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The Ballistics
The Kids Are Alright
South Africa’s hottest young rock band are bringing back the blues.
By Willim Welsyn
In the outskirts of Kraaifontein’s Joostenbergvlakte, a dirt road splits the space between the train tracks and V&H Publishing’s one-year-old recording studio. Behind the mixing desk, in the studio’s control room, Afrikaans singer-songwriter and studio CEO Wouter van de Venter is chain-smoking Kent Ultra Lights while JP le Roux lays down a bass track. The rest of his bandmates are standing impatiently around him, arms folded, watching his every move. JP doesn’t succumb to the pressure, he nails each note and break – as cool as a cucumber.
Elton John
My Life in 20 Songs
From Reginald Dwight to technicoloured pop sensation to rehab and back: Elton takes a self-guided tour through his career.
By Cameron Crowe
‘You don’t mind if i play it loud, do you?” It’s morning in Las Vegas, and sunlight fills the condo that serves as Elton John’s home during his latest run of shows at Caesars Palace, part of the residency known as “The Million Dollar Piano”. Wearing a white terry-cloth robe, he moves to the stereo system like an athlete, arms swinging crisply at his sides. Soon, he’s locked and loaded his latest album, The Diving Board. Many who’ve just spent the past year and a half working on a recording might then leave the room, allowing the listener his own experience.
Charles Manson
Manson Today
The final confessions of America’s most notorious psychopath.
By Rik Hedegaard
In California’s San Joaquin Valley, about halfway between Bakersfield and Fresno, on the outskirts of the fly-infested, windblown, stink-soaked, dry-mouth town of Corcoran, sits the squat, sprawling expanse of Corcoran State Prison, where Charlie Manson is serving out the rest of a life sentence for his part in the peace-and-love-era-ending Tate-LaBianca slayings of 1969. He has just entered the visiting room.