Bleeding Neon

It didn’t occur to me until just now that I haven’t written a story for HRH, the Hard Rock Hotel’s glossy on-property magazine, since the fall of 2008. I was actually assigned a story for last spring’s issue, but due to a bunch of nonsense you don’t really need to know about, but one day I will include in my tell-all memoir, “Screwing It Up,” I turned the story over to another writer and have been absent from HRH’s pages since then … until now.

As you may determine from that sexy, silvery cover you see to your right, the new issue’s cover story is about Muse, who rocked the Joint at the Hard Rock back in December. And this guy wrote it. “No Resistance” is 1776 words of pure gushing Pj prose exploring the bombastic rock band’s struggles to become king of the U.S. rock scene (which they haven’t yet, but SHOULD).

Photography for the article comes courtesy of Erik Kabik, a good dude and great shutterbug. When the digital version is put online, I’ll link to it. In the meantime, you’ll have to actually get off your couch and go to the Hard Rock to pick up an issue if you want to read it. Which I highly recommend.

I know I already shared this over at my old site, but since the “old” incarnation of pjperez.com has been rolled up here, I don’t feel too bad reposting. Especially because of this: The winter 2008 issue of HRH, the Hard Rock Hotel’s in-house magazine, is now available online in a fully interactive digital format. And if you’re interested in reading my feature about Billy Idol (which appears on the cover in about half of the copies — the other half feature Kings of Leon), then click here to enjoy an interview with the legendary rocker. That’ll link you directly to the article.

The shots of Idol featured on the cover and in the story look live, but they were actually shot by Robert M Knight before Idol’s Sept. 12, 2008 show at the Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel here in Las Vegas. Knight is a very humble guy, but he’s been one of the most prolific music photojournalists of the last 35-plus years, shooting all the greats, from the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin to the Ramones and Jimi Hendrix. As he’s known all these musicians for so long, Knight just showed up to take photos for his own collection, and Idol let him kind of do whatever he wanted — which meant, of course, getting some iconic Idol poses with good lighting on stage before the madness began. That was right before I went upstairs to Idol’s dressing room to do the interview for the story, and as I’ve discussed elsewhere, he was gracious, funny and candid — if not a bit mumbled.

A large number of Idol’s fans hit up the old website to check out the article, but I know the scans I originally posted were hardly legible, so hopefully for those who couldn’t procure a copy from the Hard Rock, this zoomable digital version will be helpful.