Hendrik Hertzberg on “Crossfire Hurricane,” a new documentary directed by Brett Morgen:

If you watch it, and you ought to if you have any interest in or curiosity about the Stones, by all means crank up the volume—spouses, roommates, and neighbors permitting, all the way to eleven.

Continue reading.

Photograph: Rolling Stones Archive/HBO.

Also read: Richard Brody on “Charlie is my Darling,” a documentary about the Stones in 1965.

If you say the song is bad, people accuse you of not listening closely to what is obviously skilled work by skilled musicians, of holding them hostage to their own impossibly high past standards. If you say the song is good, people accuse you of being a Stones apologist, of practicing a kind of self-deception in which you pretend that the band is still relevant. 

Ben Greenman reviews the Rolling Stones’ new song, “Doom and Gloom”: http://nyr.kr/STAyv5

(Source: newyorker.com)

(Source: newyorker.com)

“Like any great musician and performer, Bruce Springsteen served a long apprenticeship. In various bands, he played the basics: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, the Beatles, the Stones, the Animals, Sam & Dave…” Click-through for a selection of especially fine Bruce covers: http://nyr.kr/OMfNcE 

(Photograph by Julian Broad.)

Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Photographs.

In this week’s issue, David Remnick profiles Bruce Springsteen. Click-through for a selection of photographs of Springsteen from over four decades, with words from the photographers who captured him: http://nyr.kr/MWTvFj

Doug Springsteen was a deeply troubled, withdrawn, and depressed man, someone who was barely capable of holding a job or a conversation. And yet Springsteen needed to have a conversation with his father, and so he did it largely through his songs.

David Remnick on Bruce Springsteen’s songs about his father. Click-through to watch more concert videos: http://nyr.kr/OzkPJv

Watch Bruce Springsteen performing “Prove It All Night” with its famous opening guitar solo in the video above, and then click-through to see more videos from 1978, the golden age of The Boss: http://nyr.kr/OTWVs4

In his Profile of Bruce Springsteen in this week’s issue, David Remnick describes the Asbury Park rocker’s 1972 audition with John Hammond and his early career with Columbia Records:

Columbia signed Springsteen to a record contract and tried to promote him as “the new Dylan.” He was not the only one. John Prine, Elliot Murphy, Loudon Wainwright III, and other singer-songwriter sensitivos were also getting the “new Dylan” label. (“The old Dylan was only thirty, so I don’t even know why they needed a fucking new Dylan,” Springsteen says.)

Two years later, The New Yorker’s rock critic, Ellen Willis, went to see Springsteen perform at Avery Fisher Hall. Here’s a look back at her thoughtful and decidedly mixed review of the up-and-coming rock star (which we’ve unlocked in our archive this week): http://nyr.kr/Oksnj4

Springsteen wants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, with “your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated.”

In this week’s issue, David Remnick profiles Bruce Springsteen as he embarks on his new world tour.  Remnick talks to Springsteen’s band mates, wife, manager, and others about the musician’s early years, his evolution as an artist, the depression that he struggled with: http://nyr.kr/O1XqzZ