February 26, 2009
by Corrigan Hammond
There is something distinct about being on the cover of Rolling Stone
Magazine. Something pure rock-n-roll, decadent and cool. Rolling
Stone is, after all, a chronicle of the condensed desires of the
post-war generation howling and hip like Dylan or the Stones, equal
parts forever young and leather-faced ego. And for the first 42 years
of its existence Rolling Stone just sat there, glaring out of the
newsstands, all gall, with a smiling famous face on its cover oozing
sexually charged American, defiantly proclaiming "hail-hail
rock-and-roll" all at once subject to counter-culture infamy and
counter-culture disdain.
Throwing John Lennon at the height of Beatlemania onto its first
cover, Rolling Stone hardly pretended to be the final word on the
underground. Its ambition, after all, was never to be the most
credible of all music magazines or counter-culture rags. In those
days Rolling Stone had a sort of mainstream ambition and edge
somewhere half married to the San Francisco counter-culture scene
that it spoke for, and in recognition of a niche, a need, a market
for a more mature music publication that did not pander to the
boy-crazed, screaming-girl and teenaged-dreams rock-and-roll
magazines of the day. Bringing in serious reporters and veteran
counter-culture writers with self-destructive political inclinations
and gonzo tendencies, the Rolling Stone in those days behaved more
like classic Penthouse or Playboy only with less sex and more
electric guitars, than its peers like Teen Talk or 16 Magazine.
Rolling Stone was more interested in channelling the shifting spirit
of young America circa-67', than in pimping boy bands with California
good looks or in husking the revolutionary fervour of the new
underground presses that were popping up in every college town from
Berkley to Austin.
However, as Rolling Stone became more and more a corporate magazine
and recognizable cultural-institution, it quickly found itself in the
dubious position of being a mainstream brand chasing a market of
aging hippies and aspiring hipsters with a sharp sense and resolute
disdain for sell-outs and phonies. Unafraid to court all music
figures from Neil Diamond to Neil Young, by the early seventies,
Rolling Stone had earned itself a reputation for being just another
marketing tool for record labels more interested in selling 20
million Fleetwood Mac or Led Zeppelin records than in discovering the
next Bob Dylan or Otis Redding. Rolling Stone got to be just another
piece of rock-and-roll excess, alongside private jets and sold-out
coliseums, every two bit hit-maker with their own "Sweet Caroline"
was allowed to grace its cover. Bands even sang about Rolling Stone,
just like Chuck Berry used to sing about jukeboxes or Buck Owens
about movie-stardom: "wanna buy five copies for my mother, wanna see
my smilin' face on the cover of the Rolling Stone."
With a name copped from one of those Dylan tunes that Hendrix always
covered, Rolling Stone always kept a distinct political aptness and
dangerous hip within its pages that that no amount of Doritos ad or
full page Axe Body Spray spreads could synthesize. It was the
originator the envy of every tuned-in kid pushing out their own zene
on some co-opted Xerox machine. Rolling Stone, with its mandate for
quirky news with a relevant counter-cultural spin, and tendency to
deride the absurdities of pop-culture, became the model for a
particularly ballsy type of publication, a breed of counter-culture
news that each subsequent new generation of could aspire to print.
Rolling Stone had a distinct look. Ordinary magazines usually only
measure about eight by ten and a half inches, up until last October,
Rolling Stone tacked on an extra two inches belt-length and height.
And although Rolling Stones publishers long since did away with the
magazine's original newsprint the type that left behind a sweet
black inky residue on your fingers after reading being oversized for
decades imbued Rolling Stone with a particular aura of rock-and-roll
authenticity. Its pages looked like something you could find in the
restroom of sleaze bars with grease bands playing hot rock. Unlike
Cosmo or Maxim, Rolling Stone wasn't bound with some blinding glare.
Even if Kurt Cobain had once graced its cover, sly and ironic,
wearing his "Corporate Magazines Suck" t-shirt, Rolling Stone and its
extra two inches may have looked like a sell-out yuppies publication
of choice, but it still had some feisty counter-culture zest left in
it. The crinkle as you turned its pages screamed like analog white
static. Reading Rolling Stone was like throwing on the Stooges or the
Stones Beggars Banquet, filled with threatening distortions and
unforgiving, relentless violent inclinations. Picking up Rolling
Stone was like picking up some radical newspaper off the streets of
Paris 1792. It was like getting a hold of something off Benjamin
Franklyn's Philadelphia press dangerous and revolutionary. That is,
until those dangerous two inches were lopped off. Suddenly, Rolling
Stone with its glossy paper and perfect binding was that "Corporate
Magazine." Everything its many critics had ever lobbed against it, in
the simple act of become like every other magazine at the
supermarket, was confirmed. Or was it?
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