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The Ultimate Trip: "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" Heads to the Big Screen Film version of Tom Wolfe's book on Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters comes closer to reality The onscreen version of Tom Wolfe's literary cult hit The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is primed to hit theaters by 2010. When published in 1968, the book shattered cultural perceptions of the peaceful, passive hippie zeitgeist by introducing the Merry Pranksters, author Ken Kesey's roving gonzo army of LSD-fueled pioneers who tripped about the country, mixing it up with rowdy Oregonians, Bay Area hippies, Hollywood rockers, Hell's Angels and a flurry of left-handed...

LAS VEGAS — Ethan Hawke might want to avoid crossing paths with Toby Keith in the near future. The country star lit into the actor for an article Hawke wrote in the new issue of Rolling Stone about Kris Kristofferson. In it, Hawke refers to a blowup Kristofferson had with an unnamed country star back in 2003 that sounds a lot like Toby Keith. But a furious Keith, speaking backstage at the Academy of Country Music Awards, said it wasn't true, and added that Hawke did not name him in the story because he did not want to face him...

On September 9, 2009, after a nearly 22-year wait, digitally remastered versions of all of the Beatles studio albums will be released, a press release has confirmed. Each album will feature the track listings and artwork as it was originally released in the U.K. and come with expanded booklets including original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited time, each of the Fab Four’s 12 proper albums will be “embedded” with a brief documentary about its making. The rereleases will include the Beatles’ 12 studio albums and Magical Mystery Tour as well as Past Masters Vol....

When Barack Obama moved into the White House on January 20th, he gained access to five chefs, a private bowling alley — and a killer collection of classic LPs. Stored in the basement of the executive mansion is the official White House Record Library: several hundred LPs that include landmark albums in rock (Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed), punk (the Ramones' Rocket to Russia, the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols), cult classics (Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, the Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin) and disco. Not to mention...

Master Legend races out the door of his secret hide-out, fires up the Battle Truck and summons his trusty sidekick. "Come on, Ace!" he yells. "Time to head into the shadows!" The Ace appears wearing his flame-accented mask and leather vest; Master Legend is costumed in his signature silver and black regalia. "This is puncture-resistant rubber," Master Legend says proudly, pointing at his homemade breastplate. His arms are covered with soccer shinguards that have been painted silver to match his mask. "It won't stop a bullet," he says, "but it will deflect knives." "Not that any villain's knives have ever...

Ron Wood has confirmed long-standing reports that the Faces are gearing up for a reunion tour next year. “We had a few fantastic rehearsals last week and we’re ready to go,” Wood tells Rolling Stone. “It’s like no time has passed by.” Rod Stewart’s touring bassist Conrad Korsch sat in on bass, replacing original Faces bassist Ronnie Lane who died in 1997. “There’s a lot of guest bass players that want to do it — including Flea,” says Wood. They plan on hitting the road sometime in 2009, though no dates have been set. “We just have to sort out...

Below is an edited version of the newsletter. ROCK & RAP CONFIDENTIAL No. 224 / October 2008 CELEBRITY POLITICS…On a perfectly pleasant evening at the end of May, my colleague Gavin Martin and I were sitting with most of the E Street Band and a few dozen others in the bar of the Merion Hotel in Dublin after a Springsteen show. It was getting on towards midnight. The room was conversationally loud. I was drinking red wine because I can’t stand Guinness, never mind my last name. The noise level rose noticeably as another troupe entered. It was U2, in...

Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe. Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Wha? How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked,...

The tides of history are rising higher and faster these days. Read them right and ride them, or be crushed. And then along comes Barack Obama, with the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him, and underneath that ease lies a resolute discipline. It's not just that he is eloquent — with that ability to speak both to you and to speak for you — it's that he has a quality of thinking and intellectual and emotional honesty that is extraordinary.

The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, its special 40th anniversary issue, reveals almost all one needs to know about the current state of the cultural Left. The issue features interviews with people Rolling Stone considers to be America's leading cultural and political figures -- such as Al Gore, Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Cornel West, Paul Krugman, Kanye West, Bill Maher and George Clooney, among many others. It brings me no pleasure to say that, with few exceptions, the interviews reveal a superficiality and contempt for cultural norms (as evidenced by the ubiquity of curse words) that should scare anyone...

I’ve been catching up on the GOP debate. Thank God for TiVo. After a half dozen of these, I just can’t stomach any more of the Tancredo, Hunter, Brownback triumverate. *Bub-boop!* Tonight, of course, marked the first debate for Fred Thompson. He fit right in. Which is hardly a complement. He was shaky with his talking points — visibly straining to remember the script about “Islamic fascism”. He looked vaguely dyspeptic when he was speaking, and more or less catatonic when it wasn’t his turn. The top lighting gave the bags under his eyes an uncanny resemblance to steamer trunks....

In the 2000 film "Almost Famous," young William Miller (Patrick Fugit), the stand-in for writer-director Cameron Crowe, somehow turns his first assignment for Rolling Stone into a month-long trek across the country with the mythic band Stillwater, transforming a rote profile into a star-making cover story while pausing just long enough for a tryst with three gorgeous "Band Aids" (Fairuza Balk, Anna Paquin and Bijou Phillips). If that really was life for the magazine's journalists in the '70s -- and Crowe swears his movie is accurately autobiographical -- it certainly isn't anymore. "Dude, this looks like Enron or something," says...

If you believe the propaganda emanating from Lieberman and his coterie of whore-cronies in the Democratic Leadership Council, Lamont is a dangerous, pillar-crushing revolutionary, a preppy, tanned mixture of Lenin and the Ayatollah. The Democrat insiders' strategy vis-à-vis Lamont is very similar to the one used to dispose of Howard Dean a few years back, only it's even more savage this time around: They have chosen to go after Lamont's supporters in the blogosphere, deriding the likes of "Daily Kos" founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and the wackos at MoveOn.org as "liberal fundamentalists" bent on liquidating poor Lieberman for the sake...

Writing in Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. assures us that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. This popular conspiracy theory has attracted many Democrats, from the clearly unbalanced to John Kerry himself. (Professor and activist Mark Crispin Miller of NYU says Kerry told him he believes the election was stolen.) Kennedy thinks it's fishy that the recorded vote didn't match the exit polls in four battleground states where Kerry was supposedly ahead. He also thinks the Republicans discouraged voters by creating long lines at voting stations in heavily Democratic areas. But bitter surmise isn't proof. And according to a...

NEW YORK (Talon News) -- Rock music magazine Rolling Stone rejected an ad on Wednesday for a new Bible translation designed to reach "spiritually intrigued 18- to 34-year-olds" because it was deemed too religious. Zondervan, the largest Bible publisher in the United States, was hoping to purchase space in the popular secular magazine to attract their target consumers for the new "Today's New International Version of the Bible," which is due to hit bookstores in February. Doug Lockhart, who serves as the executive vice president of marketing for Zondervan, said he purchased the ad in Rolling Stone last July in...

I never felt any longing to go to Orlando, Florida. What I felt, in traveling south to volunteer for the campaign of George W. Bush, was an obligation. Let me explain by first saying something about the critics of our president. A great many of them like to laugh at George Bush for not reading books and for being uninterested in visiting other countries. But a lot of those same people are guilty of the opposite offense. They prefer to read books and travel abroad rather than actually getting to know their own country face to face. These critics do...

Last year, singer Melissa Etheridge promised to love and protect her new partner, actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, until death do them part, but she may not be able to leave her songs to Michaels. U.S. copyright law discriminates against homosexuals by not allowing songwriters and other artists to determine conclusively who gets the rights to their work at the time of their death. No matter what an artist's intention, spouses, children and grandchildren, in that order, are the first in line to recapture the copyrights, followed by next of kin, executors and administrators. Since most states do not recognize gay...

January 15, 2004 Rolling Stone Editor and Adobe Executive Put $800,000 Into Salon Web SiteBy DAVID CARR ann Wenner, the founder and editor of Rolling Stone magazine and chairman of Wenner Media, said yesterday that he would invest $200,000 in the Salon Media Group, the financially struggling Internet media company, and join its board. Also yesterday, Salon announced that John E. Warnock, co-chairman of Adobe Systems and a longtime financial backer, would invest an additional $600,000 in the Web company.As part of the alliance with Mr. Wenner, Salon and Rolling Stone, each known for liberal political leanings, will collaborate on...

Listening to Kevin Phillips talk about politics, it's easy to mistake him for a populist firebrand from the 1890s. He rails against the growing inequality of wealth in America. He bemoans the unprecedented influence that private corporations hold over public institutions. He attacks the "smug conservatism" of George W. Bush and accuses the president of attempting to establish a family dynasty better suited to royalist England than to democratic America. But Phillips is no left-wing demagogue. He's not only a lifelong Republican, he's also the guy who literally wrote the book that became the blueprint for the party's dominance of...

Howard Dean expresses admiration for President Bush's father in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, but says the current president's "obsession with re-election is hurting the country." "I admire George Bush's father," Dean told the magazine during the course of two question-and-answer sessions last month. "There were some things I strongly disagreed with him on, but he tried to be a good president." He said President Bush is the opposite of his father. "This president is not interested in being a good president." "He's interested in some complicated psychological situation that he has with his father," the Democratic presidential front-runner...