Terry Gross

Actor, comedian, composer and musician Michael McKean is best known for co-starring in the spoofs This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. He got his start playing Lenny in the 1970s sitcom Laverne and Shirley.

Robert Plant is the former lead singer of the band Led Zeppelin, one of the most influential pioneers of heavy metal music. Led Zeppelin formed in 1968 and broke up in 1980. Plant, along with band mate Jimmy Page, wrote one of the most popular and parodied hard rock ballads of all time, "Stairway to Heaven."

Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, two of the original members of the band Aerosmith, talk about the group's long and spectacular run. Starting in the 1970s, the band had such hits as "Dream On," "Walk This Way," and "Sweet Emotion." Tyler and Perry also became famous for their drug and alcohol abuse, earning the nickname the toxic twins. Drugs, sex and self destruction were a part of their image, and part of their attraction. In 1997 the band collaborated on the book Walk This Way which traced their rise from the music scene in New England.

Guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield founded the popular metal band Metallica. Hetfield co-writes many of the band's songs, a force on the heavy metal scene since the 1980s. In 2004, the movie Metallica: Some Kind of Monster captured the band at a time of crisis, when their bass player quit and the group hired a "therapist and performance-enhancement coach" to help them sort things out. Also, Hetfield entered rehab during the filming.

Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford kicks off a series of interviews on hard rock and heavy metal. The band, originally from Birmingham, England, was a pioneer of the heavy metal sound at the height of its popularity in the 1970s and 80s. The band's name comes from the title of the Bob Dylan song, "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." Halford left the band in 1991, citing internal tension. In 1998 he came out of the closet during an interview on MTV. Halford, whose nickname is the Metal God, returned to Judas Priest in 2003.

On his third album, Up Front & Down Low, singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson covers classic country songs including "She Thinks I Still Care," "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers," and "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone." On his earlier discs, including his self-titled 2000 debut and 2006's Separate Ways, Thompson performed more of his own songs. He's also appeared on various recordings with his parents, the British folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson.

Novelist Bill Flanagan wrote the comedy A&R about the smooth operators and the scatty artists who make the music business so entertaining. Now he's lampooning the cable-TV industry in his novel New Bedlam. The source for his send-ups? His day job as an MTV networks exec.

Canadian journalist Paul Watson won the 1994 Pulitizer Prize for his photograph of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu,Somalia. His war-zone work leaves him suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress, and he says the Mogadishu photo still haunts him. Watson has also reported from Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq; he earned three National Newspaper Awards for foreign reporting and photography while at the Toronto Star, and was recently posted to head The Los Angeles Times' Southeast Asia bureau in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Actor, comic, and Howard Stern Show cast member Artie Lange stars in the film Artie Lange's Beer League, which makes its network TV premiere tonight on Comedy Central. Lange was a regular on the Fox network's sketch-comedy show Mad TV, and he's appeared in a number of comedy films, including Old School and Elf. Lange's personal life — namely his binge drinking and eating — is often fodder for Howard Stern and the rest of the cast on the daily Sirius Radio program.

NPR's Baghdad bureau chief, Jamie Tarabay, has been living in and covering Iraq since December 2005. She spoke to Terry Gross in Fresh Air's Philadelphia studios, during a two-week break from her reporting duties. Australian by birth and Lebanese by heritage, Tarabay speaks fluent Arabic and French. She lived for three years as a child in Beirut during the bombings there. Before joining NPR she was a correspondent for the Associated Press, reporting from Southeast Asia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.