A HELL OF A BAND Bjork (wearing a dress by Alexandre Matthieu and fishnets by Wolford), Bono (in his own clothes), Macy Gray (in a shirt by Jean Paul Gaultier and jeans by Diesel with accessories by Chanel), and Keith Richards (wearing a coat and shirt by Lords Los Angeles). Hair by Sally Hershberger, Edris Nicholls, and Tré Major. Makeup by Jeanine Lobell, Jillian Dempsey, and Billy B. Manicures by Deborah Lippmann. Grooming by Gigi Hale and Rheanne White. Set design by Rick Floyd. Styled by Kim Meehan. Photographed exclusively for V.F. by Annie Leibovitz in New York City.

Unless you feel like you’re going to die if you don’t do it, it’s cheating,” says Icelandic pop star-actress Bjork, 34, about her commitment to making music. She first came to the world’s attention as the yelping, outrageous lead singer of the alterna-rock group the Sugarcubes, a band she and her friends started in her native Reykjavik as a joke.

Her solo career has been anything but, producing such revelatory albums as Debut (1993) and the multi-platinum Post (1995). This past spring she won the best-actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her intense portrayal Jl of a blind woman on death row in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (a musical, no less). Selmasongs, the expanded soundtrack to the film, is her latest record. These days Bjork divides her time between Iceland and London, but she went to New York this summer to promote Dancer in the Dark and liked it so much she decided to stick around for three weeks in order to do our cover shoot. Unlike the weird waif she plays in her videos, Bjork is sure of her purpose. She says she has 50 years ahead of her to create the perfect pop song. Anything she wants to do is worth waiting for. -LISA ROBINSON

He’s charmed the Pope and the U.N. General Assembly in an attempt to eliminate world debt. Millions of people have thrilled to his band’s concerts. He is still a passionate fan himself—of Patti Smith, the Clash, the Buzzcocks. And at our cover shoot he immediately went over to longtime pal Bjork and congratulated her on her showing at Cannes (“She’s done very well in the films,” he said). Bono is the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2, which has sold more than 100 million albums, headlined tours all over the world, and is a shoo-in for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (they will be eligible in 2004)—all this from a little “punk” band that started two decades ago in Dublin playing Ramones covers at auditions for record labels. This g month U2 releases its new album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Next spring the band will begin a world tour in the U.S., with Bono ready—once again— to prove that U2 is, in his words, “the loudest folk band in the world.” —L.R.

Björk and Gray cuddle.

As guitarist and co-songwriter of the world’s greatest and longest-running rock ’n’ roll band, Keith Richards is rock’s original outlaw and coolest survivor. Age, addiction, death, fights— nothing could stop the Rolling Stones. Richards, a native of Dartford, England, who now lives in Connecticut with his wife, Patti, and their two teenage daughters, set the standard for blues-based rock guitar: chunky chords, undeniable groove, no gratuitous solos. In its 37-year history, the band has sold over 100 million copies of more than 30 albums, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and remains the biggest concert attraction in the world. The legendary Richards is a musician first; he feels a band is only really alive if it’s onstage. At the end of V.F.’s cover shoot, he looked around at the assembled talent and pronounced, “Now I feel like we should just all do a gig.” —L.R.

No one on earth sounds like Macy Gray. The 30-year-old native of Canton, Ohio, was the surprise success story of 2000 with a debut album, On How Life Is, that sold seven million copies. Gray, who flew in from Austria, where she was on tour, to sit for V.F.’s cover, has moods that range from spacey to exuberant, and a psychedelic visual style—think Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix—that has been missing for too long in rock. She grew up listening to records by James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin, but was so self-conscious about her “funny” voice that she barely spoke, much less sang. At the MTV Awards in September she beat out a number of teen dreams when she walked off with the best-new-artist prize. There is some justice. —L.R.

ECLECTIC LADYLAND Chuck Berry (in his own clothes), Patti Smith (in her own clothes), Fiona Apple (wearing a T-shirt by Anthropologie and pants by Egg by Susan Lazar with vintage shoes from the Family Jewels), Dr. Dre (in clothing by Phat Farm and sneakers by Puma), and Faith Hill (wearing a top by Helmut Lang and pants by Tom Ford for Gucci with shoes by Jimmy Choo).

When the lanky, pomade-topped 28-year-old Chuck Berry first duckwalked across the national stage, in 1955, he brought to the squeaky-clean Hit Parade a real sense of back-alley threat— and plenty of it. With little visible effort, the St. Louis native whipped out a juke-boxful of classics—“Maybellene,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “No Particular Place to Go”—that hymned teenage life with wry specificity and that, in their adroit use of vernacular, prefigured hip-hop by decades. At our photo shoot, Berry—who will be one of five recipients of Washington’s Kennedy Center Honors in December—was showing off photos of himself with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. He also had a couple of adamant requests: that we serve oatmeal cookies and put him up at the luxurious LaGuardia Marriott. -STEVEN DALY

Patti Smith electrified the mid-70s New York City punk scene. She combined Beat-style poetry with hard-edged rock ’n’ roll. By 1978, she and the Patti Smith Group had taken their act around the world and had a Top 20 hit with “Because the Night.” Then she quit and moved to suburban Detroit to marry former MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith and raise their two children. But after the sudden deaths of both her husband and her brother, Todd, in 1994, Smith, at the age of 49, returned to New York City and re-entered a very different music scene. Since then she’s released three albums of newly passionate, optimistic music. She came to our shoot directly from North Carolina and the final show of her summer tour. Ever a fan, she says, “I would listen to Bob Dylan, and I always felt that there was somebody out there who voiced things for me. If I did that in turn for other people, then it’s a great thing.” —L.R.

The music world fell in love with Fiona Apple right away. She was discovered in 1996 at age 18 when her debut album, Tidal—with its songs about lust and heartache, guilt and torment—sold four million copies and won a Grammy. In her first year of fame, this self-described “basket case” was called difficult and melodramatic, but her follow-up album, this year’s When the Pawn ..., revealed a more confident singer, songwriter, and pianist. She was a delight at our cover shoot—arriving early, with no handlers, clearly excited to meet the rest of the musicians. After her meltdown this spring at New York’s Roseland—when she left the stage mid-show because of sound problems— she did a makeup date several months later and told the audience, “It was a misunderstanding. You said you wanted something self-confessional. I thought you said selfish and unprofessional.” Perhaps she’s not so tortured after all. —L.R.

His latest album, Dr. Dre 2001, finds Dr. Dre in a reflective mood, feeling “disconnected from the streets forever” (he is, after all, 35 years old, married, and a multimillionaire), but also asserting that “as long as I got a Beretta, I’m down for whatever.” (Napster users, beware!) After helping to create gangsta rap in the late 80s as a member of N.W.A., Dre then redefined West Coast hip-hop on 1992’s The Chronic. But his discovery of a white kid from Detroit with a twisted imagination and mind-blowing flow has brought Dre one of his biggest commercial successes to date: he produced Eminem’s recent Marshall Mathers CD, which has been lounging at the top of the charts for four months while doing more to infuriate guardians of public morality than even the NW.A. oldie “Fuck tha Police.” But controversy doesn’t faze Dre, who arrived at our shoot in excellent spirits and was pleased to see the musicians he’d never met—such as Keith Richards and Chuck Berry. (He already knew Bono.) Dre was taking a day off from touring, having flown in from hip-hop-loving Boise, Idaho, -MICHAEL HOGAN

Her roots may always be country, but beautiful Mississippi native Faith Hill can go from wearing denim to Versace like no one else—that’s crossing over. After her 1998 album, Faith, went quadruple platinum, she was invited to sing the national anthem at this year’s Super Bowl. She also performed at the Oscars, filling in for an ailing Whitney Houston on 24 hours’ notice. Meanwhile, Hill’s latest single, “Breathe,” the title track from her new album, has scored the rare feat of hitting No. 1 on both the country and pop charts. She is currently performing with her husband, country star Tim McGraw, on their Soul2Soul 2000 tour. She had interrupted a family vacation to take part in our cover shoot, where she met the other artists for the first time. -PUNCH HUTTON

ALL-STAR TRIO Carlos Santana (wearing a shirt by Marta Kappl Couture and suit by Marta Kappl with a hat by Bailey), Mary J. Blige (in a coat by Tom Ford for Gucci and shoes by Louis Vuitton with earrings by DKNY and choker and bracelets by Erickson & Beamon), Zack de la Rocha (wearing a T-shirt by Calvin Klein and a vest by Maharishi with vintage pants by the Family Jewels).

It was the comeback heard round the world: after nearly two decades of fading glory, guitarist Carlos Santana, who catapulted out of Woodstock in 1969 to remake rock with his blend of blues, jazz, and Afro-Latin rhythms, surprised even himself by stealing the show a second time. And how: his aptly titled 1999 release, Supernatural, sold more than 10 million copies in less than a year and swept the Grammys. You can go home again: the gracious, unassuming Santana, who got his start as a teenager in the brawling blues bars of Tijuana, still plays straight from the intersection of, in his words, “soul, heart, mind, body, and cojones.” He was under the gun the day of our shoot, with a concert that night at Jones Beach. -ALIYAH BARUCHIN

The term “ghetto fabulous” might have been invented for Miss Mary J. Blige of Yonkers, New York. The diamond-hard product of the city’s Schlobohm housing projects graduated from church choirs to Andre Harrell’s groundbreaking Uptown Records. With her rough-and-tough 1992 debut, “Real Love,” she became the hip-hop generation’s prime sex symbol. At our shoot, Blige, who must have the longest legs in show business since Tina Turner’s, talked about how she’s grown musically and now considers herself an R&B singer. On her latest album, Mary, the 29-year-old shines in the regal company of Elton John, Aretha Franklin, and Eric Gapton—yet her every soaring syllable is still steeped in memories of the hard-knock life. —S.D.

“Every revolutionary act is an act of love,” says Zack de la Rocha, “so every song I’ve written has been a love song.” Not that he’s conventionally romantic: most of de la Rocha’s songs contain fist-in-the-air choruses such as “Fuck you / I won’t do what you tell me” and “Rolling down Rodeo with a shotgun.” The 30-year-old singer for Rage Against the Machine has helped make the pioneering rapmetal band one of the 90s’ few enduring rock acts. While it’s unclear whether his revolutionary message is being heeded, de la Rocha’s angry lyrics are certainly reaching millions: last year’s The Battle of Los Angeles debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts and was widely praised as the best rock album of 1999. Even though he’d flown from Japan to be at our cover shoot and was undoubtedly jet-lagged, he was already talking about Rage’s summer tour and upcoming live album. In an era dominated by apathy and mindless bubblegum, de la Rocha’s words, whether you like them or not, bring hope that rock’s rebellious and socially conscious spirit is alive and well. -JOHN GILLIES