Rolling Stone Magazine

Part celebration and part take down, this episode on Rolling Stone magazine dives into the highs and lows of one of America's iconic rags.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck. It's the one o'clock hour. I just
had a nice Caesar salad, so that means it's time
for stuff you should do. How do do you dress

(00:21):
your lightly or do you like it? I do it smartly.
I start out light and then add is needed. Okay,
because you know I've I've experienced the regret of too
much salad dressing. Right, you can't take it away. No,
you can't undring that bell, you cannot. Yeah. Uh, Rolling

(00:44):
Stone Magazine, what's your history with this rag? It's um
a couple it goes back a couple of days at least. Oh,
you were never into the magazine at all. No, I
mean I've read plenty of like Rolling Stone articles over
the years, like Matt tub stuff, um, some Hunter Thompson stuff,
and of course, you know, every once in a while,
I'll just run across a really good article from like

(01:06):
years back. Right, but that was it. Never had a subscription,
never bought it at the magazine rack or anything like that. Okay,
you know, I just wasn't into it. I didn't hate
on it or anything like that. It just was never
into it, not like you're going to today. I won't
hate on it today. I'll just reveal facts. Yeah. So

(01:27):
my history, if you care, is, uh, I always loved
Rolling Stone Magazine and I continue to digitally subscribe, and uh,
you know it is, as we will learn, it is
not a magazine without its downs and controversies. Um. And

(01:50):
you know it's as Ed even points out in this research,
like it's sort of been sport over the last two
decades to sort of debate when then if Rolling Stone
has lost its way. Uh, but it's a magazine that
I always Um, I just took what I took from it,

(02:11):
like when I was reading you know, at the end
of this we'll get to some of their biggest controversial
articles and like very poor shoddy journalism, Like I never
read any of those. So I've always just sort of
taken from it what I wanted to and uh, not
really thought about it a lot until this research. Man,
there's nothing more rock and roll than that. But I

(02:33):
do want to plug another magazine. What Cream Magazine is back?
Oh really? Yeah, I've seen people be you know, the
ones in the know, Like Cream was always better than
well it was, and uh, like my magazine of choice
for music since the probably early two thousand's was Magnets,

(02:53):
which I still oh yeah, you know, it went away,
then it came back and then but Cream is back now,
and you I think you get I subscribed immediately. You
get four paper copies per year like a quarterly issue,
which is kind of cool. But what's really cool, dude,
is if you subscribe, you get access to all of

(03:15):
the archives. So it's really fun to go back and
read like a contemporaneous Lester Bangs or Cameron Crow piece
uh from Cream magazine. So I highly recommend here at
the beginning of our Rolling Stone article to subscribe to
the new Cream. So yeah, Cream. The impression I have
is Cream is the one that like really was true

(03:38):
to what it was going for pretty much from start
to finish, while Rolling Stone was viewed as more like
the corporate version of that almost from the outset. Yeah.
The reason that it was viewed as that and still
is today is because the guy one of the founders,
Yawn Winner, was super corporate, like that was his goal.

(03:59):
He was in ambitious, um hippie hanger on basically who
happened to be in San Francisco when the Summer of
Love happened, when psychedelic rock broke out, when like the
sixties like really we're like happening in San Francisco was
the epicenter. And that's not to say he like didn't
dig it and wasn't moved by it, But he also

(04:19):
saw that this was a really important thing, at least
to him and a lot of other people, and he
saw that he could probably sell ads against this, so
he did what he knew how to do when he
started a magazine, as we'll see. Yeah, that's a nice
little intro. And for those of you who don't know,
Rolling Stone is the music largely music magazine, but also

(04:42):
over the ensuing years is since November nine seven, has
branched out into all manner of pop culture and politics,
and uh, you know, we we didn't want to not
mention what it was in case you happened to live
under a Rolling Stone. Oh man, is that written down
in your notes? No? I just yeah, WHOA. So should

(05:05):
we go back in time a bit? Yeah, So let's
getting the way back machine and go back to the
sixties in San Francisco and it's dusty in here, Um,
a contact buzz from some grass that's being smiled. They
called it grass back then. Uh so yeah, you know,

(05:26):
Ed is very astute to point out that the origins
of Rolling Stone is kind of born out of this
sort of um certainly nineteen sixties, but maybe even before,
um left wing all rags that are self published, these
sort of poorly printed black and white magazines about the

(05:46):
counterculture that never really desired to make money. Uh, and
you know, most of them were super regional and never
like went outside of, um, usually the city that they
were in as far as distribution. But Rolling Stone was
kind of born out of this idea and in particular
got a lot of its influence from a San Francisco

(06:08):
based magazine called Ramparts. Yeah, which was like far far left,
radical left politics magazine. Um, there was a headline and
I think nineteen sixty eight, maybe even earlier than that
that Ramparts ran it was Ramparts offers ten thousand dollars
for information leading to the arresting conviction of any cop

(06:30):
who was murdered a black man. That was on their cover.
But it was on their cover and there's like a
cop pointing a gun at you. The viewer from the
magazine's cover. And that's you know, okay, it's you know, shocking,
especially for for even back then. But it's even more
shocking when you realize that just a few years before
Ramparts have been lost launched as an intellectual catholic quarterly. Yeah.

(06:53):
I mean, I don't even know why they kept the
same name. It was a complete redo, it really was.
And the guy who redid it was a guy mean,
Warren Hinkel And you can't talk about Rolling Stone without
talking about Warren Hinkele. That's right. He transfermed that magazine
into that, you know, that leftist rag that they knew,
and it was you know, obviously big in San Francisco,

(07:13):
but it reached national levels of fame, if not like
widespread fame, like the writers were like featured on talk
shows and um other kind of notably, I guess when
you're a magazine being written by other magazine being written
about by other magazines, you've definitely made your mark. And
Time magazine even had a very famous article called a

(07:37):
bomb in every issue. I think it was a cover
article on Rampart's magazine. Uh. And though it would exist
alongside Rolling Stone for a little while, in the seventies.
It was not a big, widespread financial success, and obviously
because his politics had a pretty um just by nature
of of what it was a sort of limited audience.

(08:00):
And so Yan Winner, who was one of the founders
of Rolling Stone, who basically personified Rolling Stone over the
decades because he was the CEO for years and years
and years. He was involved in ramparts Um through a
guy named Ralph Gleason, who will meet in a second.
But the upshot of this is that jan Winner saw
ramparts what it was doing, how important it was, and

(08:20):
that it never really took off. That I saw it
blew through at least two personal fortunes Rampart magazine did
before it declared bankruptcy. And he noted that and he
he kind of took it to heart for his magazine,
Rolling Stone, And the lesson for him was reflect the
counter culture without actually like furthering the agenda, and you
can probably be absorbed by much more people and be

(08:43):
palatable to advertisers too. Yeah, And as far as Winner goes,
he himself was a college dropout from Berkeley Um. He
is sort of the personification of what we now think
of as like the Boomer generation, which is to say
that he uh and and probably still does. You know,

(09:03):
Um just sort of laud that generation and everything they
did as the utmost importance, and the music of the
time and the movements of the time were truly historic
and not to be um trifled with. And also in
a sort of boomer esquay um said, but you know
what's great as making tons of money, right, being a

(09:27):
capitalist and loving coke? Sure, yeah, I'm sure that was not. Uh,
I'm sure they were not. In short supply, he was
very famous for his ability to put put away bags
of cocaine. All right, So you mentioned Ralph Gleeson who
were going to meet. He was a jazz critic of

(09:49):
music critic who also dabbled in the rock and roll world.
But he was not a boomer. He was born in
I think nineteen seventeen, so he was thirty ish years
older than Venner and they met at a Jefferson Airplane
concert and became buddies, and I think, uh, John Winner
really looked up to him, and they sort of developed

(10:09):
a mentor relationship mentor mint mentee is that what it is?
It depends. So if if Gleason was strictly kind of
advising and training and teaching um Yahn Winner, that would
make him a mentee. But if he did anything to
further Jon Winner's career, which he ended up doing, that

(10:30):
would make Winner his protege. Okay, well, let's just say
it was a mix of both. Sure, I just I
looked it up and I really wanted to share that
I got you there's a distinction. But they were friends,
and I believe it was Gleason that also worked for Ramparts.
Uh some and then when Ramparts fell apart, Uh, they

(10:54):
hatched the idea for Rolling Stone magazine. Well it so
Gleason left even before Ramparts fell apart because as Warren
Hinkel did not love the psychedelic rock era, did not
love hippies um, and Ralph Gleeson did even though it
was a jazz critic. He definitely got the psychedelic movement
and was very um appreciative of it and wrote very

(11:15):
kindly about it in his columns in Ramparts. Um, but
they're falling out happened when Warren Hinkel ran The Social
History of the Hippies, which was a pretty unflattering cover
story about hippies and the Summer of Love and how
basically he accused them of of falling down on the
job of taking over the responsibility to steer the country

(11:37):
and instead they were just off like dropping acid enshirking
the responsibility, which would pan out to be really prescient
when you're talking about the baby boomer boomer generation, right,
And um, Ralph Gleason didn't appreciate that at all, so
he left in disgust. He quit Ramparts. And that was
about the time when Winner was like, hey, let's make
a magazine together, Summer of Love. Who can forget know?

(12:00):
Oh wait, no, it's seventy two. Yeah, because John Volta
played the woodstock for that Summer of Love concert and
seventy two. Oh boy, always feel bad for people who
don't pick up on the inside jokes. We'll get some emails.
That's all right, it's fun. Uh So they again hatch

(12:20):
this idea together and they really, um kind of borrowed
a lot from Ramparts, um, not the least of which
was their logo. Um. If you look at the Ramparts logo,
it's I don't know if it's exactly the same font.
I'm sure there's They probably technically might have made a
new font, but it looks a lot like that font

(12:41):
and not the original Rolling Stone magazine font because the
earliest issues it was definitely a little bit different. But
the one that we all know today is the Rolling
Stone font looks a lot like ramparts. Uh. They definitely
hired away a lot of people from that magazine, including, um,
you know, some of the designers, some of the writers,
some of the some of the editors, photographers, and even

(13:06):
the office space. They raised, Um, they wanted to raise
ten grand, but they ended up raising sears from a
variety of investors, including uh Jane Winner uh in her family,
who was Joan Winner's wife, who actually had a much
larger role in the early days of the magazine than
I believe she's usually given credit for. Yeah, I saw

(13:29):
it described in I think it was an Atlantic article.
Is that where where it was? Um, Yeah, that was
a great article, it really was. I think it was
called the Rise and Fall of Rolling Stone or something
like that. Um. And uh Jane Schindelheim Winner is described
as basically being the She's she was so cool that
her her personality was what attracted those you know, cool

(13:51):
photographers and cool musicians and just people to the magazine
that they wanted to be close to her basically or
she knew how to behave around them basically A yeah,
and they had a um interesting marriage. He came out
of the closet in the mid nineties, much to her, well,
I say much to her surprise. Apparently she had heard

(14:11):
rumors over the years and things like that. But I
think it was sort of a sudden thing for her
and did not go down well. And I believe he's
been in a partnership with the same gentleman since then. Yeah,
it was this. It was a sudden surprise for John
Winner two because I read that he was outed by
the Wall Street Journal without his permission or even interesting
even a heads up, just outed him in the pages

(14:34):
of the Wall Street Journal. The author even pondered, like, wow,
is this is this scandal going to be the thing
that sinks Rolling Stone? But it was by then or
ninety four, and everybody's like, cares you know, it's I
don't think that qualifies as a scandal. Yeah, absolutely, Um,
so they have this money they got the uh at

(14:56):
his points out that John Winner kept his Porsche though
it's not like he his force to raise money for
the for the magazine. Uh. So they got the money
together and they hire a bunch of the Ramparts people.
They in fact used um a lot of the same equipment.
The magazine was the same size, had a bit of
the same look. They had a bunch of unused paper,

(15:18):
uh from Ramparts that they were able to use. And
they even used the offices where they printed it. I
think the loft above the office was where they first
made their homes. So they really had a bit of
a head start. Yeah, and so it Ramparts had spun
off something called the Sunday Ramparts newspaper and that's what
had gone to funk. So Ramparts of the magazine is
still going at this time, but they used all the
Sunday Ramparts newspaper stuff, including staff, right, so they have

(15:42):
well when it worked for them, Yeah, and and when
Glease and quit in protest, and I think shortly after
that the Sunday Ramparts newspaper folded. That's when they got
together and did this. And then like you said, they
did it with bucks and they were able to print
I think forty thousand copies of Rolling Stone number one.

(16:02):
There was a last minute decision to put a production
still of John Lennon in the from the movie How
I Won the War wearing like um, like fatigues and
like um a helmet with netting on it and everything
he's looking at the Camera's a very famous photograph and
they said that it was like a perfect mix or
perfect um metaphor for the mix of like politics, culture

(16:25):
and music all rolled into one. It really was a
perfect photo for Rolling Stone number one's cover, for sure.
I think so, uh, maybe we could take a break
and talk about how that first issue fareds that is
that for a cliffhanger, it's great, all right, we'll be
right back and shock stop. Did it sell? No? Did

(17:07):
it sell no? Chuck? Now, that first forty thousand, I
believe thirty four thousand issues were returned. I think a
lot of this was in part to the fact that
they tried to be their own distributor, which they realized
right away was not a good idea. Uh, and so
they quickly signed deals with distributors and news stands, and

(17:29):
UH realized that you know, at cents a copy, weren't
going to make a lot of money with that sort
of distributor partnership. Model. No. So, I mean they did
the sensible thing, and they gave up a pretty significant
chunk of their their margin to that distribution distribution company.
But in return, they were able to grow grow, grow,
like from issue number two or three. I'm not sure

(17:50):
exactly when they took on that new distributor, but it
was pretty soon after the failure of the first issue. Yeah,
and then they started selling pretty well. Um, as far
as the name goes, they did get a thing sort
of threatened, um legally speaking, by the Rolling Stones music group. Um,
but they sort of got out of that pretty quickly.

(18:12):
I think they may have realized, hey, maybe it's good
to be friends with this up and coming music magazine.
I don't really know for sure, but yeah, that would
make sense. Yeah. I saw um that it was I
saw I described as a letter writing campaign or correspondence
between that was initiated by Mick Jagger to John Winner
basically saying, hey, man, you can use this, but how

(18:32):
about some free advertising and lots of really good coverage
and all that. Um exactly what? Yeah, And I guess
they got dropped or something like that. Supposedly only that
initial letters survived, so no one knows exactly how it
panned out. But John Winner was definitely the kind of
person to trade you know, space for something else, like
maybe advertising dollars or you know, a favorable review of

(18:57):
a record um in Rich earned for that record company
or the parent company, Advertising and Rolling Stone. He was
definitely not only not not above doing that, he was
actively chasing that kind of opportunity. Yeah, and you know,
I don't think there's a lot of people that would
stand up and say that Jan Winner was the greatest
boss they ever had, especially back in those days. I

(19:19):
think he might have cleaned up his act, you know,
later on, But in the sixties and seventies, it was
very well known that he would, like you said, make
these sort of under the table deals. He would play
labels and writers against one another, uh ad, sales people
against one another. He was apparently a pretty cruel editor.
He was never the best writer in the world. He

(19:40):
wrote some reviews and things here and there, but that
wasn't his strong suit. But um yeah, he was known
as being fairly misogynist and sexist and sort of all
the things you might imagine from a uh sort of
magazine editor in chief. In the nineteen seventies, yeah, like
a good example for the first issue and early on

(20:00):
in Rolling Stones Life, Um, a guy named Michael Lyden
was the managing editor and he used to write for Newsweek,
and he brought his wife Linda along, who was also
a writer and an editor, and Jon Winner made Linda
answer the phones because she was one of the few
women working there. Right, it's a good example. Yeah, And
this isn't a hit piece. There's a a very well

(20:22):
known biography of Beyond Winner out there that is um also,
while not a hit piece, not very kind to him
at all, the Sticky Fingers one that came out, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he had been, apparently on Winner had been shopping
his his story around for you know, to be written,
initially by a ghostwriter and then finally a biographer. Like

(20:42):
he couldn't get anybody to do it because he was
just known as such a control freak and everybody was like,
I do not want to be involved with you for
three or four years writing your story, Like he would
pick a part line by line captions under photos in magazines.
This is in the nineties. He was still doing this,
you know, like he was that kind of Boston You
can just imagine what a train wrecked nightmare. He would

(21:05):
have been if you were his biographer. He finally got
somebody to do it, but that somebody said, dude, you've
got to give me creative control over this. You have
to give you freedom, and the you know, the guy
like you said. It wasn't a hit piece, but it
also wasn't just fawning and flattering like apparently Yon Winner
had kind of hoped it would be. Right of course. Um,
as far as circulation goes, they say that it peaked

(21:28):
in two thousand and eight with a circulation of one
point four million, uh and as around five hundred thousand today,
about twenty seven thousand of which is actually I believe,
like you know, paper copies, although maybe that's just news
stand and not subscription. Yeah. I was wondering if that
number reflects their um digital subscribership, because actually it is.

(21:54):
And honestly, I never really knew what magazine distribution equaled anyway,
so I was surprised is that it peaked at one
point four million, which just seems for such an iconic
magazine that just doesn't seem like a lot of human
beings reading a magazine. No, I mean, think about it,
We're not too far off from Rolling stones peak. You know,

(22:14):
I didn't want to say that, but that's what I
was thinking. I was like, I had a Caesar salad
for lunch, so I'm feeling rather chilled anyway. Um, yeah,
I don't know what I thought it would be a
figure to be like ten million or something like that,
but no, that's still rather respectable one pointion. That's subscribed
to a lot of people, I believe. Yeah, circulation. I
think that includes new stands sales. But the reason I'm

(22:36):
wondering whether the web or the digital subscribers are included
in that later number the recent stuff, is because they
very famously, I should say, Yahn Winner very famously shunned
the idea of moving into the digital realm. And even
even as his son Gus was the guy who was
running the digital arm, he still wouldn't give him resources

(23:00):
to support like a genuine website. Yeah. An example I
saw is that Rolling Stone broke some story. I can't
remember what story it was, but it was a big story,
and um, everybody had to go read about it on
other digital news sites because they hadn't posted anything or
the story on Rolling Stone website. Like it was like
that interesting. Uh. They've also changed format just size wise

(23:24):
over the years. They they started out, you know as
a sort of regular size smaller magazine or or should
I just say average magazine. Um, And it was in
black and white with the with a little bit of
color here and there, like a single color process, and
then in the early seventies switched to a for color
process and went to that glossy large format style that

(23:47):
Rolling Stone like to me, was really known for. It
was always just different because it was a big, large magazine,
but also it was glossy, but it wasn't like the
glossy slick magazine pages of day. It wasn't it glossy
newsprint basically. Yeah, So that that gave it its own
field too, along with the size, Like it was definitely

(24:08):
its own own thing, right, But then it went back
to the small, and then now is back to the big,
isn't there? Right? Yeah? In two thousand and eight they
went to standard magazine size. In two thousand and eighteen
they said, I'll forget it, We're going back to the
ten by twelve. I'm glad they did. I mean that's
I don't again, I don't buy the paper version, but
I just always associated that sort of iconic tin by

(24:30):
it turns out eleven and three quarter size. It's a
quarter inch really bugs me, Yeah, it does. He just
made me snort man good. So. Um. Initially Rolling Stone
was like a national magazine that was centered in San
Francisco because again that was the epicenter of the hippie
movement of everything that was going on that was important

(24:51):
in the late sixties and early seventies, right. But then
Jon Winner kind of spiritually decamped from San Francisco even
before the magazine did. And then finally Ralph Gleason, Remember
Ralph Gleason, the jazz critic who kind of co founded
Rolling Stone. He kept a column in every issue where
basically he was just talking about San Francisco goings on

(25:12):
or whatever, and he eventually was like the last tether
to the origin the roots in San Francisco. And when
he died, Jan Winner waited a couple more years and
then moved the whole thing to New York City and
it was officially a gen bona fide national, you could
even say international magazine around that time. Yeah, And I
think from what I understand, when Gleeson died, he was

(25:35):
sort of battling with Winner at the time. Uh, and
that they had had fallings out and I believe I'm
not so sure if it was personal, but maybe it
got personal, but it was definitely over like the direction
of the magazine. I think I always got the feeling
that Gleeson was a little less likely to be accused

(25:56):
of some of the sort of sell out things that
went Winner would eventually be accused of. He was a
jazz critic. That's not exactly as you pursue when you're
an ambitious, money hungry, you know, Wall Street type. Yeah,
I think that's a good point. So, um, it makes
a really good point here. I've seen it elsewhere too,
And it's kind of like something that people have realized

(26:17):
in the last few years, maybe last decade or so,
and that is that Rolling Stone is possibly the most
important mouthpiece for the Boomer generation, and that it was
so important. It's entirely possible that things like Woodstock or
the Beatles, or the Summer of Love or all the

(26:39):
stuff we associate with the beginnings of Boomers and then
onward and onward, um, that Rolling Stone amplified it to
a way that now we think of those things as
like historic events, but they might not be we might
think of them as historic events because Rolling Stone amplified it. Yeah,
I don't. I don't agree with that, but I do
agree that has been a boomer mouthpiece for sure. But

(27:02):
I don't think that one could reasonably make an argument
that the Beatles wouldn't be the Beatles that had not
been for Rolling Stone magazine coverage. No, no, no, I
don't think that's the point. I think the point is
would would the would we consider the Beatles as having
changed the world if Rolling Stone had never been there? Yeah,
I definitely think so. That's just my opinion. Um, what

(27:26):
about wings Oh I love wings Man Jet give me
that all day long. One thing Rolling Stone was definitely
at the forefront of, even though they did not create
what's called, um, the new journalism. And this was basically
when journalism went from kind of anonymous style reporting to

(27:49):
putting the writer right in the middle of the story
and sometimes the story was even about the writer in
the case of a Hunter S. Thompson, who was also
at the forefront of new journalism. And it was very
uh literary style writing. It was very uh not flowery
because that sounds kind of haughty, but just sort of

(28:10):
a kind of a higher caliber literary style writing than
typical journalism had been. Um, I love it. I've always
been a big fan of new journalism. I think it
has its place, um and shouldn't be confused with other
kinds of journalism. But UM, I've always been a big,
big fan. Yeah, it's amazing. UM. And there's so Hunter Thompson.

(28:31):
He was so he was so at the forefront of it.
He actually spun off his own subdiscipline called gonzo journalism,
which is um new journalism to the extreme, like that
when you spell extremes starting with an ex kind of thing. Right,
Why haven't we done an episode entirely on him yet?
Will someday. It just seems very strange for us. But

(28:54):
he so, Um Jan Winner did not discover Hunter Thompson. Um.
He is actually kind of introduced to the magazine world.
He'd already written Hell's Angels in nineteen sixty eight, so
he made a name for himself. But the first piece
of gonzo journalism is considered um the Kentucky Derby is
decadent and depraved. That was commissioned by UM warren Hinkel,

(29:18):
who had gone off and started another magazine former Ramparts chief. Yes, exactly.
And Warren Hinkel was the genius who put Ralph Steadman
and Hunter Thompson together, and they first appeared together in
the UM. I can't remember Scanlon's I think is the
name of the magazine with the Kentucky Derby is decadent
and depraved, and so Joan Winner saw this, He's like,

(29:39):
this guy needs to come right for me. Or I
think it might have been the other way around. I
think Hunter Thompson showed up at Rolling Stones offices and
basically demanded that he'd be made a writer for that magazine. Yeah,
and was certainly, you know, one of the most famous
writers they ever had, along with Um. Cameron Crowe of course,
was well known as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone magazine.

(30:01):
I know he got a cover assignment age sixteen brothers
and that's what almost famous is based on. Yeah, and
he very famously too, was sort of based on his
work with the band Eagles. You mean the Eagles. It's Eagles,
And I always just like to annoy people by saying Eagles.

(30:22):
That's awesome, because it's like, who else was it or
might have already talked about this, It's Eagles. And uh oh,
Hall of Notates. It's like Daryl Hall has a big
be in his bondent about the fact that they're not
Hall of Notes. They were always Darryll Hall and John
Oates and He's like, people just called us that, and
that's not It's not on any of the records there.
They all say Darryl Hall and John Oates and the

(30:44):
Eagles don him. He's always like, it never was the Eagles,
it's Eagles. I'm like, all right, just relax. Another way
to annoy people, Chuck is just to play Eagles music.
I came back around with the Eagles, did you. Yeah?
I mean I took I took off. I love them
growing up, and I took off probably twenty years, two

(31:07):
solid decades of no Eagles, and then I came back around.
I was like, I love this music. What am I doing?
You're back off the wagon. Uh So anyway, hunteris Thompson
a very famous writer for them, obviously, uh And he
did something which other writers in the New journalism school
would do, which was including one Tom Wolfe was used

(31:28):
the magazine as not a testing ground but as sort
of the beginnings of what would become books. By writing
these sort of chapter like installments, uh, every issue, and
Hunter Thompson did that. Tom Wolfe did that with his
early work on what would become The Right Stuff and
the Bonfire the Vanities. Yeah, Man, Tom Wolf, I think

(31:50):
is my I prefer Tom Wolf the Hunter Thompson these days.
I think he's so interesting. Yeah, I just like him more.
But Hunter Thompson's um Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
was was born out of two different assignments where Rolling
Stone sent him to Las Vegas first to cover the
MIT four hundred, the cover that right, the police convention

(32:10):
on Drugs, that's where the books can from. Was those
his submissions for from those two assignments. I think Tom
Wolf is the natural graduation point from Like you like
Hunter S. Thompson more in your twenties and thirties, maybe, yeah,
But I also wrote Electric coolid koolid Asset Tests around
the same time, and I was just like, I love

(32:31):
Hunter Thompson, but Tom Wolf is just I think, by
far the better journalist. Yeah. Electric koolid Asset Tests is
the only thing I've read by Tom Wolf. Actually, The
Right Stuff is really amazing too. About Tom Wolf. Is
he because he's a new journalist. He writes about things
where he can be kind of involved or like he's there,
or it's really kind of like he puts you in

(32:54):
the middle of what's going on sometimes in people's like
bedrooms at night, when a guy talking to his wife,
and he does it so well that you forget first
of all that you're not there, but then you forget
that he wasn't there either. Like he's working off interviews
sometimes other author's notes, um, and he just gives me
he's he's so good at it. You just assumed like

(33:16):
he was there for all the stuff, and he wasn't
there for any of it. There's like a couple in
bed and it just pans over and Tom while sitting
there in his searsucker his legs crossed. Very interesting, Can
you say that again? Other famous writers early on that
went on to have outside careers elsewhere is MTB Skurt Loader,

(33:36):
Joe Estra House, uh, screenwriter and filmmaker. What oh Estra
House was? He was fatal attraction, right, fatal attraction. It
just goes downhill from there, basically instinct. Yeah, Liver, Show
Girls Jake of course, but it's weird, like he had
a real type his his screenplay was a real like

(33:57):
you know, like, hey, you want to see some some boobs,
twelve year old kid, come see my movies. Yeah, absolutely. Uh.
Lester Bangs from Cream magazine wrote for Rolling Stone, and
then of course the legendary journalist being Ben Fong Torres,
who was one of the greatest Rolling Stone writers in
their in their history for sure, yeah, for sure. And

(34:19):
all these people like were legitimately great writers, Um, and
they were contributing to this music magazine that really just
also had its finger on the pulse of really good
journalism too. Yeah. So in that UM article on the
from the Atlantic, they do quite a bit of speculating
on UM sort of when they think Rolling Stone might

(34:41):
have started selling out and become something untrue to its roots.
And and they basically talked about even in the seventies
and eighties, basically, you know, Jan Winner saw the writing
on the wall and said, hey, we can't just be
a boomer archive and a nostalgia jam and I want
to sell mag magazine. So we're gonna start writing about

(35:02):
TV shows and comedians and and uh, I mean they
always write about politics, but you know, really expanded beyond
the sort of mission statement which was a largely music
magazine which also wrote about politics, and it became something
else entirely and really became a popular, hugely popular magazine. Yeah,
because I mean like Rolling Stone as an institution was

(35:26):
just keeping up with the times. Um if it if
it was you know, looking backward to like the greatest
moments in boomer history. You can thank Yon Winner almost
personally for that. And so it's kind of weird as
as John Winner, who was like controlling everything. He he
had to let the magazine reinvent itself, even though he personally,

(35:47):
you know, he you know, I'm sure he did. He
went to Studio fifty four and stuff like that in
the in the seventies and like, you know, went to
Sardes for lunch in the eighties and all that stuff.
But he, like I saw an interview with him in
two thousand and seventeen and he just casually tosses out
the Stones and the Beatles, and it's like, it's two
thousand seventeen, man, and this guy is still sighting like

(36:08):
the Big Three whenever he brings up music from the sixties, right,
So it was the Beatles, It was the Beatles, the Stones.
I think I automatically questioned, somebody who uses the Stones
and that's it, and then um, and I'm trying to
find this quote. It was like an interview with mpr um.

(36:30):
But oh, the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan. That's another
thing too. If you just say Dylan and the Stones,
I say both those things, all right, Chuck. But my
my point is that Yon Winners frequently accused of what's
called rockism, which is we talked about it in our
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame episode, this idea that

(36:52):
rock is white guys using a bass and electric guitar, drums,
maybe a rhythm guitar, and a lead singer. Um, they
probably use a lot of hair product and like that's
rock and nothing else matters. Apparently want John Winner really
personifies that. And one of the reasons why people get
snubbed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inexplicably
is because of him specifically, it seems, yeah, I mean

(37:15):
he's is he the head chair or is he just
on the board. He's definitely high up in it enough
that he can be like, no, I don't even want
them on the ballot kind of thing. Yeah, And if
you remember our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame episode
we talk about snubs, and a lot of people have
had very personal beefs with Winner over the years because
of this. Um. I'm going to read a couple of
choice quotes from his This from the Atlantic article, but

(37:38):
from his biography, Winner was a little barbarian who's less
for money, drugs, and sex threatened to outpace his razor
intellect and turn him into Augustus Gloup falling into the
chocolate river of the nineteen sixties. Rolling Stone was an
expression of winners pursuit of fame and power a magazine

(37:58):
more than occasionally at the mercy of his editors, unembarrassed
appetite for stardom and excess, with which made him an
object of scorn and parity. And basically he said it
was a parable for the age of narcissism. Uh And
then one final little bit here. As newsstand sales rose,

(38:19):
Winner became hungry for still more sales. By the mid seventies,
the focus of Rolling Stone had shifted from what the
editors determined to be the best in pop culture to
what was measurably the biggest. And I think that was
where a lot of people say he lost his way.
It was like, well, what's hot, let's just write about that,
not what's great. Yeah, I saw there was a dust
up years back, I guess in the nineties maybe where

(38:41):
one of his music reviewers didn't write a flattering review
of who Who Do You In the Blowfish's latest album,
and Jon Winner himself killed the review and had assigned
it to another writer who wrote a much more favorable review,
and they were like, well, you know this, this record
company is a huge ever TiSER with Rolling Stone, and

(39:02):
that's I mean, that's what he just did that, you know.
And I think people see him as a founder of
this like really hip magazine that was like a voice
in a reflection of the times, and it kept reinventing itself,
and they want him to be like legit and grounded
in like that kind of ethos, and he just wasn't.
Like people wanted to pigeonhol him like that, and he

(39:23):
just was not like that. I don't know him well enough,
and I haven't read his biography to see if he
tried to put himself out there like that and that's
why people expected him be or if it was just
because he was so closely associated with Rolling Stone. People
mistakenly assumed things about him and then found out it
wasn't actually that way. I don't know which is which.
All right, so, uh let's take our second break and

(39:45):
we'll talk about some of the biggest controversies in Rolling
Stone history right after this shock stop stop stop. Okay,

(40:15):
we're back, chuck um, and we're here to talk about
now some of the low points of Rolling down history.
This isn't a hit piece, no, but I mean, I
think all of the things that we're going to talk
about in the last bit here can be uh classified
under one in one big bucket, which is bad journalism,

(40:37):
uh lazy journalism, abandoning journalistic integrity for the sake of
an article. And it's really a shame that they've done
this kind of repeatedly. Yeah, Joe Esther hass is rolling
over on top of show Girl right now. Oh boy,
that to sight. Uh So, I guess if among these

(41:00):
um sort of high profile instances is the article A
rape on Campus by sabrina Ardly, which made all kinds
of news. It was a story about a gang rape
at the University of Virginia at a fraternity house, and
the more of the story sort of was investigated. The

(41:23):
more it came out that, um, not only were there
a lot of big time journalistic flaws, UM, but you know,
eventually uh, lawsuits and a full retraction of the story
and police investigations that the story was was made up.
I mean journalism one oh one flaws like Um. The

(41:44):
author Sabrina Ruben eardly did not interview friends, UM, who
came out publicly and said, Hey, what this what the
story is saying is not what Jackie, the pseudonym of
the woman who claimed to have been I think gang
raped even eternity house. Um, that's not what she told
us that night. There wasn't even a party that night. Um.

(42:05):
And apparently it just became more and more clear that
the the entire event did not happen, and that the
Rolling Stones journalists who they sent out to do this
really important story did not didn't do some basic fact
checking and as a result just bought the whole thing
hook line and sinker. Yeah. And in the end Rolling

(42:26):
Stone ended up either losing or settling a bunch of
lawsuits with administration at u v A, some of the students,
and the fraternity at u v A. UM. It came
out during this process that apparently there were text messages
that seemed to support the idea that this young woman
made this up to gain the affection of a boy

(42:48):
on campus. UM. I tried to look as much into
it as I could, but um, in the end, they
completely retracted the article, which is a really big deal
for a major publication to like fully attract and say,
all right, this article, we do not stand by it.
We're taking it, you know, we have takes these backsease privileges.
And they even commission I guess, to their credit, a

(43:11):
Columbia University School of Journalism review and published that the
findings of that review, which were not kind. No, the
review was titled Tisk tisc tisks. But even worse than
you know, Rolling Stone losing face and credibility and millions
of dollars, is that like this was used as shorthand

(43:33):
for people who kind of who were like, we shouldn't
really believe you know, rape survivors, and that keeps that
has a chilling effect on actual rape survivors from coming
forward and like naming their accusers. It was a huge,
huge problem that was created by this that you know,
I think it would even came up in the Brett

(43:55):
Kavanaugh hearing somebody basically used it from that and Tomill
cause we talked about it on the courthouse steps. Are
you serious? Yeow? So yeah, So it was a big deal.
It was a big fall down, and you can really
easily point to that as the biggest mistake in the
history of Rolling Stone Magazine by far. Yeah. Another big
one was an article in two thousand three from Gregory

(44:17):
Freeman about what's called bug chasers, which is, um, what
appears to be a very fringe thing where gay men
want to be HIV positive and and try to have
unprotected sex with people they know are HIV positive and
basically the same kind of thing, not a lot of

(44:39):
fact checking. Um. He interviewed a couple of doctors who
he says they they said that they um said it
was like of the gay male community are bug chasers,
And both of the doctors said, I never said that
at all, like I said the opposite. And then the
author later came out and said, no, I remember those

(45:01):
conversations explicitly, and they're just not admitting to it. And
I didn't record the interviews, which you should probably alwaystes do,
And so that that was obviously another big sort of
black eye on the magazine. Yeah. Um and then so
uh and I think it was they were saying new
HIV cases come from bug chasers. Yeah, but it's still

(45:22):
it's just that's just a ridiculously a ridiculous amount. So chuck. Um,
this was in the past, right. There was another big
one to another big flub. They sent Sean Penn to
interview El Chapo, like the most powerful vicious drug cartel
leader in the world. They sent Sean Penn to do it,
and Sean Penn sent back a dispatch that was really flattering,

(45:45):
really sympathetic, and really one sided. And so they were
really criticized for that as well. But that's all in
the past. Rolling Stone has refound its footing correct and
it's everything. It's all good now. Uh No, apparently not correct. Uh.
Just recently, I remember just reading this in my subscription
not too long ago. They wrote an article about Taylor

(46:07):
Hawkins after he'd like very soon after he died. That Um,
a lot of the people in the article, like you know,
famous musicians that were quoted, came out and said, wait
a minute, this is really taken out of context. I
didn't mean this stuff. I didn't say this stuff. The
article kind of basically said that the Foo fighters kind
of killed him with their schedule and that Dave Grohl

(46:29):
wouldn't let up, and it was, you know, had a
big reason. It was a big reason why he died,
and that was a very recent stain. They also did
a hit piece on Marilyn Manson that didn't preside present
any of his side of the story. He was accused
of sexual abuse by a next girlfriend, Evan rachel Wood,
and it was, um, yeah, very one sided, and a
lot of people came out and said, like the ones

(46:51):
who were quoted were like, I gave them paragraphs and
paragraphs of stuff, and they used one sentence, you know,
because I was speaking out in defense of Maryland Manson.
And um there's also one that was considered having given
a moral victory to anti vax ER's. They posted a
story about how Oklahoma's emergency rooms were being overrun with
people who are having toxic reactions to iver Mechten, who

(47:14):
are taking that that cattle d wermer when they caught
COVID and apparently it was just fake wrong. Not only that,
they ran a picture of people lined up wearing masks
and winter coats and the events that they described were
took place in summer, so it was just from top
to bottom a terrible story. And that seems to be
what's going on. And I read an article on UM

(47:37):
a website called Saving Country Music and this this UM
author basically points to the hiring of Noah Shackman from
The Daily Beast to take over, and Noah Shackman said,
We're going to start making our journalism more mediate, more visceral,
and faster, louder and harder. And this Saving Country Music
person is like, that's the opposite of what journalists are

(47:59):
supposed to do. When you do things fast and immediate,
you're sacrificing like follow ups, getting secondary sources, fact checking,
and that seems to be where a lot of the
most recent like flubs and um biffs are coming from. Yeah, Like,
I think it's that digital journalism thing where you want
to be the first to break a story, and that's

(48:21):
where it's just a minefield if you try and operate
that way, you know, Yeah, but I also get the
impression that it's also there it's clickbait. They're fanning the
flames of outrage culture and or like at the expense
of society. Sanity basically is how this saving country music
person put it. And they're trying to save country music. Yeah,
but now they had some. It was a really airy, dight, amazing,

(48:45):
like really insightful post by Trigger on saving country music
dot com. You got anything else? I got nothing else.
I mean this could have been a two parter, but
that that's a good Rolling Stone Magazine overview. I'm still
going to read it, but gonna take it or what
it's worth. But get get a subscription to Cream. Well

(49:05):
that's it everybody for Rolling Stone. And since Chuck said
get a subscription to Cream, of course that means it's
time for listener mail. Uh. This is a great email
from a mom in New Zealand, Kia or a Josh
and Chuck. I'm writing you all the way from New
Zealand and it's currently ten three pm and I need
to thank you. You. My friends are my last bargaining chip,

(49:29):
my last resort and more often than not the best
thing to get a bit of peace. Sounds like an insult,
but let me explain. I have too wonderful, beautiful, enthusiastic,
intelligent girls eleven and nine years old and a frequent
occurrence in our house is the reluctance to go to bed.
Sometimes sleep just eludes them. I get it, it alludes
me to However, if all else fails, what about Josh

(49:52):
and Chuck. We'll usually get them to where I need
them to be, tucked up in usually my bed, with
your two comforting voices teaching them about animal science and
random things. They settle and relax enough to let old
Sandman take them away. Although your content is incredibly interesting,
your tones are soothing and comforting, like a big hug

(50:13):
to settle into. And you are often my go to
when I need a comfort food podcast, and it seems
you have the same effect on my girls. Keep being awesome.
You're very much appreciated from a tired mom Bethany. And
I wrote Bethany back and asked if she wanted to
name her girls, and she said absolutely that is Alison Page.
And she had just written me back after I believe

(50:35):
using our show to get Page to sleep. Very nice.
Alison Page also known as Thing one and Thing two.
That's right and Alison Page give mom a break, cooperated bedtime,
let's get kids, get it together kids? Well, thank you?
Who was the mom? Bethany Thank you very much, Bethany.

(50:56):
That was very nice to let us know that, and
I'm glad we could help out. And hello to Alice
and Paige and everybody. They're down under. Uh she from
New Zealand, New Zealand, Okay, Unders exactly. UM. If you
want to get in touch with us, like Bethany did,
you can send us an email, even from New Zealand.
It'll get here, wrap it up, spanked on the bottom,

(51:17):
and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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