Here are the first two sentences of Rolling Stone’s first Billy Corgan feature in a decade: Unless you count what he’s done to his career, Billy Corgan has never attempted suicide. Until recently, there were plenty of mornings when he’d wake up to a stark choice: “Go eat breakfast, or go kill yourself.” When Rolling Stone met with Corgan in Los Angeles in early February, the Smashing Pumpkins founder had a lot to say about a very rough 10 years. “There’s a lot of days where you feel forgotten,” Corgan says at one point. In a soul-baring, wide-ranging interview, Corgan discusses the idiosyncratic spiritual beliefs that saved him from suicidal depression (including his association with a vintage hippie cult called Source Family); opens up for the first time about his 2009 split with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin (Corgan says he fired him); reveals his father’s heroin addiction (his dad was arrested two years ago with a needle still in his arm); says that he “loves” Jessica Simpson; and much more.

Corgan on His Critics:
“Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do,” he says. “I’ve been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am. So all the Pitchforks in the world can try to strip me of every ounce of dignity, but I belong.”

On the Pumpkins’ Breakup:
“Rather than break up the band, what I should have done is chuck James [Iha] out,” Corgan says. “I should have just said to Jimmy [Chamberlin], ‘You go to rehab, and we’ll continue, and James, get the fuck out of here.’ Instead, I fell on my sword for James, for what I thought was a friend.”

On His Spiritual Beliefs:
Corgan subscribes to the fashionable idea that we’re building to a cataclysm, or at least a major vibrational shift, in 2012; he wonders what was really in the H1N1 vaccine; he fears that the United States is headed toward a Soviet Union-style economic collapse… But when pressed on details, he backs off: “I don’t want to be a dead hero,” he says.

On “Loving” Jessica Simpson:
“If I go, ‘Oh, we’re just friends,’ then it’s like, ‘Did they go out, did he dump her or she dump him, what happened?’ It has nothing to do with any of that. Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that. My goal in life is to love whoever I think is worth loving, and I think if people knew her like I knew her, they would love her like I do. It’s really simple.”

Oh man … a bit delusional, totally power-hungry, somewhat paranoid and he prolly really loves Jessica Simpson … yep, sounds like Billy Corgan. I’m curious to read the full text of this interview with Rolling Stone magazine. With Courtney Love back on the scene again, you knew it was only a matter of time before Billy wanted a piece of the limelight. I’m afraid that 2010 is gonna be the new 1996.

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Shaun White has revolutionized snowboarding, won the big gold in Vancouver and lit his snowboard aflame, Hendrix-style, on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone, joining an elite club of athletes to appear on our cover not once, but twice. And as the focused, business savvy White tells it, a lot of his recent success on the half-pipe and off can be attributed to a new addition to his life: “Getting into music has changed my personality and my way of doing things,” he reveals to RS writer Vanessa Grigoriadis. “I”m far more open now.” White, who began snowboarding at six and went pro at 13, has recently returned to one of his early loves — skateboarding — but he does more shredding on one of his three Les Pauls. Jimi Hendrix, Guns n’ Roses and Led Zeppelin are in regular rotation; “Whole Lotta Love” is his favorite-ever song. “I think guitar is the best thing in the world,” he says. “It’s the only thing where no matter what I do, I can’t do it all myself.” The 23-year-old White is a bit of a loner, though. He practices his sport solo on a $500,000 private half-pipe Red Bull built him in Colorado and is known to march to the beat of his own disciplined drummer. While fellow competitors gather to watch snowboard or skate videos in their spare time, he opts out (”I’d rather do it, not watch it,” he explains). Olympic teammate Louie Vito even tried to unnerve him a bit by blasting Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” in the van while White was setting his mental stereo to rock & roll.

This new issue of Rolling Stone should be on newsstands now so all y’all snowboarding fans can rush out and get a copy. I have to say … I like Shaun White. The kid seems so down-to-Earth and there is no question of his talent. I think he does the US proud at the Winter Olympics. After the jump, check out 2 more photos from Shaun White’s Rolling Stone photoshoot …

It’ll prolly come as no surprise that these photos were shot by the “It” photographer of the moment — Terry Richardson. Not only has he recently photographed Britney Spears, Jared Leto and the Jersey Shore guys but he also shot Shaun White for this issue of RS. Again, I’m not a huge snowboarding fan myself but I really do like Shaun White … and I think he looks great on this magazine cover.

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All of these new outtake photos look pretty good but, as I’m sure you can imagine, the Rolling Stone photos are the better ones. Check out 2 outtakes from the EW shoot and 2 from the RS shoot and see which ones are YOUR faves …

Woof! Not bad, right? So … which pic is your fave?

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Lil Wayne is constantly moving. But the hyperactive hip-hop star will find himself suddenly sedentary come Tuesday, when he has to report to prison to serve a yearlong sentence for gun possession. “I don’t like to stop,” Wayne, 27, tells Rolling Stone. “I believe you stop when you die.” He says his prison term is God’s will for him and everything happens for a reason. Wayne’s felony charge came after a July 2007 arrest in New York City, when police found a .40-caliber handgun in his tour bus. Initially Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., pleaded not guilty – but in October, he changed his plea to guilty in exchange for a reduced 12-month sentence. But before he finds himself waking up behind bars at New York’s Rikers Island, Wayne is packing in video shoots, recording sessions of songs from The Carter IV and time with his family. He says he’s avoiding getting tips on prison life. “This is Lil Wayne going to jail,” he says. “Nobody I can talk to can tell me what that’s like. I just say I’m looking forward to it.”

I’m not a Lil’ Wayne fan by any means but I can appreciate that he is a very talented, hugely popular artist and I find it wholly fascinating that the fact that he is going to prison for weapons possession will likely make him an even bigger star. Celebs these days can practically get away with murder and still enjoy much success afterward whereas celebs of the past could not. The old adage there’s no such thing as bad press rings more true today than ever before. I’m pretty sure Wayne’s plan is to get as much work done as possible before he goes to prison, then turn his prison experience into more work which will — in turn — prove a huge, successful boon later on down the road. It’s nuts, y’all … but these days, I guess it’s just the way the game is played.

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John Mayer may be the king of the confessional Twitter, but all his 140-character missives about spectacular bowel movements don’t measure up to the explosion of deeply personal details he reveals to Erik Hedegaard in the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands tomorrow. The 32-year-old singer-guitarist admits he prefers Continuum to his 2009 disc Battle Studies (”I know that I’m supposed to say that my newest is the best one. Bullshit,” he says), that he hasn’t stopped thinking about his split with ex-girlfriend Jennifer Aniston (”I’ve never really gotten over it. It was one of the worst times of my life”) and that his sex life has become an endless loop of new girls rejecting him in clubs (”Blowing me off is the new sucking me off!”). Mayer’s in the midst of a massive 10-year record deal and enjoys the pleasures of late-night weed-and-video-game sessions, as well as his $20 million vintage watch collection, but what he truly wants, he tells Hedegaard, is to finally find a a female companion. But not just any girlfriend — Mayer is after “the Joshua Tree of vaginas.” “I’ll be happy when I close out this life-partner thing,” he says. “Think of how much mental capacity I’m using to meet the right person so I can stop giving a fuck about it.” Grab the new issue for Mayer’s full advice for Tiger Woods (”I have masturbated myself out of serious problems in my life”) and more on his journey from bedroom guitar player to the most angst-ridden playboy in rock.

No doubt, John Mayer is a talented guitar player … it’s the public persona that turns me off. Even with his ability to display his wit with ease, it just seems so unappealing when he takes his talents into doucheland. The man is incredibly smart, insanely talented and yet … I’m not a huge fan. I can appreciate that he likes to have fun and isn’t all that serious and is really into enjoying his life … I cannot fault him for that. After the jump, check out a few photos from Mayer’s RS photospread — for those interested, there are more shirtless pics ahead …

I like the B&W photos, the first one looks very Elvis Presley. I understand from many of my friends that Mayer’s music is actually very good … I’ve never really gotten into it because his public persona has made me so uninterested in checking it out in the first place. Ah well. Any Mayer fans out there … what do y’all think of these photos?

[Photo credit: Mark Seliger/Rolling Stone; Source]

Additionally, the mag has released the online version of his coverstory interview … but who gives a shizz about that?!? Grab the smelling salts and clutch those pearls, y’all. After the jump, check out some of Taylor’s hawt Rolling Stone photos …

Just like Queerty says, these photos of a fully-dressed Taylor Lautner are FAR MORE attractive than those horrible photos of nekkid Levi Johnston in Playgirl magazine … no.doubt.whatsoever. These photos are … good. Wouldn’t you agree? Oh, for those of you who like to read magazines, you can read RS’s Taylor interview piece HERE.

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Um … yeah … this is a very nice magazine coverphoto. It is, by far, Lautner’s highest profile magazine cover … and he looks great, no? Thus far, neither his Rolling Stone interview nor the accompanying photospread has yet been made available online … so we’ll just have to enjoy those candid beach photos of his shoot posted last month until the photospread gets released. I really like this coverphoto and I suspect members of Team Jacob will love it as well. What do y’all think?

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Unlike most women, Shakira is willing to let her body go. In fact, the 5-foot-2 Colombian “She Wolf” singer, 32, says she’s looking forward to it — if it means she’ll become a mom. “My body feels like it is asking to reproduce, to have a huge belly and carry babies,” she tells the new issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands today. “My boyfriend is six feet tall, and sometimes I feel like I’m his keychain, a small thing.” But while the Grammy winner — currently in a nine-year, monogamous relationship with investment banker Antonio de la Rua — has long had a maternal instinct, don’t expect her to walk down the aisle any time soon. It’s something she says she’ll never do. “We live in a society that represses women’s subconscious dreams,” Shakira, who considers herself a die-hard feminist, says. “You know, women have to make enormous efforts through life, much larger than men. We deal with so many pressure: the pressure of aesthetics, and how society wants us to deliver our performances as mothers, daughters and wives. “It’s funny how the papers want to see you married, and then they want to see you divorced,” she continues. “Well, I won’t do any of it.” For more on Shakira’s desire to start a family — but not before putting the finishing touches on her Nov. 23 She Wolf album — pick up the new issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands now.

Good for her … Shakira seems to be a woman unafraid to be exactly what she wants to be … and if she wants to have a baby, she strikes me as the type of lady who won’t wait around for a man to help her have one. You do your thang, Shakira! Ah-woooooo!

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In January 1984 Madonna had just one album under her belt when she told American Bandstand’s Dick Clark she had lofty plans: “To rule the world.” Over the past three decades, she has provoked, innovated and inspired; she’s set and broken her own records, most recently wrapping the highest-grossing tour ever by a solo artist with her Sticky & Sweet show. And now that she’s released the two-disc retrospective Celebration, the pop superstar who rarely looks back sat down with Rolling Stone’s Austin Scaggs for a revealing trip through her early days in New York, some of her biggest scandals, and of course, her most massive hits in our new issue, on stands today. Even as a seventh grader in Michigan, Madonna reveals she knew how to push her audience’s buttons. For her first ever performance, “I had my girlfriends paint my body with fluorescent hearts and flowers,” she recalls of a rendition of the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” that left her fellow students speechless. “I wore a pair of shorts and a midriff top, and I just went mad. … I’m sure everyone thought I was insane. That was the beginning of my provocative performances, I guess.” But having innate stage savvy didn’t mean Madonna grew up a wild child. Though she tells Scaggs about her days as a graffiti artist when she was running with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York City (her tag: Boy Toy), life was tamer before that. “I was a geek in high school. I didn’t really have a drink until I got divorced for the first time [from Sean Penn] when I was 30,” she admits. ” ‘Geek’ is not a word anyone uses to describe me, except perhaps [Confessions on a Dance Floor producer] Stuart Price, who once said, ‘You know, you’re a nerd at heart, nobody knows it.’ I took it as a compliment.” She credits her first major shift in style — from punky brunette club kid to blonde wedding wonder — to getting dressed and styled for more photo shoots and videos as her career progressed. “I think people put a lot of emphasis on the whole reinvention of my image, and it’s always been a lot less calculated than people think,” she says. ” I think it’s boring to stay the same. A girl likes to change her look.” But if she had to pick her worst fashion moment: “It was the purple lipstick, fluorescent-green sweater combo. … It’s OK, it was the Eighties. It was a bad-hairstyle era. Let’s face it.” But Madonna doesn’t have many musical regrets. She tells Scaggs about writing “Live to Tell” and “Vogue,” returning with a head full of brand-new ideas on Ray of Light and teaming with some of the industry’s biggest hitmakers on Hard Candy. But after all these years, she admits she still can’t sniff out a Number One. “I’ve never been a good judge of what things are going to be huge or not. The songs that I think are the most retarded songs I’ve written, like ‘Cherish’ and ‘Sorry,’ a pretty big hit off my last album, end up being the biggest hits,” she tells RS. ” ‘Into the Groove’ is another song I feel retarded singing, but everybody seems to like it.”

You know, say what you will about Madonna — whether you love her or hate her — you cannot deny that the woman knows what she wants and gets what she wants … no matter what it is that she wants. From the start of her career, her hunger to conquer the world has kept her on point and allowed her to carve out a legendary career. Because she now has everything that she wants, she’s not as hungry anymore and, therefore, isn’t as innovative as she used to be. While I would love for Madonna to be the iconic trendsetter that she is known to be for years to come, I just don’t know that she can really do that anymore … which is why, I think, she is looking to the next generation to take up the reins. After the jump, read some of Madonna’s comments about Lady Gaga and find out what she thinks of the singer …

“I can see myself in Lady Gaga. In the early part of my career, for sure,” she told the mag. “When I saw her, she didn’t have a lot of money for her production, she’s got holes in her fishnets, and there’s mistakes everywhere. It was kind of a mess, but I can see that she’s got that It factor. It’s nice to see that at a raw stage.” And she appreciated the “Just Dance” singer live, as did Madonna’s oldest child, Lourdes. “I think Lady Gaga is great. When [she and daughter Lourdes] saw her, I actually felt a kind of recognition. I thought, ‘She’s got something,’” the pop star said. “There’s something quirky about her. She’s fearless and funny, and when she spoke to the audience, she sounded intelligent and clever. She’s unique.”

And a few more excerpted quotes from this Rolling Stone interview:

“What can you say? It was a challenging year. I think work saved me, and I’m very grateful that I had work to do. I may have thrown myself off a building,” she told the mag. “Life is an adjustment. It’s different. My sons aren’t with me right now, they’re with their father, and I’m not very comfortable with the idea of my children not living together. There are pros and cons, but I feel good now” … “I wanted to work with Eminem,” she revealed. “I don’t think he wanted to work with me. Maybe he’s shy” … “I was a geek in high school. I didn’t really have a drink until I got divorced for the first time [from Sean Penn] when I was 30,” she said. “‘Geek’ is not a word anyone uses to describe me, except perhaps [‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’ producer] Stuart Price, who once said, ‘You know, you’re a nerd at heart, nobody knows it.’ I took it as a compliment.”

That is some compliment that she paid Lady Gaga … as I’ve said many times, I’m not the biggest Gaga fan primarily because I find her over-the-top “shocking” tactics extremely contrived and banal. I do believe she is a very talented musician and I have HUGE respect for her work to advance equal rights in this country. For me, the jury is still out on Lady Gaga but the fact that Madonna has given her her stamp of approval says a lot. I cannot wait to read the rest of this interview. I’m still solidly on Team Madonna … even if she isn’t the inspirational innovator that she once was, her contributions to pop culture cannot be denied.

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Megan Fox has proclaimed herself bisexual, called actors narcissistic douche bags, flat-out lied to the press about a lesbian teen affair and slipped some scathing words about her Transformers director Michael Bay into interviews. So what makes this sexy starlet tick? Rolling Stone’s Erik Hedegaard goes head to head with the star of Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body in the new issue and learns the secret of her bewitching power: “a powerful, confident vagina.” “Men are scared of vaginas,” she says, telling RS a woman is most powerful when she is “completely in charge of her sexuality.” So what makes this seemingly in-control 23-year-old star crave the security of her pillow cocoon in bed at night and let her temper flare so wildly she’s told off-again, on-again boyfriend Brian Austin Green, “I’m going to stab you with something”? Fox opens up about childhood panic attacks, the only two relationships she’s ever had, and her struggle to reconcile her public persona with her true self. “I don’t really want to share myself with the public,” she says. “I want to deflect attention from my reality.” In Jennifer’s Body, Fox is a demon-girl who literally devours her horny high school classmates and engages in the most anticipated girl-on-girl make-out scene of the year. “Clearly I can’t argue that it’s not gratuitous, because it is,” she admits.

Rolling Stone promises that there is much more interesting stuff in Megan’s coverstory interview to read in the new issue of the mag which hits newsstands today … apparently Megan Fox is a “self-loather”. HMMM. You wouldn’t really know it by reading/listening to her interviews. After the jump, check out some of the photos that are included in Megan’s Rolling Stone photospread …

Yeah, the photos are pretty much what we’ve come to expect of Ms. Fox. Whether she’s laying about with mouth agape, or showing off as much as possible without giving it all away … this RS photoshoot is exactly the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from Megan Fox. Yeah, she looks like a self-loather to me. I can’t wait to read the rest of this interview.

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