Katy Perry Opens Up to Rolling Stone About Her Political Awakening

Jun 23, 2011 Music Avenue

In the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands and in the digital archive now, Katy Perry takes contributing editor Erik Hedegaard backstage at the kick-off of her California Dreams Tour. Between the elaborate rehearsals and three-hour make-up sessions, Perry reveals that shes recently undergone a political awakening. You can check out a gallery of highlights from the story, and go behind the scenes of the singers sexy, silly cover shoot.

Rolling Stone mourned the loss of E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons, who died on Saturday at the age of 69. We looked back on the sax legends career, collected tributes and remembrances from his peers, and shared Bruce Springsteens statement on the passing of his close friend and collaborator.

We also talked to U2 about their plans to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Achtung Baby, chatted with Paul McCartney about the new reissues of McCartney and McCartney II, learned about Phishs plan to record a new album and caught up with punk legends X and Who frontman Roger Daltrey about their upcoming tours. Also, we reviewed hot concerts by Eddie Vedder in New York City and My Morning Jacket in Chicago.

Plus, former Men at Work singer-songwriter Colin Hay performed a brief acoustic set at our office, hard-nosed country singer Ashton Shepherd was named our latest Artist to Watch, we analyzed this weeks pop charts, pondered why music currently dominates prime time television, looked back on this week in rock history and, as always, we reviewed all the weeks biggest new releases.

On the pop culture front, we got pumped up for the return of HBOs sexy True Blood with a look behind the scenes at Deborah Ann Wolls Rolling Stone photo shoot and Rob Sheffields review of the new season, which he says “keeps up the standard of excellence, with more fetishes, more lust, more evil, more startling ways for bodies to change and transmogrify.” Peter Travers reviewed Pixars Cars 2, which he says is just as good as the underrated original, and the disappointing new Cameron Diaz comedy Bad Teacher. Also, Mallika Rao recapped the latest episode of The Voice and provided power rankings for the shows final four.

We also posted a gallery of your Top 10 favorite album songs about dads, as determined by your votes on Facebook and Twitter. In honor of the late Clarence Clemons, our question for you this weekend is: What is the best Bruce Springsteen song of all time? You can answer on our website, on facebook.com/rollingstone or on with the #weekendrock hashtag.

Edot Music
Your Guide Through the Music World