’re the butt of the joke, that’s ine, as long as you get the story. Were you ever in danger as a reporter?

Season Two of Simon’s ‘The Deuce’ returns to HBO on September 9th.

Working on The Corner, I got robbed at gunpoint, but it was fairly routine. I used to resent the reporters who made a big show about how they thought they were risking their lives by traveling to neighborhoods in Baltimore. It was horseshit, y’know? It was like, “It’s not Beirut. It’s Baltimore, calm down.” Everyone you were encountering, they had to live in those neighborhoods every day. Why is the media so widely disliked? We were always disliked by everybody. It never metastasized into a political philosophy because we never had somebody who was, frankly, as morally depraved as the current president. He’s willing to trade on American fundamentals in a way no other leader has attempted since Huey Long. It’s populism wedded to totalitarianism. Very few people have been so devoid of ethics to go there. You would argue with strangers on Twitter. Did you enjoy that?

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I didn’t enjoy it. But my problem is that when somebody is slandering somebody or telling a big lie in the fashion of a Goebbels, what Twitter’s asking you to do is either ignore them, which allows the lie to stand, or asking you to engage with it as if it’s deserving of any rigor. And that, my friends, is 1935. That is, here comes Julius Streicher or Joseph Goebbels. Instead, what you’re supposed to say is, “Go fuck yourself, you scumbag anti-Semite.” Twitter banned you? They said, “You can’t talk to Nazis that way.” Telling [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey he should die of boils is not an actual threat. I maintain no biological agent that can afect a death by a dermatological disorder. You’re a master vulgarian. Did anybody teach you to curse? I grew up in police precincts and on street corners. I would say, from the age of 21 on, I had a good laboratory for maledicta. Do you need me to spell “maledicta”? You wrote a moving tribute to Anthony Bourdain. What do you think happened? I can’t explain Tony. There are elements to Tony that I can’t even fathom. Nothing I experienced in his presence, or reading him or spending time with him or working with him — nothing prepared me for that outcome. It tells me how much I don’t know about him, how much none of us know about each other. It’s infuriating, terrifying and grievous.

September 2018

David Simon The ‘Deuce’ co-creator on lessons he learned as a young reporter, fighting with trolls on Twitter, Anthony Bourdain, and capitalism run amok

What would you say to David Simon 30 years ago? Holy shit, you’re asking me what I regret. I wish I’d read more. I learned everything there was to know about crime reporting, and I read the paper basically every day. But there are whole swaths of the human experience that I didn’t attend to. I didn’t travel a lot. I can’t tell one tree from another, you know? It sounds like a small thing, but I can’t tell a goddamn oak from a beech tree. You get to the last third of your life, if you’re lucky, and you start thinking about all the shit you didn’t pay attention to. That’s kinda it, isn’t it? What should every American know about our political system? Right now the fundamental question is whether or not mass capital is going to purchase the republic. That’s the great ight. People need to know that your country’s been bought. You know, capitalism is a remarkable tool for generating mass wealth, but the moment you mistake it for a structure that can deliver a just and coherent society, you’re an idiot. We apparently have millions and millions of idiots. Does that get you down? I’m happier than I sound. You ask me to talk about depressing shit, but the truth is every day I go to work, and it’s fun, and I enjoy my family. I wish the Orioles had a better farm system. But, other than that . . . What motivates you? Obviously, I’m interested in telling a good story. I just want to come to the campire and have everyone say, “That was a good story, you didn’t fuck that one up.” You put stuf in the world, and you hope. SEAN WOODS ILLUSTRATION BY Mark

Summers

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