Reminder! The deadline is approaching to email Austin Scaggs questions about the art of the rock & roll interview and what really goes on behind the scenes. Send those queries to askscaggs@rollingstone.com, then check back Wednesday, September 5th, for answers.
The last time we saw Jack Johnson, in May 2005, he was paddling into a wave on the North Shore of Oahu. (Thewaves were so scary that the S.S. was forced to boogie-board, which is known as “tea-bagging” along the Pipeline.) Since then, Johnson has been chillin’ out there with his wife and sons. But the music bug has bitten him again. He tells us that his third album, currently titled Sleep Through the Static — will be released in February. It’s the first record ever to be recorded at L.A.’s Solar Powered Plastic Plant (Zack de la Rocha is in there now), and Johnson and his band have broken form by incorporating electric guitars, as well as recording outside of Hawaii. “We tracked a lot of stuff in Los Angeles,” he says, “then we took a couple months off. Now we’re back in Hawaii, and hopefully we’ll finish it in a couple of weeks.” Johnson would get crackin’ right now, but his studio is too cluttered: “I’ve been changing it from being my kids’ playroom back into a recording studio.”
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Please allow the S.S. to introduce our favorite new band, Brooklyn badasses Vampire Weekend, consisting of four Columbia grads (three from ‘06, one from ‘07). Singer Ezra Koenig reports they dig drum beats and guitar tones from Kenya, Jamaican ska and Brit melodic geniuses like Elvis Costello and Ray Davies. Somehow it all adds up to the best danceable indie-rock grooves since the Strokes’ Is This It. Buy their limited-edition EP, or snag its three cuts on iTunes, before they make a splash with their debut in January. When we spoke to them, VW were on their way to London to seal a record deal and play a secret show. Says Koenig, “It feels like it’s building up to something.” Obviously!
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The S.S. was set to have dinner in Manhattan with James Blunt. But then Lyor Cohen — the chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group and Blunt’s U.S. label boss — requested our presence in the Hamptons. Thus began our instruction in “How to Roll Like a Mogul 101.” We raged Saturday night at the Pink Elephant (alongside the wee Olsen twins!), but the next day was the shit. We tapped Cohen’s account at his beach club, then we cruised in his 1976 baby-blue Cadillac El Dorado, blowin’ a J and crankin’ Otis Redding. During drinks at the idyllic, you’ll-never-play-there-unless-you’re-loaded Bridge Golf Club (”I’m the club champion,” Cohen boasted), a helicopter hovered overhead, and we choppered into the sunset back to Manhattan. It was truly the high life — the champagne of weekends.
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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC.
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