“I had a psychedelic experience where I looked up at the clouds and went, ‘Oh!’… I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make it happen.” — Adam Lambert

Photograph by Matthew Rolston

Magazine photos and outtakes

Someone tell me why these photos never made it to the actual magazine???? They’re gorgeous! Seriously, this is really old school glam rock stuff. I think the photographer, Matthew Rolston, must have had so much fun with it. (Read what he has to say about the photo shoot) What’s next? Vanity Fair fantasy styled photoshoots?

Rolling updates

ETA 7: Here’s ABC News’ shrine. Check out the videoc clip on the making of the RS photoshoot. Guess who’s behind the snake concept? (Great answer btw!). JMHO, as much as I like the RS interview, I think his personality really shines in face-to-face video/audio ones. I also think he’s a PR dream, handling the toughest questions with aplomb, unlike Gokey who seems to stumble everywhere he goes (“Money, money, money!”).

ETA 6: Uploaded a gorgeous wallpaper which unfortunately I seem to have lost the source. :( To the designer, please forgive me but I had to capture this for posterity!

ETA 5: According to this website, one of the most influential people according to TIME, Martin Lindstrom has this to say:

“He didn’t lie. He was transparent and honest… The gay thing these days is a brand in itself and his appeal to the tween market that drives the sales for Idol products these days will be huge. The biggest trend for tweens isn’t to be in the crowd these days, it is to stand out in it. That is what Lambert has done by branding himself this way. And that is what is going to drive his record sales.”

ETA 4: Some Rolling Stone interview stuff that did not make it to print.

ETA 3: Someone typed out the article, just reposting the text here.
BTW, news of this cover has been one of the top trending topics in Twitter since yesterday, was among the most read topics in CNN, most searched topics in Google. The coverage has been insane.

ETA 2: Full Rolling Stone text can be found here.

ETA 1: After getting over the delirium of seeing the cover, and reading snippets of what’s to come in the RS issue, I think I can safely say the reason why I’m totally enamoured with the man is the fact that he’s totally unfiltered, is willing to take risks, and totally true to himself. I wish I could say the same for me, because I’m constantly torn beween trying to live up to other people’s standards and my own. The latter is what I’ve been trying to achieve, I’d like to embrace my own eccentricity but it’s so hard sometimes. Often I wish I could take off without hesitation or say what I feel without fearing the repercussions, but it ain’t that easy. Having said that, my greatest achievement this year was having left an environment I absolutely detested, against much advice, and feeling really happy that I did not take that advice as my life is far less miserable now. From the little glimpses into what’s going into this interivew, this unicorn prince (haha I’m a fangurl) has completely on-upped my impression of him. ❤

Click here for the Rolling Stone interview teaser.

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Link to other videos and articles:

• CNN coverage
• MSNBC coverage
• Adam Lambert comes out to Rolling Stone, and a change has come indeed by Ann Powers of LA Times
• ONTD Ai: Only for fans! You need a LiveJournal account. The number of comments posted here is staggering!
• Bestweekever Teehee I love Michelle Collins

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From Web Preview of 20/20 Interview with Chris Connelly for 12 June 2009

Lambert on Wild Rolling Stone Shoot

Chris Connelly: What were you channeling for that photograph?

Adam: A combination of, like, okay, Matthew Rolston, I’ll be a sexy rock star as you take my picture, and the fear of “there’s a python on my crotch”. So there was kinda a mix, was like a risky-sexy…

CC: Whose idea was the snake?

A: [Gleefully raises hand] Mine. There was an idea I had about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, this whole concept of you know, Adam, and the fruit of knowledge… The idea behind the Adam and Eve thing is questioning the concept of morality and what’s right and wrong. I think it’s an interesting debate …And a snake on my crotch!”

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From RollingStone.com

Adam Lambert in His Own Words: Sexuality, Kris Allen and Life After Idol

Posted Jun 10, 2009 9:00 AM

It was the conversation he could only have with us.

“Right after the finale, I almost started talking about it to the reporters, but I thought, ‘I’m going to wait for Rolling Stone, that will be cooler,’ ” Lambert said. His patience paid off with a cover story in our latest issue (check out exclusive video of his cover shoot), and here, in his own words, more from Vanessa Grigoriadis’ conversation with Lambert — his true thoughts on his Idol experience, his future in music and why he refuses to hide his sexuality.

On why he auditioned for American Idol:

I looked at the music business, and realized it is nearly impossible to make it with the way it is right now. No one is going to take a chance with an artist who is somewhat out there. The only way you have a chance being looked at by a label right now is if you are what everyone else is. So I realized that I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a recording artist unless I had a huge platform. I saw that and I knew that Idol was the only thing that would do it — if it worked.

On Kris Allen and Allison Iraheta:

[Kris Allen] has a good heart and a good spirit. He’s so mellow, he’s so kick-back. He and I have a lot of love with Allison Iraheta: It felt like this kind of sibling thing. Just good energy, the three of us together. Kris and I both got very protective of her. We encouraged her to pick up the guitar and take risks musically. It always felt very positive … good karma, you know? Kris doesn’t need any advice, clearly. Even though he’s really kick-back, he’s got a very strong sense of self in a non-aggressive, non-intense way. It’s cool.

On his early attempts at songwriting:

My songs were like campy, sexy electro, like Peaches and Goldfrapp. I can look back now and realize I wasn’t very good at it. I was trying to put in way too many words. I was trying to be way too melodramatic and serious, you know? It’s like what a junior high student does with poetry. But over the course of a couple years, I started really trying to listen to what worked out there in music, like hooks — and realized that less is more. The simple idea is better in a song.

On life after Idol:

I’m hopeful. I have a great opportunity right now. There are a lot of people who want to work with me that I really respect. And hopefully it works. I’m not cocky because I’ve seen a lot of guys come off this show and bomb, so I recognize that I could crash and burn. But if I play it safe, it’s not going to work, so I might as well go for it with the same intention that I had on the show.

On where he wants to go musically:

I want to do something that has theatricality, a nod to the glam rockers that I love, but is also contemporary. It’s not all going to be happy-go-lucky because I think it’s important to explore other emotional parts of yourself as an artist, but there’s a time and place for it. I would love to work with Madonna. I’m a big fan. I just want to play dress up and be fabulous. When you’re a kid, you do the make-believe thing — you play dress-up and pretend. That’s the child mentality, and I feel like if you’re an adult and you can adopt the child mentality to something cool, that’s what being a “rock star” is. It’s just playing. It’s Halloween. It’s make-believe. It’s fun. And who doesn’t want to do that? That’s the kind of music that I want to make — music that encourages people to play make-believe, escape and have fun.

On experiencing discrimination:

A few years ago, I did a musical with Val Kilmer, The Ten Commandments at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. I was finally personally awakened, wearing nail-polish, feeling attractive and comfortable in my own skin for the first time. We’d go out sometimes with Val, and it was the first time I’d ever been around a celebrity — it felt really fabulous. One night, we hung out at his house and Sean Lennon came over to jam with us. I was like, John Lennon’s son? This is the coolest thing I’ve done in my life. But I had a lot of problems with the people putting on the show. One day, the director pulled me aside and said, “Can you turn it down? The producers are a little uncomfortable. It’s a little too … gay.” I was like, “Um, are we doing a musical here? I’m sorry, there are fags all over the place, dude.” It was very upsetting.

On making his sexuality public:

There are so many old-fashioned ways of looking at things, and if we want to be a progressive society, we have to start thinking in a different way. There’s the old industry idea that you should just make sexuality a non-issue, just say your private life’s your private life, and not talk about it. But that’s bullshit, because private lives don’t exist anymore for celebrities: they just don’t. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder all the time, thinking I have to hide, being scared of being found out, putting on a front, having a beard, going down the red carpet with some chick who is posing as my girlfriend. That’s not cool, that’s not being a rock star. I can’t do that.

“Wild Idol: The Psychedelic Transformation and Sexual Liberation of Adam Lambert” is on newsstands now.

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Rolling Stone Issue 1081
COVER STORY
The Liberation of Adam Lambert

How the Idol star went from a shy drama geek to the flamboyant, cross-dressing club kid who almost won America’s biggest popularity contest.
By Vanessa Grigoriadis

Wild Idol: The psychedelic transformation and sexual liberation of Adam Lambert

Sometimes in the desert, you can figure things out. That’s what Adam Lambert discovered a couple of years ago at Burning Man, the annual utopian festival in Nevada. At the time, he had been hanging out in the nightclub scene in Los Angeles, at Hyde and other celebrity hot spots - “It was negative and really dark, all about cocaine and synthetic-ego bulls**t,” he says - and he felt a little but lost, not sure of what he wanted to do with his life. “I was getting bitter,” he says. “I was looking for something and I wasn’t sure what it was.” At Burning Man, he drove around in a bus with a flamethrower welded on top, performed in an impromptu musical review called the “Big Black Man Show” and experimented with “certain funguses.” Then it happened: “I had a psychedelic experience where I looked up at the clouds and went, ‘Oh!’” he says. “I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make it happen.” And what he wanted to do was to try out for American Idol.

These are not the kind of stories that one expects to hear from the average American Idol contestant. And there are many other aspects to Lambert that people don’t know, even after 30 million viewers spent four months thinking they were getting close to him. For example, he’s Jewish, though he was never bar mitzvahed and hated Hebrew school, mostly because he got a bloody nose in front of class the first day. His parents split up when he was 19, while he was in Europe performing in a cheesy six-person musical revue on a cruise ship. He admits to having spent a lot of his life partying, obsessively chasing love, though at his core, he is the hardest thing to come by in pop culture: a genuinely free-spirited, easygoing flower child who prizes love over money, peace over power. And there’s one more thing, something you probably knew already, but he hasn’t been explicit about it until now: “I don’t think it should surprise anyone to hear that I’m gay,” he says.

This information - again not a surprise - is passed along at 11 p.m. two nights after the Idol finale, when Lambert bound into the waiting area of 19 Entertainment’s chic offices on Sunset Boulevard, with a view of the Los Angeles lights sparkling in the distance (“Is it smog that makes everything look that way?” Lambert muses, gazing into the distance. “Or is it glitter?”). In two weeks, he’ll begin rehearsing for the Idol national tour, which starts July 5th, but tonight he met with Simon Fuller, the creator of the Idol franchise, about his new recording contract. “He’s so confident and self-assured,” says Fuller. “He’s like Marc Bolan meets David Bowie with a touch of Feddy Mercury and the sexiness of Prince.” This may all be the case, but right not Lambert is running on fumes: After the finale, he celebrated the show’s wrap until 3 a.m., then woke up for a batch of Fox-affiliate TV interviews an hour later. “The first thing I did in the morning was crack a Red Bull,” he says, laughing. “For a little while I thought I was at a rave. Then I went from, ‘Oh, my God, who has glow sticks?’ to ‘Stick a pacifier in me, I’m done.’ Nevertheless, he pops open a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, a present from Fuller, pouring glasses for his new retinue: a publicist, a day-to-day manager, and a bodyguard. “Ain’t going to say no to booze,” he says. “You’ve got me in rare form: no filter.”

It certainly seems that way during our late-night dinner next door at the Sunset Marquis hotel, where - in the face of a grotesque media circus with such paragons of virtue as Bill O’Reilly and Perez Hilton trying to beat his homosexuality into public consciousness on a daily basis - Lambert eagerly shares details about his private life and his rationale for having kept may of them to himself. “Right after the finale, I almost started talking about it to the reporters, but I thought, ” I’m going to wait for Rolling Stone, that will be cooler,” he says. I didn’t want the Clay Aiken and celebrity magazine bulls**t. I need to be able to explain myself in context.” Later, he adds, “I find it very important to be in control of this situation. I feel like everyone has an opinion of me, and I want a chance to say, ‘Well, do you want to hear how I really feel about all this?”

This is a question easier posed than answered, because Lambert has a lot of thoughtson his newfound role as America’s new gay runner-up Idol, and many of them are somewhat contradictory. But there’s one point on which he’s completely sure: “I’m proud of my sexuality,” he says. “I embrace it. It’s just another part of me.” that

Let’s return for a moment, to the other parts of Lambert, the 27-year-old from San Diego who captured many hearts in this season of American Idol for reasons that have little to do with his sexual preference and everything to do with his show-pony voice, silky presence and explosive performances. After all, this is the guy who upstaged Kiss on the finale. “I was so excited,” he says of the segment.”I was like, ‘I’m going to to glue rhinestones on my eyelids, bi*ch! That’s right American Idol in platform boots. You ain’t voting anymore.’” The same electricity that he projected onstage is abundntly availble in person, coupled with this triple-snap sense of humor, relentlessly sunny disposition and a knack for quickly assessing the best way to work everybody he comes across. Lambert is handsome - six feet one and 185 pounds, with patrician features and sky-blue eyes - and he’s unrepentent about flirting with both sexes. Even when you know he’s gay, it’s hard not to find him attractive. And that’s the way he likes it. “I loved it this season when the girls went crazy for me,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s all hot. Just because I’m not sticking it in there doesn’t mean that I don’t find it beautiful.”

These are the kind of lines that Lambert loves to throw off, a glint in his eye as he savors the shock value. Some of it is gratuitous, meant to provoke; most of it seems genuine, stemming froma sense of confidence that comes from having stakes his claim in Hollywood for almost a decade. Before the show, Lambert was a working singer, making $1,800 a week as an Actors’ Equity chous member in the Los Angeles production of the musical Wicked. But he wasn’t happy. “I’d finally gotten a part in a Broadway show, and suddenly it wasn’t what I wanted,”he says. “Musical theater was too static, in a way, and too thankless. I was so over being a chorus boy.” Backstage, in Wicked’s dressing room, the guys liked to chatter about American Idol. “Everyone had an opinion, like, ‘Oh, Jason Castro is so cute, but can hereally sing?’ or ‘Carly Smithson, she’s so fierce,” he says. When he shared his Burning Man epiphany with them, they cheered him on: “They were like, ‘You have to go, bi*ch!’ I knew it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it’s fast and broad.”

So, in July, he drove up to the Idol auditions in Sanfrancisco - and soon was catapulted into the Top 36, whereupon he got his first tatoo, of the Eye of Horus, an Egyptian God, to keep him safe.He tried to keep calm, dug into his own pocket for stage costumes and agonized over every song choice. “I saw what David Cook did last year, and it was cool,” he says. “He thought, ‘I have to sing something everybody knows, but I’m going to make it work for me, and I’m not going to give a f*ck about what the theme is that week - and, most of all, I’m going to just ignore the pageantry of the whole thing.” He snorts a little. “It is so pageant,” he says. “That’s why it’s hard for people like Allison [Iraheta], who won’t stand there and smile, say what they want her to say. I was on my best behavior, but it wasn’t fake: That really was my best self.”

When Lambert hit the Top 13, he sublet his studio apartment in a 1920s Hollywood building and moved into the show’s Bel Air mansion with a new roommate:eventual winner Kris Allen. “I was like, ‘Oh, sh*t, they put me with the cute guy. Distracting! He’s the one guy that I found attractive in the whole group on the show: nice, nonchalant, pretty and totally my type - except that he has a wife. I mean he’s open-minded and liberal, but he’s definitely 100 percent straight.” Danny Gokey, a worship director from Milwaukee, was not quite a progressive as Allen, and Lambert says they discussed religion a few times. “Danny is by the book, and the book is the Word,” he says diplomatically. “And I respect that. Just don’t try to push it on me, and we’re cool.”

Gokey wasn’t in Lambert’s clique on the show, which was made up primarily of Allen and 17-year-old Iraheata - “Two bros and a sis!” says Iraheata, giggling. They encouraged Iraheata to pick up a guitar, express herself. “One of the vocal coaches once said to me, ‘Stop giving everybody such good advice.’ No one else is doing it for them,’” says Lambert. “But is was good karma, you know?” Allen didn’t need any of his help, and Lambert isn’t upset about losing the competition to him.” “I wasn’t after the title,” he says. “I was after staying on the platform as long as I could and I did that.” Allen has been unceasingly gracious about grabbing the crown. “Adam was consistent through the competition and I was really shocked to win,” he says.

Backstage at Idol, Lambert was out to everybody, but America wasn’t completely clued in. Then, one day in March, pictures of him dressed in drag and tonguing his ex-boyfriend hit the internet. It was his fault: Before Idol, he took down his MySpace and Facebook pages but forgot to remove photos from his profile on Tribe.com, a social-networking community of Burning Man attendees. “I thought, ‘Fu*k, I’m screwed, possibly,’” he says. “Going into Idol, I assumed, ‘Ok, people are going totalk.’ I mean, I’ve been living in Los Angeles for eight years as a gay man, I’ve been at clubs drunk makng out with somebody in the corner. But photographic evidence?” He shakes his head ruefully. “Didn’t count on that. Wasn’t ready for that.” He was partially nervous about the drag photos, worried that people might think it was his true nature. “I’ve only dressed in drag three or four times - and of course I took pictures, because I looked amazing - but I don’t tuck and wear breasts, that’s not me,” he says. “Sucking my boy’s face? Yes, that I will own.” The decision then was to keep the mtter quite - a choice made for him in part because Top 13 contestants are usually banned from speaking to the media until they are voted off the show. “The head of Idol Public Relations asked me what I wanted to do about it,” says Lambert. They were completely supportive of any decision I made.” He thought about coming out to the press, but he didn’t ant audiences to focus on the issue. “I was worried that [coming out] would be so sensationalized that it would overshadow what I was there to do, which was sing,” he says. “I’m an entertainer and who I am and what I do in my personal life is a separate thing. It shouldn’t matter.” He sighs. “Except it does.” He shakes his head. “It’s really confusing.”

Way back, before he went on Idol, and definitely before the revelation at Buring Man, Lambert wasn’t sure he liked being different. When he was little, he enjoyed spending afternoonsin a cape, singing or lip-synching songs in front of the mirror: “The box with the Halloween costumes stayed out all year,” says his mom, Leila, who worked as a children’s dental hygenist. “He was so precoocious and thirsty for everything.” His parents, a liberal couple who met at the University of Vermont in the late Seventies, didn’t mind that he didn’t like sports; instead they jpined a children’s theater group to cultivate Adam’s talent. His dad, Eber, who worked as a DJ in college and followed the Grateful Dead throughout the Eighties, let Adam mess around with his record collection. “I’m not a huge Dead fan, though I love the community and art around them,” says Adam. Instead, he gravitated to Diamond Dogs, Jesus Christ Superstar and theatrical rock like Queen (although it was widely reported that Lambert might tour with the band, it seems that this is no longer in the cards.) “Once, someone gave Adam a two-Cd set of Seventies disco, the era that I hate the most, and I cam home to him playing ‘Brickouse’ at full volume,” says his father. “I was like, ‘Man, it’s so depressing that I have to live through this music twice.”

The cape, it turns out, remained a fixture at home through middle school, when he suddenly began to feel awkward around his classmates. “I started to realize I wasn’t like every other boy, and I was just in my own head about it, tripping myself out,” he says. PE classes stoked his anxiety: “I didn’t want to be naked and vulnerable,” he says. “I was so scared of my sexuality.” He found solace onstage, double-booking himself as the lead actor in school plays and semi-professional plays in San Diego, and inserting himself into a tight-knit circle of theater kids, many of whom were Mormons. “We were such goody-goodies,” he says. “When I was young, I never got in trouble at all.” His parents asked a gay friend whether they should talk to Adam about his sexualit, but he advised them to wait for their son to come to them with the news. When Adam was 13, Eber caught him looking at gay porn on the family computer. “I went to my ex-wife and said, ‘It’s official,’” he says. “She said, ‘He’s just curious.’ I said, ‘Let me tell you about heterosexual men and homosexual pornography - this isn’t curosity.”

In high school, Lambert made out with a few girls, and even had oral sex with one during Spring Break, but for the most part, they were quick to realize that he wasn’t on their team. “During plays, Adam would hang out in the girls’ dressing room while we were changing, and every once in a while a mom would walk by and ask him,’What are you doing in there?‘“says Danielle Stori, a singer-songwriter. “And we would be like, ‘C’mon, it’s only Adam!’”

After high school, he enrolledin college in Orange County but dropped out after five weeks to star in a play in San Diego. One night he accompanied his mother to a high school speech-and-debate evening of fictional monologues. “One kid did a dramatic speech qbout his parents turning their back on him because he was gay, and the kid almost got killed because of it,” says Lambert. “I could tell my mom was geting upset. On the way home, she asked, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ I said, ‘No.” She was like, ‘Well, do you want one?’ I said, ‘Yes, that would be nice.’” He laughs. “Suddenly, it was like a wall dropped, and we started gabbing like crazy.” But he still had maturing to do. “I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. didn’t feel sexy,” he says.

After spending a year on the cruise ship, he moved to Hollywood, where he lost his virginity on his 21st birthday. “I was drunk, and it was awkward,” he says. “I was like, ‘Wow, that was bad.’” Intimidated by the notion of moving to New York to pursue a job on Broadway, he took roles in small productions in California, including a musical version of Debbie Does Dallas in Lake Tahoe. “In high school, I got everything I wanted as far as performing was concerned, but in thereal world, it was really hard,” he says.

When he couldn’t pay the rent, his parents usually bailed him out, but sometimes his cellphone would get cut off, and he wouldn’t have money for gas. At 21, he was cast in a European tour of Hair for six months. In Germany, he started smoking pot and tried Ecstasy for the first time; he dyed his hair black and went to his first sex club. “I was always obsessed with the Sixties, and this experience was like living through it for me,” he says. “I wanted so badly to be the hippie in the show.”

That’s the lifestyle he sought out upon his return to America, immersing himself in the West Coast neohippie underground around the Burning Man festival - a mix of psychedelics, astrology, left-leaning politics, dub-step DJs and free expression (some might call it “oversharing”). An after-hours musical review based on the zodiac? Sign him up. A Monday-night bacchannalia in grimy downtown L.A.? He’s there. In this crowd, beng diferent wasn’t only OK - it was to be revered. “Having so much extra is a difficult journey,” says one of his best friends, Scarlett (she goes by one name). “Sometimes if you’re too fabulous, people react in a weird way, and I think that was part of Adam’s path.”

Friends like Allan Louis, an actor on the CW’s Privledged, encouraged him to expand as an artist, so he took up songwriting on GarageBand with Monte Pittman, a guitarist for Madonna and Prong, even fronting a metal band for Pittman briefly. He also fell in love for the first time, with another Burner. “I expanded a lot spiritually with him,” Lambert says. “We treated our relationship like a workshop, talking to each other about the ways we wanted to grow.” (“I’m trying to get Zac Effron to come to Burning Man,” he says later. “He says he really wants to go!”).

Now he feels creatively awakened and personally fulfilled. “Everything that I always thought was a fantasy is actually happening, and it’s a testament to imagination and doing whatever the f*ck comes to my mind,” he says. He even met his own idol, Madonna: Pittman invited Lambert over to her apartment after he gave her a guitar lesson. “She had her guard up a little at first, like anyone would in that situation, but after she realized I had good intentions she was so playful,” gushes Lambert. “I told her that I loved her and was intiminated by her, and she was like, ‘Oh, so love equals intimidation for you?’” Madonna hadn’t watched American Ido, but the two of them talked astrology, and they discussed his moon sign, Aries. “She said, ‘You don’t like anyone telling you what to do, do you?’” he says. “It’s so cool because she gets it, you know?”

He smiles. “I’m finally checked into my self-worth for the first time in my life, and the fact that it coincided with Idol is so sweet,” he says. “I mean, I still have moments where I think, ‘Oh, my skin is terrible, and I’m a little fat, I should really go to the gym more.’ But for the most part, when I look in the mirror now, I finally see somebody who can do something cool.” Then he laughs a little. “Don’t they say that you dream more when there are things you aren’t attaining, that you are repressing? Well, I haven’t been having any dreams lately. Now, I’m in a walking dream.”

The day after the dinner at the Marquis, Lambert arrives at his hotel in Beverly Hills around 10:30 p.m. after a long photo shoot, taking a seat in the secondfloor lounge. We talk about his likes and dislikes:One the side of likes, we have the Twilight book series, Bret Easton Ellis, Thievery Corporation, Goldfrapp, and President Obama. “I voted for the first time, for Obama,” he says. “Travelling in Europe was so depressing when Bush was in office: People were always asking, ‘Why’d you elec him?’ And I guess I let it happen, in a way.’” On dislikes list is topped by Nickelback, Creed, cameras (“Why can’t you have the experience without taking a picture of it?”) and cocaine. “That drug is such a reflection of the lack of self-esteem and control people have over themselves and their lives,” he says. “I’d much rather smoke a bowl , chill out and listen to music.” We start talking about his fears, and the only one on this list is worry about his parents dying and, later, growing old alone himself. “I belive whatever happens after death is really great,” he says. “I don’t believe in hell: Maybe you’re rewarded for being a good person, but I don’t think you’re punished.”

This is the usual kicked-back attitude one expects from Lambert, but when the conversation turns to his newfound role as a gay icon, he begins to pick the polish off his nails, which is what he does when he feels anxious - it’s clearly an argument he’s spent a lot of time having with himself, in his own head. On one hand, he wants to support gay rights at a moment when same-sex marriage is in legal limbo in many states. He enjoyed performing Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” on the show for a reason: “This civil rights movement is near to my heart and it felt really good to sing that,” he says. “I’m not asking to get married in your church, but you don’t have any right to tell me I can’t do it.”

Discrimination, though it’s usually minor, is a fact of his life. Just the other day, an American Idol chauffer told him that he had no problem with him, “because at least you’re not girly.” Lambert shudders. “Man, it’s so ignorant,” he says. “Why can’t some men have strong feminine sides? Does that make them less of a man? I don’t know why our society has such an emphasis on masculinity and femininity - it’s really gross. I don’t think you’re truly sexy until you don’t care about that.”

On the other hand, Lambert doesn’t want to be the poster child for gay rights. “I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader,” he says. Also, he’s uncomfortable with some of the ways gay culture has evolved. “Middle America may think that what I am is gay, but here in Hollywood, gay guys are all trying to fit in - they’re obsessed with looking and acting hetero,” he says. “Clay Aiken’s gay, and I’m gay, and we couldn’t be more different. The only thing that’s the same in the gay community is that we’re gay. Do we have anything in common besides the fact that we like dick? Why can’t we just talk about a human community?”

He’s right: Identity politics suck, and his situation is tricky. Plus if he didn’t want to come out publicly, wouldn’t that be his prerogative? “I think I reserve the right to talk about my own sexuality,” he says. He’s faced a firing squad of entertainment reporters every day, desperate to know when he’s going to answer the “question dangling over his head,” as one of them put it. He shrugs. “I can either get irritated and let this drive me nuts, or laugh at it,” he says, then smirks a little. “I kin of like things dangling over my head anyway.” He leans in. “Lately, you know, there’s a part of me that’s almost bi-curious the other way around. I’ve made out a few times with girls at nightclubs when I had way too many drinks. I don’t know if it would ever happen, but I’m kind of interested. I don’t think I would ever do it with a groupie, though.” He c***s his head. “Then again, maybe I’d rather it was with a stranger than someone I knew.”

After an hour of talking in the hotel lounge, Lambert’s bodyguard appears to escort him to his hotel room so he can pack for his trip to New York tomorrow, for a new round of TV interviews. At 9 a.m. the next day, he jumps into the back seat of an SUV, Karl Lagerfield shades clapped on tight, gabbing about the new condo he wants to buy. “I want a crash room, or a kind of hookah den with pillows on the floor, a sound system and lots of color therapy, sensual purples and reds,” he says, then fiddles with his Blackberry. “My brother Neil called me last night so drunk, with his friends,” he says, giggling. “He said, ‘We think you should do an album of covers called Doin’ Hella Dudes: You’ll cover some badass dudes, but it’ll be like you’re doin’ dudes, you know?’” He lets out a loud guffaw from deep in his belly. “Then he said, ‘It’s cool if you can’t thank us now, but when the album comes out, give us credit, because we love you.’”

In New York, Lambert dines at five-star restaurants, gets into a fight with a cab driver and bawls through Hair on Broadway. He meets with Barry Weiss, the head of RCA, the company distributing his album - with 19 Recordings - “He asked if I was a Jew, and I said I’d wear a yarmulke if he wanted, as long as it had rhinestones,” he jokes. He’s hopeful about his new album, which he classifes vaguely as pop-rock electro. “Everyone’s so hung up on ‘Are you pop?’ or ‘Are you rock?’” he says. “It’s like, “Um, does this song make you want to dance, or have sex, or remind you of something?’ It’s not that deep. Being a rock star is just playing. It’s Halloween, make-believe.” He laughs. “I can’t believe I get to play dress-up for a living now!”

On the morning of his return to L.A., he decides to drive up the coast with a guy he’s dating to a resort in Santa Barbara (the dude whom Lambert met while passing out fliers at a club is, “Cajun, voodoo-down, dreamy,” but he doesn’t want to talk about him too much for fear of jinxing the relationship). “I’m so excited to be almost on vacation,” he says. “I ain’t gonna lie, I put Kahlua in my coffe this morning.”

Before he leaves he stops in a nail salon, where a dozen Korean attendants whip their heads around in unison at his appearance. After selecting a gun-metal black nail polish, he sinks into a massage chair, one attendant buffing his feet and another at his hands. He murmurs a little, then directs his attention to a flatscreen TV, set to reply of the 2008 American Music Awards, with performances by the Pussycat Dolls (“my guilty pleasure”), the Jonas Brothers (“I like those laser lights more than them”) and Justin Timberlake (“Yum”).

Within minutes, a pair of bedraggled paparazzi appear at the salon’s door, toting cameras. A manager lowers a gauzy white curtain for privacy, but they linger on the sidewalk, rising on their toes to peer through windows.

“Should I flip them off?” asks Lambert, a smile playing on his lips.”Is that too racy?”

He goes back and forth on this decision - “Don’t you think I want to make a storm?” he says. “Isn’t it fun to be cheeky?” - before settling on showing off his pedicure for the cameras when the polish dries, but he gets impatient. He bounds out in bare feet, wiggling his foot like the hokeypokey, then slips into a waiting car. It would’ve been fun to flip them off though. “I would have done it with a smile on my face, to show them I’m not actually mad,” he says. “I’m only playing.”

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Here’s the original fuking swoontastic video (Original source: RollingStone.com)

And the CNN one — just for the parts between 0:17 to 0:38:

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From RollingStone.com

The New Issue of Rolling Stone: The Liberation of Adam Lambert

American Idol’s glamtastic runner-up Adam Lambert opens up in the next issue of Rolling Stone, speaking frankly about his sexuality, though he doesn’t think his revelation is particularly shocking.

“I don’t think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I’m gay,” Lambert says in the new issue of Rolling Stone, hitting newsstands this week.

The flamboyant Idol singer hits our cover and bares all, talking about his childhood (“I started to realize I wasn’t like every other boy,” he says), the drug-fueled Burning Man epiphany that led him to AI (“I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen,” he tells RS) and his run on the show (“I was like, ‘I’m going to glue rhinestones on my eyelids, bitch!’ “). And yes, he talks about his sexuality. “Right after the finale, I almost started talking about it to the reporters, but I thought, ‘I’m going to wait for Rolling Stone, that will be cooler,’ ” he tells us. “I didn’t want the Clay Aiken thing and the celebrity-magazine bullshit. I need to be able to explain myself in context.

“I’m proud of my sexuality,” Lambert adds. “I embrace it. It’s just another part of me.” Ultimately, however Lambert tells RS contributor Vanessa Grigoriadis that there are other parts of his life that he’s trying to keep front and center. “I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader,” he says.

It was that mission — and his Burning Man “psychedelic experience” — that lead him to Idol after years in musical theater. “I knew that it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it’s fast and broad,” he tells RS.

He details his experience on Idol, his true thoughts on winner Kris Allen and how his sexuality impacted his Idol run in our cover story, “Wild Idol: The Psychedelic Transformation and Sexual Liberation of Adam Lambert,” which hits newsstands this week.

Subjects: Film, Television & Anime 映像, Music 音楽

Mood: Gratifications, Raves and Rants

Tags: Adam Lambert, American Idol, FML, Glambert, Kris Allen, Matthew Rolston, Rolling Stone, YouTube