12 | Rolling Stone | September 2019
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HUTTERST
OCKWHEN ROB SHEFFIELD is on deadline, he follows a strict rou-
tine: He wakes up at 5 a.m., hits “play” on a cassette mix-
tape he’s loaded the night before into his 1989 boombox (Rob
has hundreds of cassette mixtapes stacked on shelves in his
Brooklyn apartment), and makes a grilled-cheese sandwich
on his George Foreman. Next, he wraps his hands and arms
in black tape (“I hope it prevents injury,” he says, “but it’s
probably just superstitious”) and sits down to write. “The
internet hasn’t started that early in the morning,” he says.
“You can have solitude.”
This routine has helped Rob produce thousands of brilliantreviews, columns, profiles, and other pieces (not to mention five exceptional non-
fiction books) in the years since he joined ROLLING STONE, in 1997, the same year I
started here. I’d been familiar with Rob’s writing long before that, always astound-
ed by the depth of his knowledge, the exuberance of his prose, and his far-ranging
love for all kinds of music (except, weirdly, Tom Petty, which I could never under-
stand). Once I got to know Rob, it dawned on me that the things I loved about his
writing were equally true about him — he’s one of the most radiant, joyous, thought-
ful, and hilarious people I’ve ever been lucky enough to work with.
In this issue, Rob profiles Harry Styles, a singer he’s admired since his days inOne Direction, when most rock critics dismissed the group as one more soulless
boy band. “Even back in his One Direction days, Harry had this freakish enthusi-
asm that reminded me of people like Paul McCartney or David Bowie,” says Rob.
“He was the rock star of the group.”
After reading Rob’s book Love Is a Mixtape, Styles sent Sheffield a text, and theystruck up a friendship, built around their deep music fandom. “He texts all the time
about music,” says Rob. “In one of our first conversations, he told me he was listen-
ing to Don McLean’s American Pie rec ord and was like, ‘There are other good songs
on here nobody knows!’ ”
Rob spent more than a week trailing Styles, from Malibu health-food shops to divebars in L.A., then on to London, where they went to pubs and to a Fleetwood Mac
concert. “People used to think he was just a celebrity and that he’d eventually leave
music and start making romantic comedies,” says Rob. “But he’s a real music geek.”
It’s no wonder that Styles was drawn to Sheffield, who has bizarrely near-perfectrecall when it comes to pop culture. “If you give me pretty much the month of any
year, I can tell you what the popular music was that month,” he says. “If there’s an
audio equivalent of photographic memory, I have it. I don’t know why my brain
is like this. Sometimes I feel like it’s a curse as much as a blessing. But it comes in
handy a lot, too.”
JASON FINE
EDITORWhen Harry
Met Sheffield
Editor’s Letter
“There is a shocking, unreported, fundamental change
coming to the habitability of many parts of the planet.”
—PETER GLEICK, co-founder of the Pacific Institute“USEFUL IDIOTS” is
a new podcast with
RS senior writer Matt
Taibbi (above) and pod-
caster and comic Katie
Halper. The podcast
will feature humor,
political discussion,
commentary, and
interviews. With Taibbi
covering one of the
most contentious
presidential campaigns
ever, Useful Idiots will
provide a weekly forumUPDATETaibbi’s Podcast Hits
2020 Campaign TrailWE WANT
TO HEAR IT.
Email us,
confidentially,
at Tips@
RollingStone
.comGOT A HOT
NEWS TIP?Phoenix
risingJEFF GOODELL HAS been covering the
climate crisis for RS for more than a decade,
but he realized he had a lot to learn about
the human toll when he began reporting this
issue’s feature on extreme heat. “It’s very
different from sea-level rise or hurricanes,” he
says. “When it hits, it leaves buildings intact
but kills people.” Goodell spent months inves-
tigating increasingly deadly global heat waves
caused by climate crisis, focusing on Phoenix
— where the average temperature is rising
faster than in almost any other American city.
“The environmental-justice issues are stark,”
he says. “If you’re poor, sick, old, or homeless,
you’re more likely to die during a heat wave.”RS reports on the increasing impact
of global warming on human lifeInvestigating
Extreme Heat
INSIDE THE STORYto review develop-
ments on the trail and
talk to key figures in
and out of the race
— their first guest
is Hawaii Rep. Tulsi
Gabbard, a candidate
for the Democratic
nomination. Taibbi
and Halper will also
take an offbeat look
at the news, examine
important stories that
have slipped through
the cracks, and laugh
about whatever’s left
to laugh about. “Katie
and I are trying to look
at a crazy political
landscape with a sense
of humor,” says Taibbi.
“Maybe we can have
Henry Kissinger on,”
Halper says. “Or if not,
we can get that guy
from Office Space to
impersonate him.”