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Bill Gates

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The Rolling Stone Interview

 

By Jeff Goodall

Illustration by Roberto Parada

 

At 58, bill gates is not only the richest manin the world, with a fortune that now exceeds$76 billion, but he may also be the most optimistic.In his view, the world is a giant operating systemthat just needs to be debugged. Gates’ drivingidea – the idea that animates his life, thatguides his philanthropy, that keeps him late inhis sleek, book-lined office overlooking Lake Washington, outside Seattle– is the hacker’s notion that the code for these problems can be rewritten,that errors can be fixed, that huge systems – whether it’s Windows 8, globalpoverty or climate change – can be improved if you have the right toolsand the right skills.

Gary Herselman

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No Direction Home

Piet Pers, the Voëlvry drifter who became a ghost, re-immerses himself in life as Gary Herselman - A man with a new album and a message.

 

By Diane Coetzer

Photograph by Toast Coetzer

 

The first time I saw Gary Herselman, he was going under the name Piet Pers and was thrashingthe bass on a wild night that some old-timers at Durban’s Central Methodist Church probablystill talk about over cups of tea.It was 1989, and a motley audience of lefties (and a sprinkling of curious but ultimately unluckychurchgoers) gathered in the church hall, upstairs on Aliwal Street, to welcome the Voëlvry Tourto Natal.

Steve McQueen

 

The Liberation of Steeve McQueen

The Oscar-nominated director of‘12 Years a Slave’ is ready to put hisanger aside.

 

By Jonah Weiner

Photograph by Sam Jones

 

A decade and a half ago, the british film-maker steveMcQueen took a plane to Grenada, the tiny WestIndian island, to visit a beautiful place where somethinghorrible once happened. The place was Caribs’Leap, a tall cliff overlooking the Caribbean Sea, andit had long haunted his imagination. McQueen’sfather, born in Grenada, and his mother, who movedthere from neighbouring Trinidad, told him in hisyouth about how, in 1651, some 40-odd members ofthe island’s dwindling indigenous population, the Caribs, were corneredby armed French colonists.

Rolling Stone Issue 28

Marvin Gaye

May 10, 1984

 

When the R&B classics crooner died by the hand of his own father, it drew the curtain on a life of personal dysfunction fuelled by a crisis-ridden psyche.

 

By Michael Goldberg


It was shortly before noon on April 1st, 1984, when the argument began that ended Marvin Gaye’s life. Gaye and his 71-year-old mother, Alberta, were talking in his upstairs bedroom in the family’s two storey Los Angeles home. The pair heard an unintelligible shout from downstairs: It was Marvin’s 70-year-old father, Marvin Gaye Sr. He was upset because he couldn’t find some letters pertaining to an insurance policy. Gaye Sr. yelled at his wife again.

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