(5 of 5)
In Los Angeles these days, friends of Bill's are looking after him: besides the Thomasons, there is Gary Belz, whose family owns the landmark Peabody hotel in Memphis and who moved to California two years ago, where he runs recording studios and studies the teachings of an Indian guru. And then there is Stone, Roger's manager, who favors lobster dinners and snakeskin boots and spent years sharing the road and mountaintop commune of the heavy-metal boogie band Black Oak Arkansas.
These days Roger is under orders from the Clintons to refrain from political comment and decline all interviews, including one for this story. His music associates, meanwhile, want Roger to get cracking on the record: since the deal was signed, he has spent thousands of dollars flying five of his oldest friends out to visit him in Los Angeles. He has also bought a sleek Dodge Stealth, in which he was stopped for speeding on Christmas Day. Yes, his brother beat him to the cover of Rolling Stone, and his mother beat him to the cover of the Daily Racing Form, a newspaper about his other passion, horse racing. But he appears to believe he can catch up. After all, he was savvy enough to write a song called Brother, Brother, a ballad about a young man who turns to life on the street while his brother seems beyond reach.