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      Becoming Johnny Rotten, When John Lydon Would Rather You Didn’t

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      Anson Boon went through a grueling process to play the punk star in “Pistol,” even though the original wanted nothing to do with the project.LONDON — Anson Boon gave playing Johnny Rotten everything he had, including a front tooth.Boon embodies the punk frontman in “Pistol,” a new limited series charting the meteoric rise and fall of Rotten’s band the Sex Pistols, and the tooth was lost recreating one of Rotten’s “most animated performances,” the 22-year-old actor said in a recent interview. “I slammed my face into the microphone by accident.”Sitting in a north London park, a mile from where Rotten grew up, Boon reeled off a list of other injuries sustained over six months of filming: He fractured his coccyx when he fell over a drum kit; zealous singing dislocated his jaw; he spent several hours a day hunched over to emulate the musician’s posture, and still has back pain from it today.This roll call is, in some ways, appropriate. Rotten — who now goes by his real name, John Lydon — was one of the pioneers of London’s 1970s punk movement, known for his “divine insanity,” as John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times in 1977, and for overseeing concerts where chairs were thrown and noses bloodied.“Pistol” — which begins streaming Tuesday on Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ in other territories — is Boon’s most significant screen role to date, following parts onstage in London and in films like Sam Mendes’s “1917.”Despite the injuries, he “loved the intensity” of playing the Pistols frontman, Boon said. Besides, “It’s not Rotten to give up. I just had to power through,” he added.Each day on set, Boon would go through an hour and a half of hair and makeup preparation.Miya Mizuno/FXThis determination was already clear to Danny Boyle, who directs the series, when he saw Boon’s audition tape. One of the scenes Boon presented was Rotten auditioning for the Pistols by singing Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” into a broken shower head. Boon sang into a toilet brush.His parents watched the tape, and asked him: “‘Are you sure you can send that? You’ve really gone for it,’” he remembered. Boon thought he would either get the part, or the casting team would never let Boyle see it.As it turned out, the director loved it. The tape was “repulsive and magnetic at the same time,” Boyle said in a recent phone interview.Boon realized he needed to “transform into Rotten.” But he only knew the Sex Pistol’s most famous songs — “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.” — and meeting Lydon wasn’t an option.The show is based on “Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol,” the autobiography of the guitarist Steve Jones, who hasn’t spoken to Lydon since 2008. While all the other living members of the band are consultants for “Pistol,” Lydon has disavowed the project from the start. In 2021, the frontman was sued by his former bandmates for refusing to agree to license the band’s music for the show; Lydon lost the case. He declined to be interviewed for this article.So Boon’s research process was rigorous. He read “Lonely Boy,” as well as “Defying Gravity: Jordan’s Story,” a memoir from Jordan Mooney, a friend of the band who is played in the show by Maisie Williams. Boon also created what he called a “Rotten museum” on his laptop, collecting photos, videos and charts of Rotten’s life to keep track of how he changed, Boon said, from a “shy kid” to a famous punk artist.From left, Johnny Rotten (Boon), Sid Vicious (Louis Partridge), Steve Jones (Toby Wallace) and Paul Cook (Jacob Slater) in “Pistol.”Rebecca Brenneman/FX“You usually have to tell young actors to be diligent and do their research,” Boyle said. “We had to tell Anson when to stop. He became obsessed with him. He knows more about him than I do.”For three months, Boon and his co-stars also went through a band camp, led by the British electronic group Underworld, who scored “Pistol.” The hard work seemed to be paying off by February 2021, when Mooney came to see the actors during rehearsals. At her request they sang the Pistols track “Holiday in the Sun.” After they’d finished, Mooney approached Boon: “‘Thank you,’” he remembered her saying. “‘I feel like I’ve just watched the Sex Pistols again.’”It took a team to get the actors to that point. A dialect coach helped Boon pin down Rotten’s accent and his lisp. A movement instructor helped him emulate Rotten’s posture.His vocal coach, Anne-Marie Speed, helped raise Boon’s singing voice two octaves to match Rotten’s register, “in the same way you might teach a dancer to do the splits,” Boon said. The process was arduous. Afterward, “I had to have acupuncture in my head because there would be so much pressure buildup,” he said.Each day on set, Boon would go through an hour and a half of hair and makeup preparation, wearing wigs and brown false teeth, while listening to interviews of Rotten “to get into his voice and his contrarian mentality,” he said.Boon said he wanted to make sure the world created by Boyle and the show’s screenwriter, Craig Pearce, didn’t feel “like a caricature,” he said. “I had to be surrounded by everything, completely enveloped in it, to make it feel real.”“I have never met a young actor who is as unafraid of throwing themselves in at the deep end like Anson does,” Kate Winslet said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesToby Wallace, who plays Jones in the series, saw Boon “shifting through these wild and risky choices, and committing to all of them,” he said in a phone interview.When Kate Winslet played Boon’s mother in the 2019 film “Blackbird,” she recognized a similar dedication. “I have never met a young actor who is as unafraid of throwing themselves in at the deep end like Anson does,” Winslet said in an email interview.The sense of responsibility Boon felt playing Rotten was only “amplified” by the fact Lydon didn’t want to be involved, the actor said. Recently, Lydon has criticized the show on Twitter and in British tabloids, which only “endears him to me even more,” Boon said.Boyle believes Boon has done Rotten justice. “He’s done his due diligence,” Boyle said. “He believed in himself,” in the same way “John would have.”For months after filming, Boon would automatically sit pigeon-toed with his friends at the pub, he said. And the show has rubbed off on him in other ways. Through Rotten, “I learned about that punk spirit,” said Boon, who still lives in Peterborough, a medieval city in the east of England.Does that spirit live on in him still? “I’d certainly like to think so,” Boon said. And just in case, he has that false tooth to remind him. More

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      Sky Ferreira’s Dazzling, Defiant Return, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Wynonna & Waxahatchee, Superorganism, Rico Nasty and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Sky Ferreira, ‘Don’t Forget’The nine long years since Sky Ferreira’s 2013 cult-classic album “Night Time, My Time” vanish in the opening moments of “Don’t Forget,” a dazzling return to form that is slated to appear on Ferreira’s much-delayed second album, “Masochism.” In her near decade (mostly) away from music — due, in part, to disagreements with her record label — Ferreira’s grungy synth-pop sound has hardly changed at all. But “Night Time, My Time” still sounds singular enough that “Don’t Forget” (which she co-produced with Jorge Elbrecht and co-wrote with Tamaryn) comes as a comfort rather than a disappointment. It’s refreshing to hear the 29-year-old pick up exactly where she left off, inhabiting a song’s echoing, tarnished atmosphere with her signature breathy intensity and smeared glamour. “Keep it in mind, nobody here’s a friend of mine,” Ferreira sneers, proving her melodramatically defiant edge is still intact. LINDSAY ZOLADZAlex G, ‘Blessing’The Philadelphia-based indie artist Alex G has both an easily recognizable aesthetic sensibility and a playfully elastic sense of self. On his excellent 2019 album “House of Sugar,” Alex (last name: Giannascoli) sometimes pitch-shifted and distorted his vocals as though he were embodying different characters — and then on the very next track he’d sing a twangy and seemingly earnest acoustic-guitar ditty that could break your heart in half. His predictable unpredictability strikes again on “Blessing,” which contrasts quasi-spiritual lyrics (“Every day/Is a blessing”) with a sound that borrows from the moody, alt-rock/nu-metal sound of the late ’90s. Alex sings in a menacing whisper, and an explosion of apocalyptic synths completely transforms the song midway through. Inscrutable as it may be, the whole thing is eerie, hypnotic and, somehow, strangely moving. ZOLADZSuperorganism, ‘On & On’The London-based group Superorganism turns boredom and monotony into something almost perky in “On & On.” “No more space, hit replay/It goes on and on,” Orono sings with sullen nonchalance, then repeats “and on” another 16 times. The track is bubble gummy pop with a hint of reggae, and it’s packed with little hooks and ever-changing effects, but nothing breaks through the ennui. JON PARELESWynonna & Waxahatchee, ‘Other Side’As she’s gotten older, Wynonna Judd has been singing with an assured husk in her voice, cutting the crisp country she’s performed for decades with just a hint of the blues. Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, over the course of a career that began in DIY warehouse spaces, has found her bridge to American roots music. The two singers meet on “Other Side,” a gentle rumination on impermanence. For Judd — whose mother and longtime singing partner, Naomi, died last month — it’s a sturdy breeze, understated but invested. For Crutchfield, it’s a soft landing in a new home. JON CARAMANICASaya Gray, ‘Empathy for Bethany’“Empathy for Bethany” keeps wriggling free of expectations. Saya Gray, a Canadian songwriter who played bass in Daniel Caesar’s band, starts the song like a folky, picking triplets on an acoustic guitar. But almost immediately, the chord progression starts to wander; then her vocals warp by multitracking and shifting pitch, and soon a breathy trumpet drifts in from the jazz realm; by the time the track ends, it has become a loop of electronic aftereffects. “Honestly, if I get too close I’ll go ghost,” Gray sings, and the track bears her out. PARELESBruce Hornsby, ‘Tag’Bruce Hornsby has stayed productive and exploratory through the pandemic, doubling down on musical craftiness and structural ambition. His new album, “’Flicted,” pulls together spiky dissonances and folky warmth, chamber orchestrations and electronic illusions, puckishness and benevolence. “Fun and games in pestilence/We could use, use some kindly kindliness,” he sings in “Tag,” adding, “Still shake your fist/A kind of gritted bliss.” The music seesaws between rumbling, dissonant piano over a funky backbeat and richly chiming folk-rock, neatly juggling skepticism and hope. PARELESMaria BC, ‘April’The songs on Maria BC’s debut album, “Hyaline,” are reveries built around patiently picked guitar patterns and tranquil melodies, though they might sprout electronics, percussion or chamber-music orchestrations at any moment. In “April,” vocals overlap and multiply into cascading chords while unexpected sounds wink into earshot behind the guitar. “Listen to me/Anything you want,” the lyrics promise. PARELESKaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri, ‘Amber’The experimental artist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and the Academy Award-nominated film composer Emile Mosseri have struck gold with their collaborative album, “I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon.” It’s only two minutes long, but “Amber,” from the second half of the project, runs like a spaced-out symphony. Over bubbling synth tones, Smith’s airy vocalizations loop into circuitous entanglements, shapeshifting into oceans of cosmic flotsam. The effect is appropriately cinematic, like a long-lost immersive Pipilotti Rist video. ISABELIA HERRERANduduzo Makhathini featuring Omagugu, ‘Mama’The first release on the new Blue Note Africa label, “In the Spirit of Ntu” is the South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini’s homage to the universal energetic force known in Bantu cultures as “ntu.” It includes this wistful but swiftly rolling tune, “Mama,” written by Makhathini’s wife, Omagugu, in memory of her mother, who recently died. Omagugu sings in a sweeping, brushy tone, holding her syllables open, as Makhathini surrounds her in a pattern of chords that ascend and ascend. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLORico Nasty, ‘Intrusive’Falling somewhere between gritty hardcore and distorted jungle, Rico Nasty’s “Intrusive” scrapes like metal through a meat grinder. With her latest single, the Maryland rapper continues her return to music after her 2020 album “Nightmare Vacation.” On “Intrusive,” she harnesses punk verve and raps over a warped breakbeat, letting her intrusive impulses and most violent desires flow out in a stream-of-consciousness torrent. It’s bratty, turbulent and deliciously cathartic, like a childhood temper tantrum. “Mom, if you hear this I’m sorry,” she raps. Hey, at least she warned you. HERRERASleazyWorld Go featuring Lil Baby, ‘Sleazy Flow’ (remix)There’s not much to “Sleazy Flow,” by the Kansas City rapper SleazyWorld Go: a few piano tinkles, some groaning bass throbs, a sleepy, sinister tempo and crucially, some select lyrics blending street beef and sexual conquest: “How you mad she choosing me?/I like what she do to me/She say she feel safer over here, this where the shooters be.” That snippet became a TikTok breakout earlier this year, and Lil Baby picks up that taunting theme on the song’s official remix. His verse is almost chipper: “Acting like I’m chasing her or something, she be pursuing me/Can’t hold her, she be telling me all the time she wish that you was me.” CARAMANICADavid Virelles, ‘Al Compas de Mi Viejo Tres’David Virelles has no beef with the piano. A virtuoso improviser and classically trained pianist from Santiago de Cuba, he doesn’t seem intent on turning the instrument inside-out, like Thelonious Monk did; or jettisoning it entirely, like a John Cage; or turning it into an android, like some of his contemporaries. Virelles is a subtler expander. He plays the grand piano with sensitivity and deference, working with it, not against. He tucks dense harmonies inside other harmonies, shading his music with deep browns and grays — like an island sky turning dark before a storm. And on “Al Compás De Mi Viejo Tres” (“By the Compass of my Old Guitar”), from his masterly new album, “Nuna,” he celebrates the lilt of classic Cuban danzón by playing with utter elegance and clarity — stopping every so often to get in his own way with a few irruptive slashes or low, corrosive chords. RUSSONELLO More

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      Harry Styles Is No. 1 With a Record-Breaking Total for Vinyl Sales

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      “Harry’s House,” the British pop star’s third solo album, moved more copies on vinyl since at least 1991, when SoundScan began keeping reliable sales data.Is 500,000 the new million?As a shorthand for success selling albums in the streaming age, that may now be the case. The latest release to hit that adjusted milestone is Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House,” which had the equivalent of 521,500 sales in the United States over the last week, thanks to strong streaming numbers and the biggest vinyl take in three decades.For years, moving a million copies of an album in one week was a coveted achievement for any blockbuster release. Since the 1990s it has been done at least 20 times, by acts like Adele, Whitney Houston, ’N Sync, Eminem and Taylor Swift.But streaming has rejiggered the music industry’s math, and the prospect of selling a million copies of an album — or even getting a million “equivalent sales units,” a new yardstick that incorporates old-fashioned purchases and streaming clicks — has largely disappeared from the strategy book. No title has had a million sales in a single week since Swift’s “Reputation” nearly five years ago, and in the last 18 months, only four albums — including “Harry’s House” — have crossed 500,000.“Harry’s House” had about as boffo an opening as any album can have now, with 247 million streams and 330,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. It had the best opening of any album since Adele’s “30,” which landed six months ago with 839,000. (Even Adele, whose previous album, “25,” started with nearly 3.4 million back in 2015, could no longer hit seven figures.)Styles’s streaming number was strong, but less robust than the totals for recent albums by Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar. Where “Harry’s House” really shone was vinyl. It moved 182,000 copies on the LP format, more than any other album has sold in a single week since at least 1991, when Luminate’s predecessor, SoundScan, began keeping reliable sales data.As Billboard noted, vinyl sales alone would have been enough to propel “Harry’s House” to No. 1. Each of the three solo albums by Styles, who rose to fame as part of the British boy band One Direction, has opened at the top of the chart. Styles’s song “As It Was” also returned to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, notching its fourth time at the top.Also this week, several recent chart-toppers hold strong: Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is No. 2, Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” is No. 3 and Future’s “I Never Liked You” is No. 4.“American Heartbreak,” by the country singer-songwriter Zach Bryan — his first major-label album after two self-released recordings — opens at No. 5. Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 6, the 72-week-old album’s first time out of the Top 5 since December. More

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      Abba Voyage Review: No Ordinary Abba Night at the Club

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      With a concert spectacle mixing wizardry and technical skill, the band makes a case for its continued relevance.LONDON — I kept turning to my friend, wanting to tell him how young and fresh the two women that put the As in Abba seemed on the giant screens ahead of us. Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were not actually in the room with us, but that’s the kind of stupor Abba Voyage dazzles you into.Though the Swedish pop band has not played London since 1979, holographic “Abbatars” of the band, modeled in their likeness from that year, are currently filling up a custom-built arena for a 90-minute concert of their greatest hits. A combination of motion-captured performance, animated sequences and a live 10-person band make up the spectacle, which makes a floor-thumping case for the music’s continued relevance.Projected on a screen that envelops one side of the spaceshiplike auditorium, the Abbatars play mostly as if it were a real concert. They “enter” from below the stage, make banter with the audience, ask for patience as they switch costumes, and return for an encore.It would feel corny if it weren’t so triumphantly fun, and the Friday night crowd was certainly along for the ride. Largely a mix of couples in their mid 60s and younger, disco-leaning gay men, the attendees sang through every number with the intensity of a therapeutic ritual. Abba Voyage is an exercise in symbol worship that separates itself from an ordinary Abba night at the club through state-of-the-art production values.“To be or not to be — that is no longer the question,” the band member Benny Andersson declares in a prerecorded solo address, and questions about live performance, truth, eternity and transience are frothed up into the sheer giddiness of (almost) being in the same room as one of the biggest acts in pop music history.It’s hard to pin down the reasons that such a strange, 21st century endeavor is a crowd-pleasing success, but Abba’s music has its own strange alchemy. Take “Mamma Mia” (performed here in rhinestone-emblazoned pink velour jumpsuits): Why is the hook an Italian catchphrase? Or “Fernando” (sung against a dramatic lunar eclipse): What could these four Swedes possibly have to say about the Mexican revolution? And yet, something about the earnestness of those songs, reflected in the audience’s full-chested belting, has made them inescapable pop standards.Those two songs are performed straightforwardly, the Abbatars life-size and center stage, with surrounding screens projecting close-ups for those seated in the orchestra level, behind a massive dance floor. Most of the numbers are done this way, recreating a concert experience; the audience was overjoyed to dance along and applaud each step of the way. Choreography, based on the band member’s real movements, but captured from younger body doubles, hit its peak during “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!,” with the digital Lyngstad doing high-kicks and twirls that I’m not sure the real one was capable of in her heyday.Abba Voyage is playing at a specially constructed “Abba Arena” in East London through December.Johan PerssonA couple of songs, however, played more like immersive music videos, with the full size of the screens used to tell more thorough visual stories. The band famously sang and performed through its own breakup, and “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” a 1977 anthem mirroring the dissolution of romantic and professional relations in the group, is here performed as an Ingmar Bergman-esque study in missed connections. Its members’ fractured faces sing across a hall of mirrors before ultimately embracing in reconciliation.Less successful than those episodes were two fully-animated numbers, set to “Eagle” and “Voulez Vous,” following a young traveler’s journey through forests and pyramids, and culminating in their discovery of giant sculptures of the band member’s heads.Those songs recreate the interstitial bits of a “real” concert, as do speeches from each Abbatar about their success and artistry. The best of these interludes saw the band present the footage from their Eurovision Song Contest-winning performance of “Waterloo,” the song that catapulted them to fame in 1974.Abba’s music is deceptively complex. What sounds like a simple little song reveals itself to be an intricately layered web of harmonies, melodies, real and digital instruments and angelic English vocals, ever-so-slightly outside the band’s Scandinavian comfort zone.It’s a mix of wizardry and technical skill that, decades later, after movies and musicals and greatest hits compilations, is still at the pinnacle of pop maximalism. To hear the closing piano riffs on “Chiquitita” in a crowded arena is an exalting experience, and despite its eyebrow-raising premise, Abba Voyage miraculously takes flight. More

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      Ronnie Hawkins, Rockabilly Road Warrior, Is Dead at 87

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      Besides performing, he mentored other musicians, including stars like Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm and Rick Danko, who went on to form the Band.Ronnie Hawkins, who combined the gregarious stage presence of a natural showman and a commitment to turbocharged rockabilly music in a rowdy career that spanned more than a half-century, died on Sunday. He was 87.His daughter Leah confirmed his death. She did not specify where he died or the cause, though she said he had been quite ill.Mr. Hawkins started performing in his native Arkansas in the late 1950s and became a legendary roadhouse entertainer based in Canada in the 1960s, his music forever rooted in the primal rock ‘n’ roll rhythms of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.For all of his success, his biggest claim to fame was not the music he produced but the musicians he attracted and mentored. His backup musicians of the early 1960s, Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, went on to form the Band, which backed Bob Dylan and became one of the most admired and influential bands in rock history.But those musicians, like many of Mr. Hawkins’s fans, never lost their reverence for the man known as the Hawk.“Ronnie’s whole style,” Mr. Robertson once said, was for he and his band to play “faster and more violent and explosive than anyone had ever heard before.”Ronald Cornett Hawkins was born on Jan. 10, 1935, two days after Elvis Presley, in Huntsville, Ark. When he was 9, his family moved to nearby Fayetteville, where his father, Jasper, opened a barbershop and his mother, Flora, taught school. His musical education began at the barbershop where a shoeshine boy named Buddy Hayes had a blues band that rehearsed with a piano player named Little Joe.It was there that he began to imbibe the crazy quilt music of the South, with blues and jazz filtered through snatches of country and the minstrel and medicine shows that traveled through town. Before long, something new was added, the beginnings of rock ‘n’ roll, which was percolating out of Sam Phillips’s Sun Records studio in Memphis.Mr. Hawkins brought to all that an element of danger — as a teenager, he had driven a souped-up Model A Ford running bootleg whiskey from Missouri to the dry counties of Oklahoma, making as much as $300 a day.He put together bands, enrolled in and dropped out of the University of Arkansas, joined the Army in 1957 and then quit the same year, intent on making it in the music business. While in the Army, he fronted a rock ‘n’ roll band, the Black Hawks, made up of African American musicians, a daring and usually welcome effort in the segregated South.Demos he recorded at Sun after he left the Army fell flat, but he and the guitarist on his Sun session, Luke Paulman, put together a band with Mr. Hawkins as the athletic frontman given to backflips and handstands. Over the years, his trademark became the camel walk, an early version of what became Michael Jackson’s moonwalk decades later.In 1958, the country music singer Conway Twitty said American rock ‘n’ roll bands could make a killing in Canada. Heeding that advice, Mr. Hawkins moved to a place he once said was “as cold as an accountant’s heart.” Toronto and other places in Ontario turned into his home base for the rest of his career.Mr. Hawkins in the 1970s. While he was known for performing in roadhouses, he also appeared in movies, including the disastrous 1980 western “Heaven’s Gate.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Hawkins liked to talk, perhaps with some embellishment, about regular parties, brawling, sex and drinking that, as he put it, “Nero would have been ashamed of.” But there was nothing glamorous about being a rock ‘n’ roll musician playing nonstop in bars and roadhouses on a circuit centered on Ontario, Quebec and U.S. cities like Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland.“When I started playing rock ‘n’ roll,” he said, “you were two pay grades below a prisoner of war.”He built up a loyal following based on his magnetic stage presence, the proficiency of his bands and the raw energy of his music. He had modest hits with “Forty Days,” his revised version of Chuck Berry’s “Thirty Days,” and “Mary Lou,” a Top 30 hit on the U.S. charts.Later successful recordings include “Who Do You Love?” and “Hey Bo Diddley.”Morris Levy of Mr. Hawkins’s label, Roulette Records, billed him as someone who “moved better than Elvis, he looked better than Elvis and he sang better than Elvis.” He saw a vacuum he thought Mr. Hawkins could fill as the original rockabilly artists slowed down or flamed out. But Mr. Hawkins was not so sure, as he watched clean-cut teen idols like Frankie Avalon, Fabian and Bobby Rydell take over from their more rough-hewed progenitors.To Mr. Levy’s chagrin, Mr. Hawkins opted to own the road in Canada rather than to swing for the fences as a recording star in the U.S., building up a remunerative career working nonstop, even though he never built an epic recording career. He also became known as a one-of-a-kind character and raconteur.“The Hawk had been to college and could quote Shakespeare when he was in the mood,” Mr. Helm wrote in his autobiography, “This Wheel’s on Fire.” “He was also the most vulgar and outrageous rockabilly character I’ve ever met in my life. He’d say and do anything to shock you.”Mr. Hawkins was more than just the consummate rockabilly road warrior. In 1969, he hosted John Lennon and Yoko Ono at his ranch outside Toronto during their world tour to promote world peace as the Plastic Ono Band. Bob Dylan was a longtime fan who in 1975 cast Mr. Hawkins to play the role of “Bob Dylan” in his experimental and largely panned movie “Renaldo and Clara.”Mr. Hawkins in an undated photo. He started performing in his native Arkansas in the late 1950s before settling in Canada in the 1960s.Michael Ochs Archives / StringerHe also appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 concert film “The Last Waltz,” as one of the invited stars who joined the Band in the final performance of the original group at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day in 1976. (The Band later reunited without Mr. Robertson.)Mr. Hawkins growled and hollered his way through a memorable performance of “Who Do You Love” with the Band, good-naturedly fanning Mr. Robertson’s guitar with his cowboy hat as if cooling it off after a particularly torrid solo.And he became a friend of his fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton when he was governor, as well as a conspicuous part of the Arkansas entourage during President Clinton’s Inaugural in 1992. Mr. Clinton also paid tribute to Mr. Hawkins in a 2004 documentary titled “Ronnie Hawkins Still Alive and Kickin’.’’Mr. Hawkins did other acting, including a supporting role in Michael Cimino’s disastrous 1980 western “Heaven’s Gate,” and he morphed into a respected elder statesman of Canadian music. He invested wisely, lived like a country squire in a sprawling lakefront estate and owned several businesses.Still, he was a master of honing his bad-boy image and playing to type, including in his 1989 autobiography, “Last of the Good Ol’ Boys.”“Ninety percent of what I made went to women, whiskey, drugs and cars,” he said. “I guess I just wasted the other 10 percent.”Besides his daughter Leah, survivors include his wife, Wanda, and two other children, Ronnie Jr. and Robin, and four grandchildren.Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting. More

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      Alan White, Who Drummed With Yes and Ex-Beatles, Dies at 72

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      The invitation to perform with John Lennon, which he thought was a joke, led to almost 50 years with one of progressive rock’s foremost bands.Alan White, a seasoned rock drummer who had worked with two former Beatles by the time he turned 21, but who was best known for his long tenure with the pioneering British progressive-rock band Yes, died on Thursday at his home in the Seattle area. He was 72.His death was announced by his family. The announcement did not specify a cause, saying only that he died “after a brief illness.”News of Mr. White’s death came just days after Yes announced that he would not be taking part in the band’s upcoming tour of Britain, which begins on June 13. He had been a member of Yes since 1972, but, the band noted in a statement, “a number of health setbacks” had restricted his time onstage since 2016, with Jay Schellen doing most of the drumming and Mr. White joining the band late in each set.Alan White was born in Pelton, County Durham, England, on June 14, 1949, to Raymond and May (Thrower) White. He began playing the drums when he was 12. He first played professionally the next year, and went on to work with a number of British groups throughout the 1960s.In September 1969, John Lennon, who had heard him with one of those groups, called Mr. White and asked him to join the band he was putting together for a concert in Toronto.As Mr. White told interviewers over the years, he assumed the call was a prank and hung up. Lennon called back, Mr. White was convinced he was who he said he was and he was soon on his way to Canada as a member of the Plastic Ono Band, which also included Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voormann.The Toronto concert, one of only two that the band would play (the second was a charity concert in London that December), was a memorable one, marking Lennon’s return to the stage after a long absence and yielding the hit album “Live Peace in Toronto.” Mr. White subsequently recorded with Lennon on the single “Instant Karma” and on several tracks of the album “Imagine,” including the title cut, which, like “Instant Karma,” was a Top 10 hit.Mr. White also recorded with another former Beatle, George Harrison, on sessions for Harrison’s first solo album, “All Things Must Pass.”Following those recordings, as well as work backing Joe Cocker and others and a brief stint as one of several percussionists with his fellow drummer Ginger Baker’s band, he was invited in 1972 to join Yes after the band’s original drummer, Bill Bruford, left to join another leading progressive-rock band, King Crimson.Mr. White worked with two former Beatles, John Lennon and George Harrison, before he was 21.Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times, via Associated PressYes’s music, like that of other bands in the so-called prog-rock movement, was more complex and challenging than standard rock ’n’ roll. But Mr. White had only three days to learn the band’s repertoire before a concert in Dallas — and, he later recalled, when he met with the band’s singer, Jon Anderson, and its bassist, Chris Squire, they told him that if he didn’t agree to join the band “they were going to throw me out the third-story window.” He agreed, he learned the music and his long association with Yes began.Yes underwent numerous changes in both personnel and style over the years, notably adopting a more straightforward pop sound for the album “90125” and the single “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” which became a No. 1 hit in 1983. Mr. White and Mr. Squire were the band’s only constant presences until Mr. Squire’s death in 2015.Mr. White performing with Yes at Madison Square Garden in 1978. He was on every one of the band’s albums from 1973 until last year.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesMr. White, who also helped write a number of the band’s songs, was first heard with Yes on a few tracks of the live album “Yessongs” (1973) and, a year later, on the studio album “Tales From Topographic Oceans.” He was on every subsequent album through “The Quest,” released last year.Yes was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.Mr. White is survived by his wife of 40 years, Rogena (Walberg) White; a son, Jesse; a daughter, Cassi; and two grandchildren. More

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      in Music

      Abba Returns to the Stage in London. Sort Of.

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      The Swedish superstars — or digital versions of them, at least — performed on Thursday to 3,000 enthusiastic fans with the help of 140 animators, four body doubles and $175 million.LONDON — Ecstatic cheers bounced around a specially built 3,000-capacity hexagonal arena Thursday night as the members of Abba — one of pop music’s behemoths — slowly emerged from beneath the stage, their classic ’70s hairstyles leading the way, to play their first concert in over 40 years.As a synthesizer blared and lights pulsed, the singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad twirled her arms skyward, unveiling a huge cape decorated with gold and fire red feathers, while she sang the slow-burn disco of “The Visitors.” Benny Andersson, poised at his synth, grinned like he couldn’t believe he was onstage again. Bjorn Ulvaeus, the band’s guitarist, focused on his instrument. Agnetha Faltskog swirled her arms as if in a hippie trance, adding her voice to the chorus.Soon, Andersson took the mic. “I’m really Benny,” he said. “I just look very good for my age.”The specially built Abba Arena holds the technology required to bring the Abbatars to life.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe audience — some already out of their seats dancing, glasses of rosé prosecco in hand — laughed because the comment went straight to the heart of the event. The members of Abba onstage weren’t real; they were meticulous digital re-creations made to look like the group in its 1979 heyday. The real Abba — whose members are all at least 72 years old — was watching from the stands.Thursday’s concert was the world premiere of Abba Voyage, a 90-minute spectacular that runs in London seven times a week until at least December, with potential to extend until April 2026, when the permission for the Abba Arena expires, with the land being designated for housing.During the show, the digital avatars — known as Abbatars — performed a set of hits with the help of a 10-piece live band and an array of lights, lasers and special effects. For the Spanish-tinged “Chiquitita,” the group sang in front of a solar eclipse. For the stadium disco of “Summer Night City,” it appeared in pyramids made of dazzling light, with the rings of Saturn twirling in the background. The avatars also appeared as 30-foot-tall figures on huge screens at the sides of the stage, as if being filmed at a real concert. At points, they started appearing in dozens of places onstage as if in a manic music video.Baillie Walsh, the show’s director, said the event was meant to be “a sensory overload.”The project, which Walsh said pushed digital concerts beyond the hologram performances that have made headlines in the past, is the result of years of secretive work, protected by hundreds of nondisclosure agreements. That included five weeks filming the real Abba in motion capture suits in Sweden; four body doubles; endless debates over the set list; and 140 animators from Industrial Light & Magic (known as I.L.M.), a visual effects firm founded by George Lucas that normally works on Hollywood blockbusters.Svana Gisla and Andersson’s son Ludvig Andersson, the event’s producers, said in an interview last Friday that they had to deal with a host of problems during the eight years they worked to develop the show, including fund-raising challenges and malfunctioning toilets.“It’s been stressful,” Andersson said, looking exhausted and sucking a mango-flavored vape pen. “But, make no mistake,” he added, “nothing has been more enjoyable than this.”Alex Beers, a member of the band’s fan club, traveled from Amsterdam for the concert.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesCarla Bento flew in from Portugal just to stand outside the show.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesMerchandise for sale inside the arena included shirts, backpacks and a tea tray.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesThe idea started around 2014, Gisla said, when she was brought in to help make music videos for the band involving digital avatars, a process that was “a total nightmare,” she said. Around 2016, Simon Fuller, the producer behind the “Idol” franchise and the Spice Girls, suggested a show starring a 3-D version of the group “singing” while backed by a live band. (Fuller is no longer involved.)The group needed to get creative because Faltskog and Lyngstad had made it clear that they didn’t “want to go on the road,” Andersson told The New York Times in 2021. But the quartet did want to include fresh music in the show, so it reunited in secret to work up a few songs, which became something more: “Voyage,” Abba’s first new album in four decades, released last year.The team quickly realized that holograms were not up to scratch; nor were a host of other technologies. “We kissed a lot of frogs,” Gisla said. It was only when they met representatives of Industrial Light & Magic that she felt they had found a company capable of making “really convincing digital humans,” who could be “running, spinning, performing in floodlights.” The key, Ulvaeus said in a video interview, is “for them to emotionally connect with an audience.”During test shoots in fall 2019, the group’s male members “leapt in with no qualms,” Ben Morris, I.L.M.’s creative director, said. (The musicians’ biggest concern? Shaving off their beards. “I was scared what I would find underneath,” Ulvaeus said.) Lyngstad had just had hip surgery and was using a cane. “But we started playing some songs and she slowly slid off the stool, stood up and said, ‘Take my stick away,’” Morris recalled.The following spring, the band was filmed for five weeks by about 200 cameras in Sweden, as it repeatedly played its hits. The British ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor and four body doubles selected from hundreds of hopefuls looked on, with the intention of learning the band’s every movement, stance and expression so they could mimic its members, then extend their movements to develop the show’s final choreography.Steve Aplin, I.L.M.’s motion director for the event, said they went through “literally hundreds” of iterations of each avatar to get them right, and also modeled clothes designed by the stylist B. Akerlund. The hardest to achieve was Andersson, he added, since “his personality is the twinkle in his eye.”From left: Bjorn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson in their motion-capture suits.Baillie WalshWhile the Abbatars were being developed, the 10-piece band was being formed and Gisla was fund-raising (the final budget was 140 million pounds, or about $175 million, she said), developing an arena capable of handling all the technology and trying to keep the massive project under wraps. A moment of potential jeopardy came in December 2019, when the team submitted a planning application to the London authorities that had the word “Logo” on technical drawings of the building instead of “Abba,” in the hope no one would investigate further.When the coronavirus pandemic hit, a project that “already seemed ludicrous before Covid” became “doubly ludicrous” Gisla said, since she was asking backers to trust the idea that 3,000 people would want to dance next to each other in the near future. Materials for the arena’s sound insulation almost got stuck outside Britain when a ship jammed in the Suez Canal; the wood for the building’s facade was meant to come from Russia, but was sourced from Germany at increased expense after Russia invaded Ukraine.Asked what he had gone through while making the project, Walsh replied, “A nervous breakdown,” then laughed.Abba Voyage is not the only Abba-themed event in London; the long-running “Mamma Mia!” musical in the West End also regularly attracts boozy bachelorette and birthday parties. Gisla said that like a West End show, Abba Voyage would have to sell about 80 percent of its seats to make a profit. Tickets start at £31, or $38, although few of those cheap seats appear available for the initial run. Attendees pay more — starting at $67 — for a spot on a dance floor in front of the stage.Andersson, the producer, said he obviously hoped Abba Voyage would be a commercial success — as do the members of Abba, who are investors — but he insisted he was happy the team had simply “created something beautiful” after so much toil. Ulvaeus said he wouldn’t be surprised if some of the group’s contemporaries consider a similar undertaking: “If they ask me for advice, of course, I would say, ‘It takes a long time and it’s very expensive.’”The Abba Voyage show features a 10-piece live band and an array of lights, lasers and special effects.Johan PerssonBrenton and Brenda Pfeiffer, from Australia, sharing a kiss after the show.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesElla Vaday and Kitty Scott-Claus, competitors on “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK,” attending the opening-night show.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesAt Thursday’s premiere, the audience was split between invited celebrities in the stands (including Sweden’s king and queen) and members of Abba’s fan club on the dance floor, yet in both sections people hugged in joy at the sound of beloved songs, and danced and sang along. The fact that the band onstage wasn’t the flesh-and-blood originals didn’t seem to matter. For “Waterloo,” the Abbatars simply introduced a huge video of their 1974 Eurovision performance and danced their way offstage as the crowd cheered wildly.Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp said he had been left in “a state of confusion” by the show. “I felt very emotional at certain times during that performance, which I’m calling a performance but it wasn’t — it was a projection,” he said. He added, “But I don’t know what it means for the future of mankind.” He suggested avatar shows featuring the Beatles and Elvis Presley wouldn’t be far behind.The fans outside were too overwhelmed to worry about the show’s implications for the live music industry. Teresa Harle, 55, a postal worker who attended with a friend and ran to the front of the arena to get the best view, said she found the avatars so convincing, she even waved at Faltskog when the show ended.“It was a once in a lifetime experience,” Harle said, “even though we’re coming again tomorrow, and Saturday.” More

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      in Television

      ‘Pistol’ Tells Steve Jones’s Story. With a Touch of Showbiz.

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      A new limited series is based on a memoir by the Sex Pistol’s guitarist. Just don’t confuse it with a documentary, he says.LONDON — For Steve Jones, direct has always been best. The Sex Pistols guitarist is known for rejecting what he describes as fancy “Beatle chords” in favor of a sound without frills, and for drunken retorts on prime time British television.This approach is at the fore in his 2016 book, “Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol.” In the introduction, he writes, “I’m not gonna come out of this smelling of roses,” before detailing the rampant kleptomania of his late teens and his sex addictions. There are also details of the sexual abuse by his stepfather, his descent into addiction after the band collapsed and the near illiteracy that hampered him until well into his adult life.The book forms the basis for “Pistol,” a six-part series directed by Danny Boyle and arriving on FX/Hulu on Tuesday. The show stars Toby Wallace as Jones and Anson Boon as the Sex Pistols’ lead singer, John Lydon, known as Johnny Rotten.Toby Wallace plays Steve Jones in “Pistol.”Miya Mizuno/FXIn the series, tensions abound between the exceptional and the ordinary, and dramatic license often overcomes fidelity to Jones’s experience. Preparations have been tense, too, with Lydon losing a lawsuit to the rest of the band over the use of Pistols music in the show.In a recent phone interview, Jones discussed what he would do if he ran into Lydon, how his story got changed to fit a TV format and the impact of the band’s manager, Malcolm McLaren. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What motivated you to write the memoir?There was just a lot of stuff I wanted to get out there, even the dodgy stuff. It was weird at first, but I got such a lot of feedback from it — from men, young guys, who experienced a lot of similar trauma stuff as kids. I didn’t realize that kind of thing happens a lot. Most guys don’t tell anybody, they take it to their grave, and it’s very unhealthy to do that. You can’t carry that stuff around with you, you’ve got to move on.In the book, you say you hadn’t minded playing second fiddle to Lydon, but when Sid Vicious joined the Pistols, you were left playing third fiddle. How does it feel to now be the dominant voice in “Pistol?”I mean, it’s OK. I’m a team player, I don’t really like being the center of attention. I’d rather be playing guitar than singing, I’ve always had that approach. I don’t really like all the spotlight at this stage of the game, at 66 years old. But it is what it is.From left, Louis Partridge, Anson Boon, Jacob Slater and Wallace in the show.Miya Mizuno/FXBut surely that was a consideration when Danny Boyle approached you, that you’d be thrust into the spotlight?Well, of course. But Boyle liked the fact that it was coming from my view. He said I was like the engine room of the Sex Pistols, and liked coming from that angle, as opposed to the obvious angle.Through the eyes of Lydon?Exactly. That’s normally the way it goes. I got a shot at telling my story, based on my book. But you’ve got to remember, it’s not a documentary. It’s a six-part series.“Lonely Boy” is a pretty frank tale that asks for little forgiveness. How well do you think that comes across in “Pistol?”Like I said, it’s based on my book. You’ve got to showbiz it up a little bit, you’ve got to make it interesting — even the relationship between me and Chrissie Hynde, the “love interest.” She watched it the other day, and she was surprised: She said, “I didn’t realize I was about this much.”“Pistol” presents that as a recurring relationship. Is that quite how it happened?I knew Chrissie, we did hang out a bit in the early days, she wanted to be a musician, and I kind of brushed her off, so that is all true. But she was shocked when she saw it last week.But I do think it’s a good story. Even if it wasn’t as long as that, my relationship with her, I just think the way it’s been written makes it interesting. If you’re a train spotter, you’re going to hate it, because it’s not in the timeline, but whatever.In “Pistol,” Chrissie Hynde, played by Sydney Chandler, is the love interest to Wallace’s Jones.Miya Mizuno/FXAnother unexpected narrative is the way Malcolm McLaren (played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley) are presented as parent figures. What was your relationship with the pair of them like?They had a flat in Clapham, and I used to go and stay over there. They had Ben and Joe [Westwood’s children], but Ben didn’t stay over much, so I would sleep in one of the bunk beds with Joe. I just used to hang out with them, at Cranks, the vegetarian restaurant in Carnaby Street. I used to drive Malcolm around to the tailors in the East End because he couldn’t drive.[Meeting them] was a real turning point for me, and that’s where my loyalty lay. Malcolm showed me a different side of life — that whole avant-garde, Chelsea “posh toffs” scene. And I loved it. I was not headed anywhere good the way I was going, so I’m always grateful for him and Viv for that. Even though you couldn’t trust him, I still didn’t care.Early in your relationship, McLaren helped you avoid a prison sentence. Repaying that debt seems to justify a lot of your actions in “Pistol.” Did that weigh heavily on your relationship?That was only one part of it. I actually liked hanging out with him. One minute he’d be talking like a toff, and the next like a cop. In all honesty, he really made it all happen, and he doesn’t get enough credit for it. I don’t think it would have happened without him.Did it bother you that Lydon didn’t want to be involved in “Pistol?”We wanted him to be involved. It would have been good if he had been on board. If the shoe was on the other foot, we’d have all been thrilled, if it had been his book and Danny Boyle wanted to do something similar. At this stage of the game, we’re grown men, I don’t know why he’s not interested. But it’s par for his personality for him not to want to be involved. Maybe he’ll secretly watch it and have a chuckle.The show includes the disastrous Sex Pistols tour of the United States, which saw the band implode.Miya Mizuno/FXIs the “Pistol” fallout the final straw in your relationship with Lydon?I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. It’s not like we hang out anyway. I live in L.A., he lives in L.A., I’ve been here 35 years, and he came just after me, and we’ve never been interested in hanging out. The last time I saw him was in 2008, when we played a load of European gigs. We don’t need to hang out, I’m good with that, we don’t need to be pals. But I do have respect for him, absolutely.What would you do if you ran into him at the shops?I’d probably run and hide behind the baked beans.Danny Boyle has said “Pistol” imagines “breaking into the world of ‘The Crown’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent.” When did you realize you had the power to shake things up?The Grundy thing [a notorious interview of the Sex Pistols by Bill Grundy on British TV in 1976] took it into a different sphere. The power came from having a label, then them giving us the boot, getting a label, getting the boot again. We were calling it on our terms, which was unheard-of back then.The Grundy thing was the beginning of the end. As far as making any more music, the creative side was out the window. The way I looked at it, then it became the leather-jacket brigade everywhere. It became mainstream, it lost its originality. Before Grundy, you had the Clash, the Buzzcocks, a bunch of bands that were very creative in their own ways.“You don’t want to fall asleep listening to what I’ve been doing after the Pistols,” Jones said.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe end of “Pistol” ties things up quite neatly. Were you happy with where the series ended?I did like the way it ended. There were a couple of different endings that I wasn’t keen about; [this one] left you with a feel-good-y kind of way as opposed to not being cheesy about it.What were the other endings?There was one where the cast were interviewed about their experiences, and one of those “Where are they now?” kind of endings, which was horrible to be honest with you. I’m so happy Danny ditched that one.It does leave out the third part of your book though, the fallout of the Pistols and your quite tragic personal aftermath. Were you OK with that?It could have gone on, but it would have started getting boring afterward. You don’t want to fall asleep listening to what I’ve been doing after the Pistols. More