Rolling Stone's obsolescence [The Magazine, not the band ;^)]

Washington Times ^ | Saturday, June 22, 2002 | House Editorial

[JohnHuang2]

Alas, more bad news: "Rolling Stone, Struggling for Readers, Names Briton as Editor." So wrote the New York Times in announcing the latest British invasion, this one to be spearheaded by 37-year-old Ed Needham, the editor of FHM, a raunchy British "laddie" magazine. His mission? To save the not-exactly-venerable chronicler of (and contributor to) the American counterculture. But even if Mr. Needham manages to close the door on exiting advertisers and boost newsstand sales of Jann Wenner's flagship publication, he'll probably do so presiding over a retooled and virtually unrecognizable magazine.

[JohnHuang2]

Saturday, June 22, 2002

Quote of the Day by ArGee

[D-fendr]

"once upon a time, Rolling Stone was considered the primo source of the "alternative culture," the magazine is now just another alternative in the establishment that emerged from that youth movement, now grown old if not up. "

The alternative culture now is Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

Perhaps someone should start a new alternative magazine called: Rock of Ages.

[rockfish59]

I didn't like them when they were in San Francisco, and if it's possible, they suck even worse now.
Buncha phony libs!

[Nick Danger]

I just hadda do this.

[SamAdams76]

Rolling Stone was actually a decent magazine to read during the 1970s. Perhaps that perception was a combination of my youth and the fact that the magazine was about the only source one had for the rock & roll lifestyle. Back in those days, rock & roll was still truly a product of youth culture. Few people over the age of 30 listened to it. These days, rock music is so mainstream that you have grandparents blasting Jimi Hendrix and Santana on their stereos.

During the 1980s, the magazine began to transform itself into a gossipy "People" magazine knockoff and it got so bad in the 1990s that I never picked up an issue again. At one time, the magazine would expose and showcase genuinely talented rock artists who did not get a lot of radio play, like Elvis Costello, Neil Young and Husker Du. But by the mid 1980s, the magazine seemed more concerned with selling its glossy ads and thus began showcasing lame, mainstream acts like Vanilla Ice, Michael Jackson and Madonna. They simply lost their cutting edge when they decided to appeal to a larger audience and boost ad revenue.

Perhaps the final nail in the "RS" coffin was in the mid 1990s, when Nirvana was featured on the cover. Kurt Cobain had on a T-shirt that said "Corporate magazines suck." That cover photo said it all. During the 1960s and 1970s, a rock band like Nirvana would have been proud to be on the cover of RS. It would have been a rite of passage for the emerging band. Now they were almost embarrassed and felt compelled to wear the T-shirt, which made clear that with respect to RS, they were on the outside looking in, instead of vice-versa.

[Skooz]

Post 5 is superb and insightful. I agree completely. I had a subscription in the mid-70s and read virtually every issue until 1983 or 1984. I remember feeling oh-so-cool-and-hip as a young teenager reading that large, newspaper-like magazine every month. The articles were cutting edge, and gave a different perspective than the stodgy mainstream press. They also had some of the most respectable music reviews in the biz. If RS said it was a good album, that was good enough for me.

I picked up a RS for the first time in several years in Barnes & Noble not too long ago. I was startled to see how the old mag had changed. It's like People with curse words. For some reason the glossiness of the thing is disconcerting. Instead of discovering fresh talent or probing the depths of counterculture for something different, they seem to piggy-back whatever trend is fashionable this week.

The magazine that cut it's teeth taking chances and brazenly taking on the "establishements" of news, politics, and music has become just another mirror of pop culture shallowness. RS has descended into the morass of normalcy. No wonder so few read it anymore. It is a boring magazine with little to say.

[jordan8]

The Cover Of the Rolling Stone

(Talking) 
Ha ha ha I don't believe it
Da, da, ah, ah don't touch it
Hey, Ray, hey Sugar tell them who we are...

Well, we're big rock singers
We got golden fingers
And we're loved everywhere we go...(That sounds like us)
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten-thousand dollars a show...(Right)
We take all kinds of pills that give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll gitcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the rollin stone

(Rollin stone...)Wanna see my picture on the cover
(Stone...)Wanna buy five copies for my mother...(Yes)
(Stone...)Wanna see my smilin face
On the cover of the rollin stone...(That's a very very good idea)

I got a freaky ole lady name a cocaine Katy
Who embroiders on my jeans
I got my poor ole grey haired daddy
Drivin my limousine
Now it's all decided to blow our minds
But our minds won't really be blown
Like the blow that'll gitcha when you get your picture
On the cover of the rollin stone

(Rollin stone...)Wanna see our pictures on the cover
(Stone...)Wanna buy five copies for our mothers...(Yeah)
(Stone...)Wanna see my smilin face
On the cover of the rollin stone

(Talking) 
Hey, I know how
Rock and roll...

(Instrumental)

Ah, that's beautiful

We got a lot of little teenage blue eyed groupies
Who do anything we say
We got a genu-wine Indian Guru
Who's teaching us a better way
We got all the friends that money can buy
So we never have to be alone
And we keep getting richer but we can't get our picture
On the cover of the rollin stone

(Rollin stone...)Wanna see my picture on the cover
(Stone...)Wanna buy five copies for my mother...(Wa wa)
(Stone...)Wanna see my smilin face
On the cover of the rollin stone
On the cover of the rollin...
(Stone...)Wanna see my picture on the cover

(Talking) 
I don't know why we ain't on the cover, Baby...

(Stone...)Wanna buy five copies for my mother

(Talking) 
We're beautiful subjects...

(Stone...)Wanna see my smilin face

(Talking) I ain't kiddin, we would make a beautiful cover...

On the cover of the rollin stone...

(Talking) 
Fresh shot, right up front, Man...
I can see it now, we'll be up in the front...
Smilin, Man...
Ahh, beautiful...

[SamAdams76]

I agree that the record reviews in RS were (and probably still are) second to none. I still have a dog-eared book of RS album reviews that was instrumental in helping me build a library of essential music from the 1960s and 70s. RS rarely steered me wrong. It's a pity that the rest of the magazine sucks so badly.

[spycatcher]

Here's a posted discussion all from last month on Instapundit with various suggestions on what to do about RS:

"RS can't out-Blender Blender From DAVID POLAND: I would suggest that Rolling Stone's "demise" is a product of following the trends, not being too far behind them. As Details found out and so many other magazines are finding out, Maxim is not going to be rebuilt on someone else's pages. Rolling Stone can't out-Blender Blender. And US Weekly can't do Entertainment Weekly better than it's already being done. Rolling Stone built its own category of tough-talking, smart, culturally-aware journalism thirty years ago and Wenner should be looking to his past to find his future.

I don't care what the journalist thought while he followed Kirsten Dunst around. I do want the journalist to press Ms. Dunst into answering hard questions about being a 20-year-old multimillionaire. Is she into drugs? Is she into sex? Is she into rock-n-roll? What you get is a blonde hottie on the cover selling her ass, literally, and then talking about the romance that is Spider-Man. When you can't differentiate between Rolling Stone and US Weekly, there is a problem.

When Rolling Stone became more about getting the "right" cover then about the whole story, it fell a step behind. A writer like Susan Orlean, who started at RS, is the kind of smart, funky writer who used to be why you picked up RS. While Andrew Sullivan is getting banned at the New York Times, get him for RS. Find the next Candace Bushnell. Do some movie coverage on great films that aren't being released on 3000 screens. Kill some sacred cows. You may fail, but you will never succeed by following... not if your title suggests leadership.

Posted 5/15/2002 10:08:07 AM by Glenn Reynolds DAVID POLAND suggests that the solution to Rolling Stone's malaise is to quit working so hard to put T&A on the cover and get some great writers like Andrew Sullivan. Not a bad idea. I'd add my faves Welch & Layne to the list of suggestions. Any other modern gonzo journalism types that RS should hire? Send me your suggestions.

sted 5/16/2002 09:09:06 AM by Glenn Reynolds ROLLING STONE RE-COOLIFICATION UPDATE: I didn't get that many nominees, which is kind of sad. There were a lot of votes for bringing P.J. O'Rourke back (he's almost respectable writing for The Atlantic, one reader complained), many nominations of Matt Welch and Ken Layne, and quite a few in support of Tim Blair. I like all these guys, but is that it?

Posted 5/16/2002 11:18:40 AM by Glenn Reynolds READER GEORGE SPENCER says that you can't fix Rolling Stone because it was never that cool anyway:

By coincidence, a few days I dug out some elderly crumbling copies of RS from the late 1960s and early 1970s. In their own dope-y way (pun intended), they're just as rubbishy as Maxim. If you're in the narrow demographic/psychographic audience that RS wants to attract, you think it's cool. If you're not in that group, RS is uncool. Advertisers would like our 40-something age group to instead read My Generation magazine, a magazine that publishes 1975 era content for mature adults. It's published by something called the AARP. A recent issue ran a feature on the late Ken Kesey in which he bragged about dropping acid every Easter and going to church with his mother. Hmmm...maybe I'll stick with the Wall Street Journal. What? Next you'll be saying we should make our own coolness instead of getting it from a magazine!

Posted 5/17/2002 10:54:29 PM by Glenn Reynolds OKAY, I WASN'T GOING TO POST ANYMORE, but I realized I had forgotten to follow up with some of the additional Rolling Stone suggestions. The winner, however (as my earlier post may have suggested) was something along the lines of "RS can't be saved, it's irretrievably lame." That said, some other suggestions included, in no particular order, Jonah Goldberg (like Jann Wenner's really gonna do that), James Lileks, Steven den Beste, multiple votes for perennial blogosphere fave Rachael Klein, and one each for up-and-comers Dawn Olsen and Jim Treacher. Simon Reynolds (no relation) got mentioned, as did Christopher Buckley. And, unsurprisingly, Mark Steyn got several votes.

All of these people would be better than most of those writing for Rolling Stone today. And none have much of a shot (neither do Welch, Layne, or Blair, mentioned earlier.) That says some pretty bad things about Rolling Stone, but not any that we haven't figured out on our own. To the above I'd add Stacy Osbaum, formerly editor of URB, who's now freelancing, I think.