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It’s been a month of headline-making for Drake, and the rapper finally dropped his latest album. Drake’s Scorpion already broke single-day streaming records, and is in a good position to have the most-streamed week in music history. More
Johnny Depp’s former business managers may have made a mistake when they claimed in court documents that he spends $30,000 a month on wine, because according to the actor, his monthly vino allowance far surpasses a measly 30 grand.
The details of Pirates of the Caribbean star’s financial expenditures were laid bare in a court filing from his former managers at The Management Group (TMG). The February filing came in response to a $25 million fraud lawsuit Depp unleashed on TMG the month prior.
Depp claimed in his initial complaint that his managers’ negligence had cost him millions, but in their response, TMG painted him as a compulsive spender who blew his $650 million fortune on mansions, yachts, cars, collectables and booze.
Now, in a sprawling interview with Rolling Stone, Depp is setting the record straight on his spending.
“It’s insulting to say that I spent $30,000 on wine,” Depp said. “Because it was far more.”
He also took issue with another TMG claim concerning the cost of shooting his friend and famed journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon. TMG claimed the send-off cost $3 million, but Depp…
“The road and the studio are the only places I’ve ever felt completely OK,” Tom Petty told Rolling Stone last summer, explaining why he was launching one last grueling tour to mark his 40th anniversary with the Heartbreakers. But the roadwork wasn’t easy for him. Petty spent the entire 53-date tour struggling with severe pain from a fracture in his left hip. He got through it with painkillers and used a golf cart to move around backstage. “Tom was ill,” said his friend Stevie Nicks. “And he fought his way through that tour. He should have canceled and gone home and gone to the hospital, but not Tom. He was going to go down that river.”
In October, a week after the final date at the Hollywood Bowl, Petty was dead. The 66-year-old had accidentally overdosed mixing a variety of medications. The one the Petty family blamed: fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin, according to the DEA. Despite having a previous history of opioid abuse, he’d been prescribed a fentanyl patch to help with his pain; in addition to that slow-releasing patch, two other, more dangerous, derivatives of the drug were also found in his system. “Those are illicit,” says Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Those you get very likely in the black market.” (Petty’s family declined to comment.)
Petty’s overdose in many ways mirrored Prince’s a year and a half earlier. Prince was also taking the drug while dealing with a hip injury, probably stemming from decades of punishing live performances. Over the past decade, fentanyl was also a leading factor in the fatal overdoses of former Wilco guitarist Jay Bennett, 3 Doors Down guitarist Matt Roberts and Slipknot bassist Paul Gray. In November, rising rapper Lil Peep died at 21 after taking a combination of fentanyl and Xanax. “It is so crazy-strong,” says Petty’s daughter Adria, who is planning a campaign against fentanyl. “We really don’t want this to happen to anyone else. We learned this is the worst feeling you can have: to lose someone you love for no good reason.”
Beyond the music industry, fentanyl has emerged as the most dangerous new drug in a generation. Of the nearly 65,000 fatal opioid overdoses in the U.S. in 2016 (the most recent survey), one-third were fentanyl-related, double the amount from the year before. The drug has surpassed heroin as the leading cause of overdose deaths, and new data shows that fentanyl overdose deaths jumped 30 percent between July 2016 and September 2017.
Fentanyl was invented in 1959 to help cancer patients cope with intense post-surgical pain. These days, it’s prescribed as a lollipop or a patch, which slowly releases the dosage through the skin, typically used for a few days after a major surgery. Though illegal in pill form, black-market fentanyl pills have become common in the past decade. This happened after doctors cut back on prescribing OxyContin in 2007, when the government sued its manufacturer for misleading the public about the drug’s addictive risks. Opioid users had to look elsewhere, and turned to heroin, which dealers started mixing with fentanyl for a faster-acting, more euphoric and addictive high. A fatal fentanyl overdose can happen in barely one minute. “The dose you require is minuscule, like a grain of salt,” says Volkow. “A tiny difference in your content can mean someone dying. You need a very sophisticated lab in order to measure a concentration that would be safe.”
The drug’s potency can pose a chilling new threat for users: In a previous era, “someone would OD and you’d have time to soak them in a bath or keep them moving until they got to the ER,” says Gene Bowen, a former road manager and founder of Road Recovery, a musicians’ substance-abuse assistance organization. “It’s not the case now. In 20 minutes they can be dead.”
Opioids have gripped the music business for decades – codeine and Percodan were among the drugs found in Elvis Presley’s body when he died in 1977. But fentanyl’s rise in music may be rooted in deeper trends. Artists are touring more than ever before. “The stress of the road is very difficult, but that’s where the money is,” says Harold Owens, senior director of MusiCares, the Grammy-connected assistance program. “So they go on these long tours, and physically it’s horrible. They’re not eating right or taking care of themselves.”
Many of those hard-touring acts – at or near what would be retirement age in other professions – are dealing with the long-term effects of life on the road. “We’re all older, and people are starting to have carpal tunnel and injuries from playing,” says Bonnie Raitt, a recovering addict herself,…
Last month, Avenged Sevenfold wrapped a sold-out tour in support of their latest album, The Stage. The month-long trek found the group playing arenas around the country, but singer M. Shadows tells Rolling Stone that the metal outfit’s upcoming summer tour “will be our biggest trek yet. In terms of production and song selection, it feels like the whole cycle has been leading up to this.” More
Joan Baez announced a new run of concerts in the U.S. and Canada, part of her final round of “formal touring.” The North American trek, which follows a stretch of U.K. and European dates in 2017, launches September 11th in Ithaca, New York and concludes November 17th in Oakland, California. More
Various Artists, Black Panther: The Album
The Kendrick Lamar-helmed soundtrack to Marvel Studios’ latest blockbuster features K-Dot collaborations with SZA, Travis Scott and The Weeknd, as well as appearances by Khalid, 2 Chainz, Future and Top Dog Entertainment crew members Schoolboy Q and Jay Rock. ” More
It’s been just a little bit over a year since Donald Trump was sworn into office, and since then, it seems like the world has fallen into new and unforeseen levels of shambles. It seemed about time for some element of lawful good to intercede, if only in the cultural landscape, and today our subconscious prayers have been answered: Rolling Stone reports that Shaggy and Sting have recorded a full-length album together. The title? 44/876, of course; no explanation given or needed. More
Five years ago this week, Monkees singer Davy Jones died of a sudden heart attack while tending to his horses at a farm in Indiantown, Florida. More
As the players and fans prepared for the biggest sporting event in the United States the following Sunday, Rolling Stone hosted one of the most highly anticipated parties of the year, Rolling Stone Live: Houston, presented by Budweiser and Mercedes-Benz.
Hip-hop legend Nas performed hits “I Can” and “Made You Look” following an unforgettable set by Big Sean, who gave partygoers an exclusive sneak peek at his new album, I Decided. But Diplo ended up stealing the show…
The latest episode of Rolling Stone Music Now podcast is now available. Listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or check it out below.
U2 is taking their 1987 masterpiece The Joshua Tree on tour in stadiums across America and Europe this year in honor of the…