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• Metallica capped off Death Magnetic week with a spot on our front cover and a siege to the top of the charts. We talked to Lars about Napster, James about opening for the Rolling Stones, witnessed the band’s tiny BBC show, went behind-the-scenes on the cover shoot and engaged the argument over whether the Guitar Hero version of the album sounded better than the CD.
• We put Wish You Were Here on repeat to bid goodbye to Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, who passed away after a brief battle with cancer. We also paid tribute to Motown producer Norman Whitfield and Infinite Jest genius and one-time Rolling Stone writer David Foster Wallace.
• We called in a few favors in order to catch concerts like Sigur Ros in New York, David Byrne rummaging the Byrne/Eno catalog and Patti Smith at Fashion Week. Plus, Paul McCartney talked about his upcoming first-ever concert in Israel.
• We caught up with the three members of the Ben Folds Five to talk about their reunion, then watched the trio perform The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.