Video: Behind the Scenes With Mötley Crüe

About an hour before showtime, here's how the four members of Mötley Crüe spend their time: Singer Vince Neil lifts weights. Bassist Nikki Sixx plays loud music. Drummer Tommy Lee plays unbelievably loud music. "The music is on 'stun,' " Lee brags. And guitarist Mick Mars meditates as far away from Lee as possible. "When we all shared dressing rooms, I was a wreck," Mars says. " 'Dude, do you have to beat on the trash can? Let's...

The best tracks inspired by Barack Obama

Song: "Yes We Can"
Artist: Will.i.Am, plus everybody in his Rolodex
Platform: As Will.i.Am explains on the song's official site, the Black Eyed Pea was so inspired by Obama's New Hampshire primary speech that he penned a simple acoustic melody, used the words from the speech and got a ton of guests (including John Legend, Scarlett Johansson and Common) to join him on the video, which has picked up over eight million views.
Awkward Rhyming? None.
Electoral Votes:...

Popcorn movies, cool beach reads and a scooter that delivers beer: what more do you need for summer?

1. Summer Movie Showdown: What Can Top Iron Man?
Angelina Jolie, Will Smith and Batman face off

"It's 'no one knows anything' time," Variety editor Peter Bart says of this year's summer movies, citing screenwriter William Goldman's famous line about how fruitless it is to predict a Hollywood smash. Indeed, when you consider that an unconventional superhero film starring a once-incarcerated ex-drug addict is the number-one movie of the season (Iron Man, at $300 million)...

• A Conversation With Barack Obama

• Barack Obama: The Stevie Wonder Geek Returns to the Cover of Rolling Stone

• Photo Gallery: Barack Obama, a History in Pictures

The Candidate Talks About The Youth Vote, What's On His iPod and His Top Three Priorities As President

• Barack Obama: Audio From the Rolling Stone Cover Story

• Barack Obama: The Stevie Wonder Geek Returns to the Cover of Rolling Stone

• Photo Gallery: Barack Obama, a History in Pictures

Shortly after Barack Obama claimed victory in the fight for the Democratic nomination, I joined him aboard his chartered 757 campaign plane as a member of the press corps. He was flying from Chicago to Appleton, Wisconsin, for a town-hall meeting, one of a...

The Democratic nominee inspires acts from Dylan to Lil Wayne

• Cover Story: A Conversation With Barack Obama
• Barack and Roll: The Best Obama-Inspired Tracks
• Barack Obama: A History in Photos

The night Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination for president, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong found himself experiencing an unfamiliar emotion: hope. "After his acceptance speech, I have to admit, it took me an hour to get the lump out of my throat," says Armstrong, whose band's American Idiot was the defining protest...

My Morning Jacket on ruling Bonnaroo and going R&B with their killer hit disc "Evil Urges"

For their 35th and final song at Bonnaroo, as a steady rain soaked Tennessee, My Morning Jacket eased into a cover of Mötley Crüe's "Home Sweet Home." It wasn't the only special moment during the four-hour, career-defining set — which included most of the band's new Evil Urges, killer covers of James Brown's "Cold Sweat" and Erykah Badu's "Tyrone," and a guest spot from Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett ("an up-and-comer," said MMJ frontman Jim James), who shredded on the 2003 jam...

For years, Jimmy Buffett has extolled the virtues of getting drunk and screwing. With his latest business venture, an Atlantic City casino-hotel called Margaritaville, he's created a venue to do those things — and gamble too. In May, the beach-loving rocker's Margaritaville Holdings partnered with New York gambling company Coastal Marina to buy the Trump Marina Hotel Casino for $316 million. It's just the latest venture for Buffett, who's about to kick off his 31st summer tour. The...

"Yellow" (From Parachutes)

Plot: Martin walks on a beach in a single take and insists that the stars are, in fact, yellow.

Is The Band In a Remote Location? The remainder of the group is absent and there's not another soul around Martin, setting up a pattern for future Coldplay videos that established the band as loners who were constantly fleeing from other people.

Radiohead Reference? Martin's dead-eyed stare into the camera recalls Thom Yorke's gaze in just about every video...

In the past two years, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has gotten married and had a baby girl. While living with his wife and in-laws in Japan, Cuomo wrote many of the tracks that ended up on the band's new disc, Weezer — nicknamed the Red Album for its plain red cover. "I bought this bicycle," says Cuomo, "and I'd ride to a studio every day, which was inside this surreal, futuristic mall." With his acoustic guitar, Cuomo would sequester himself, writing tracks like "Heart Songs," which...

Band returns to speed metal on new disc with Rick Rubin

This is the advice producer Rick Rubin gave Metallica over two years ago, as the band knuckled down to write its next album: "I said, 'Imagine you're not Metallica,' " Rubin recalls. " 'You don't have any hits to play, and you have to come up with material to play in a battle of the bands. What do you sound like?' "

"It was the obvious thing — that we didn't see," says singer-guitarist James Hetfield. Rubin, a longtime friend and fan who was producing a Metallica album for the first tim...

Chris Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview

• Video: Behind the Scenes With Chris Martin

• Coldplay Live: Concert Photos From Throughout the Band's Career

When Chris Martin emerges from a town car on a quiet West Village street one afternoon in May, he's dressed like a stagehand — black khakis, black hooded top. You'd never notice him, which is probably the idea. But then he starts singing Talking Heads' "Girlfriend Is Better" loud enough to be heard from across the street. The guy can't help it: He's a ham. The...

How a rock legend and a bluegrass queen became the unlikeliest match in rock & roll. On the road with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

They are an odd couple as they walk up to their microphones on the opening night of their 2008 tour, at the Palace Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. Robert Plant, in his first concert since his live reunion with Led Zeppelin in London last year, has seasoned his rock-lord aura with a purple riverboat-dandy vest and white ruffled shirt. Alison Krauss, the most successful singer and fiddler in modern bluegrass, looks like she is on her way to a church social, in a long summer dress, her sharp cheek...

David Cook didn't even plan to try out for American Idol - and then he won

• Video: Behind the Scenes With David Cook

Less than a week after winning American Idol, David Cook is sitting in a glitzy restaurant on the south tip of Manhattan's Central Park. The chef, who proudly says he was among the 55 million who phoned in a vote for Cook during Idol's finals, presents the singer with an off-the-menu treat — foie gras on toast — that leaves Cook unnerved. "That looks dangerous," he says. "I'm a little scared." Tossing the bite-size morsel in...

Mixtape strategy pays off with new "Tha Carter III"

• Tha Carter III Review

Lil Wayne was in the middle of one of his all-night recording sessions when he had a breakthrough. "He called and said, 'Slim, come here,'" recalls Ronald "Slim" Williams, president and CEO of Wayne's longtime label, Cash Money Records. "He played 'Lollipop' for me, and I'm like, 'Play it again, I love this record.' He played that record about 10 times, and I said, 'That's it, Wayne, that's the record right there. We hit the lottery.'"

On "Lollipop,"...

Mark Zuckerberg launched an online empire from his dorm room at Harvard. Now four fellow students say he stole their idea

It's a sunny afternoon in downtown Palo Alto, California, and inside the graffiti-covered walls of the Facebook headquarters, workmen are hanging lights and arranging tables for champagne glasses. Tomorrow night, there will be a party to celebrate Facebook's four-year anniversary. But in a nearby building — one of four sleek offices that the social-networking Website runs not far from the campus of Stanford University — the company's founder is oblivious to the preparations. Mark...

• The Essential Led Zeppelin Album Guide

• The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time

Every song you played at Led Zeppelin's reunion show in London last year started with or was based on a killer riff. What makes a great Zeppelin riff?
It is something you know instinctively. It has energy and attitude. There's sex in it as well. It was definitely my concept to have a riff-based band. My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties —...

• The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time

• The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time: Honorable Mentions

• Secrets of the Guitar Heroes: Eddie Van Halen

• Van Halen: The Essential Album-by-Album Guide

•

• The Essential Van Halen Album Guide

• The Ultimate Van Halen Playlist

How did you start playing guitar?
My brother and I were forced to take piano lessons, and it wasn't fun for me. I heard music in my head, but I wasn't allowed to play it. Then I bought myself a drum kit, and somehow my mom convinced my brother Alex to take flamenco-guitar lessons. I had a paper route to pay for the drum kit, and while I was out throwing papers, Alex got better than me on the drums, so I...

How a street-brawling, trash-talking hustler from Las Vegas turned the Ultimate Fighting Championship into the fastest-growing sport in America

• How Dangerous Is Mixed Martial Arts: Is Stepping Into the Octagon Safer Than it Looks?

The way things are going, Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, may soon be hailed as the greatest sports promoter ever, of all time, bigger even than boxing's Don King, bigger even than pro wrestling's Vince McMahon.

He's taken mixed martial arts, a sport that was essentially moribund seven years ago — the bare-knuckle, anything-goes, ...