Richard Branson's Flight Plan

The West Hollywood sun is beating down on the patio, a cold wind is blowing through, and Richard Branson is hosting a long lunch poolside at the Sunset Marquis hotel. "It's an old rock-'n'-roll hotel, which has--it's gone out of fashion a little bit, I think," he says. The Rolling Stones and U2 are regulars; Courtney Love wrote a love letter to Kurt Cobain in one of the suites. It's exactly the setting you would expect from the self-styled "rebel billionaire," the man who signed the Sex Pistols and the Stones to Virgin Records and then tried to bring that same...