Duff Mckagan

Age hasn't mellowed the high priest of punk, Iggy Pop. Since his early days as the volatile leader of the Stooges, Pop (born James Osterburg on April 21, 1947) has been angry--angry about life's despair and angry at the state of rock music as he knows and loves it. On his latest album, "Brick by Brick," Pop reiterates his anger from the viewpoint of someone who's seen it all and doesn't like much of what he's seen.

Two hotels, each wildly different but both featuring famous names, have scheduled grand openings and have begun booking rooms. The new $90-million Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the first hotel property from the company that owns the popular Hard Rock Cafes, is being readied for a March 10 opening. In Beverly Hills, the legendary Beverly Hills Hotel and Bungalows has announced that it will begin taking guests June 7 after a 2 1/2-year renovation project.

Guns or Roses? Reports are that the volatile rock band Guns N' Roses has divided into two feuding camps, with singer Axl Rose and guitarist Slash at war. The band has "broken up" regularly since it emerged in the late '80s as the world's most celebrated hard-rock group. Remember when GNR opened for the Rolling Stones at the Coliseum and broke up one night . . . only to reunite the next? This time it could be for real, though. GNR guitarist Gilby Clarke recently told Kerrang!

Velvet Revolver looked like a train rolling toward a rickety bridge when it loaded up four years ago. Supergroups aren't built to last, and fate offered few promises to the combination: three burnouts from a destructive/destroyed rock band (Guns N' Roses), plus the lead stoner of Stone Temple Pilots. At the Avalon on Thursday, though, V.R. warmed up for a tour promoting an imminent second album, "Libertad," and the omens were favorable.

Betty Blowtorch's six-week tour of U.S. rock clubs was supposed to conclude with a New Year's Eve show at the legendary Whisky on the Sunset Strip. Instead, it ended early Saturday on a New Orleans-area highway, where the Los Angeles band's leader, Bianca Halstead, died in a shattered Corvette. Halstead, 36, was a passenger in a car driven by Brian McAllister, a Chicago-area fan who had befriended the quartet.

Guns N' Roses took one step forward and one step back last week, entering the national sales chart at No. 3 with "Greatest Hits" the same day singer Axl Rose announced that the beleaguered band was canceling plans to venture out in public again to headline the annual Rock in Rio festival in Lisbon.

A strange thing happens when the scales tip in a room, and the celebrities outnumber the less visibly rich and powerful: The famous faces start to look almost ordinary. That was the case Saturday night at the Beverly Hilton, where record exec Clive Davis held his annual pre-Grammy bash. Drop a napkin and you'd hit a pop queen, bling-tastic producer or American Idol; head toward the balcony, and a scruffy platinum rocker would sidle up beside you, poking his BlackBerry.

On a typical Sunday, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a quiet place where people go to get away from other people. This Sunday will be different: As many as 7,000 will gather at Paramount Ranch inside the park for the sixth annual Head for the Hills day. The ranch, best known as a site for films, will be overrun with a maze of events and presentations--everything from raptors and reptiles to horses and helicopters.

The girl wearing the "love me" shirt and nothing more had a mildly embarrassing problem: The designers had given no thought to an undergarment, leaving her bottomless with 10 minutes to show time. The consensus, however, was that this was no real crisis. "Do you really need bottoms?" asked the show manager. "Just don't lift your arms up." Graffiti artist-turned-clothing designer Louis Carreon and his partner, Brandon Perrin (known collectively as Kloz Horse), hardly took notice.

For most of the time on Monday at the Shrine Auditorium, the 17th annual American Music Awards ceremony seemed like a teen version of the Grammys. It's not that all the winners were teen-agers (only New Kids on the Block qualified there), but they were mostly favorites of teens. The youthful onslaught was dominated by Milli Vanilli, the European dance-music duo that won three awards and drew loud shrieks from the legions of teen-age fans in the audience each time they walked on stage.