Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Was there any exchange of influence between Rolling Stone and Whole
Earth? They seem to have been co-emerging, wonder if they were
co-evolving?
  

    

<https://www.mixcloud.com/thedeepdive/deep-dive-85-interview-with-peter-richard
son-about-the-early-years-of-rolling-stone/>
Radsio interfview with Peter.
  

    
> Ellen had declined to write for Rolling Stone in 1970, in part
because Jann hadn't hired any women. She also didn't like the way
the magazine referred to women as "chicks" and cited a famous piece
about groupies as another shortcoming. Her 1970 letter to Ralph is a
banger. But when Marianne came on, Willis agreed to write a piece
about rape. 

I was most impressed to read Ellen Willis, because I'd never read
articles about rock 'n' roll by a woman. I haven't gotten to her
letter to Ralph yet--hope I get to it soon. I don't exactly remember
her article on rape, but I bet it had an enormous influence on my
attitudes toward sexual assault, which were (to be kind) very
confused at the time. 
  

    
(Her essay in the booklet for the retrospective box set "Janis" is
great.)
  

    
Rolling Stone and Whole Earth: Yes, there was an interesting
connection. Thomas Albright, the art critic, reviewed the Whole
Earth Catalog for the magazine. That led to a correspondence between
Stewart Brand and Jann. The most notable thing that came out of that
connection was a December 1972 Rolling Stone article by Stewart. It
announced the imminent arrival of video games, personal computing,
the Internet, robotics, and AI. One of the most prophetic articles
Rolling Stone ever ran. And I would say the magazine's Bay Area
location was crucial there. 

My interest in Ellen Willis grew sharply as I did the research for
this book. Her letter to Ralph Gleason was remarkably clear-eyed and
forceful. I think she wrote 23 pieces over three years for RS, but
she also wrote for other outlets, including The New Yorker and The
Village Voice. She stopped writing about rock when she realized that
the social revolution it was supposed to usher in wasn't going to
happen. But her political stuff was also very strong. 
  

    
what magazines are you excited about today?  Are there signs of life
in physical magazines or are you resigned to the fact that the era
of the print magazine is over forever?
  

    
that's a great question!
  

    
I've subscribed, on and off and in one way or another, to a handful
of magazines over the years. The staples have been The New Yorker,
The Nation, The New Republic, and Harper's. For those interested in
Californiana, Will Hearst's Alta Journal is pretty cool. At various
times I've added and dropped The New York Review of Books and Mother
Jones. Decades ago, the MoJo publisher told me they would publish
the magazine as long as they could, but they regarded the website as
their primary outlet. 

As for Rolling Stone, I subscribed while researching this project. I
also had bound volumes from San Francisco State's library plus
access to an electronic database that has everything going back to
inception.  

I wish I were more excited about today's magazines and will happily
take suggestions. 

There was one magazine I really dug, now long gone, called Stop
Smiling: The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes. In 2005, I saw Issue
22 for sale at Tower Records (!) in Larkspur/Corte Madera. That
issue was about "The Downfall of American Publishing." It had
stories on or by Lewis Lapham, Barney Rosset, Philip Gourevitch
(from Paris Review), Saul Bellow, Simon & Schuster editor David
Rosenthal, H.W. Ross from The New Yorker, City Lights, etc. Curtis
White, who wrote The Middle Mind, also contributed; I later became
his editor and am still in touch. But the jewel in the crown was an
oral history of Hunter S. Thompson. Yes, I'm showing my age here,
but that issue was right up my alley. Two copies still live on my
bookshelf. 

Going forward? Lots of pessimism and uncertainty, especially for
magazines that require advertising. The ad-based model still works
for a few outlets that cater to well-off readers. Not just The New
Yorker, but also magazines focused on high-end tourist destinations.
I don't read them, but they look like they're doing well. Another
model is philanthropy, which gives us magazines like The Atlantic
and Harper's. 

I wonder what would happen if readers were prepared to pay full
price for something that looks cool and runs fabulous stuff. Or
perhaps we could look back to the nineteenth century, when
publishers pre-sold their books, then printed them when they had
enough interested readers. Like Kickstarter, I suppose. Couldn't do
news magazines like that, but maybe other kinds of publications
could make it work.  
  

    
The article Stewart wrote for Rolling Stone is available at the
Internet Archive:
<https://archive.org/details/19721207rollingstoneexcerptspacewararticlev02/mode
/2up>

I have my own very worn bound volume of the second fifteen issues of
Rolling Stone. Flipping through it is a form of time travel. 

I also found where you can buy a copy of issue 22 of "Stop Smiling":
<https://hatandbeard.com/products/stop-smiling-the-magazine-for-high-minded-low
lifes>
  

    
Thanks, Jon! I'm all for time travel. I lost my copy of Stop Smiling
but found the right person to butter up and landed the two copies I
have now. 

Speaking of Stewart, did everybody see the Ezra Klein interview in
the NYT today? 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-stewart-brand.ht
ml?searchResultPosition=1

Also, Timothy Noah did a long piece on Big Tech for The New
Republic. Lots about Stewart and techno-optimism in the early days,
including a reference to the Rolling Stone article from 1972.

https://newrepublic.com/article/208876/tech-world-evil-musk-bezos-thiel 

I'm doing interviews now, which broadens my thinking about the media
landscape. I'm talking with KPFA's Sasha Lilley today. I've listened
to Against the Grain for a long time and am expecting thoughtful
questions. But I also did a four-minute segment on WGN's morning
news show in Chicago, and the segment immediately preceding mine was
a video clip of a chimpanzee on ice-skates. 
  

    
The NYT article briefly mentions The Well.

> a video clip of a chimpanzee on ice-skates

Now you know your status in the media sphere!
  

    
Thanks for the tip to the Stewart Brand interview!
  

    
You've mentioned Hunter Thompson a couple of times, can you say more
about how he connected with Rolling Stone, how he shaped the style
of the magazine, and how that fed into what was called gonzo or new
journalism?
  

    
In connection with that, I'm interested in how The Nation came to be
interested in the Hells Angels and asked Hunter S. Thompson to write
an article (which turned into a book in 1967) about it.
  

    
Hunter Thompson was a huge part of the Rolling Stones story. In the
mid-60s, he was living in San Francisco (on Parnassus) when he wrote
to Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation. Thompson had quit writing
for his regular outlet and was desperate for work. His story ideas
were pretty bad, but McWilliams suggested he write about the
motorcycle gangs. That led to the Hells Angels article and
bestselling book. 

During his time in San Francisco, Thompson was close to the Ramparts
staff, but he never wrote for the magazine. Then he moved to
Colorado and eventually wrote stories for Warren Hinckle's new
magazine, Scanlan's Monthly. The first article, about Jean-Claude
Killy, was originally commissioned and then rejected by Playboy. The
second article, about the Kentucky Derby, was the first example of
Gonzo journalism: that is, a comic blend of fact, fiction, satire,
invective, hyperbole, and hallucination. Thompson was shocked when
the article was hailed as a breakthrough. He thought it would end
his career. 

Scanlan's went bust after eight issues, and Thompson needed a new
outlet. 
Altamont happened around that time, and Thompson wrote to Wenner to
congratulate him on Rolling Stone's coverage. Wenner, who remembered
Thompson from his days at Ramparts, invited Thompson to submit
something, and Thompson wrote two pretty straight (non-Gonzo)
articles. While writing the second one, he was in Los Angeles with
Oscar Acosta when he accepted an assignment in Las Vegas. Sports
Illustrated rejected his piece, and he decided to double down and
send it to Jann. That became "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," and
the rest was history. 

There was nothing inevitable about Gonzo's success. It was never a
conscious project; it grew out of a series of setbacks, fleeting
opportunities, and lucky breaks. It really could have been
otherwise. But as it turned out, Thompson and Gonzo took Rolling
Stone to a new level.  
  

    
Did the success of "Fear and Loathing" and the positive reaction to
gonzo style influence the magazine? Or was it mostly just HST's
thing?
  

    
The style was HST's thing. No one could really imitate it
successfully, though Thompson lapsed into self-imitation later in
his career. 

His personal example was influential. One female staffer said there
were a lot of Thompson wannabes in the office. (He didn't spend much
time there.) 

The broader pattern was that Wenner wanted to include lots of New
Journalists, including Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote, in the magazine.
Of course, Thompson belonged in that group before he created Gonzo.
But as I say, it took him a while to realize that Gonzo was his most
valuable literary asset. 

Thompson said he never revised anything after Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas. Instead, a team of RS editors worked overtime to help him
complete his assignments. I'm unaware of any writer who received
more editorial assistance. As his powers declined, even that
assistance sometimes couldn't get his work across the finish line.
From 1980 or so, he focused more on book-length works and his San
Francisco Examiner column, with relatively few pieces for Rolling
Stone. 
  

    
We can see that Rolling Stone, which started with coverage of the
music scene, expanded into politics and investigative journalism.
What moment or turning point pushed it beyond music coverage into
something more expansive?
  

    
I am still a printhead and a sucker for a nicely designed papermag. 

I am currently getting the New Yorker, the Economist and a couple of
quarterlies:  Senet (beautifully printed, about board games) and The
Modernist (mid-20th Century design). Would love to get a quarterly
music zine and have considered Aquarium Drunkard's membership
recently. 

I also read The Quietus and Drowned In Sound with some regularity.
Was working on a project to put their archives online somewhere. 
Possibly as part of Metabrainz Foundation.
  

    
I was in high school when I first started reading Rolling Stone, and
I was deeply impressed that it employed Ben Fong-Torres and Annie
Leibovitz. I had never seen people of their gender or ethnicity
doing what they were doing so regularly at the magazine. 

Ben Fong-Torres got to interview people so often, and I started
realizing that an Asian American journalist could be just as
inquisitive and irreverent, and get as great answers, as any other
interviewer.

I began to see that Annie Leibovitz was the principal cover
photographer, and she was audacious with her subjects. 
  

    

Rolling Stone and Playboy introduced me to long-form interviews.
  

    
Sorry for the lapse. My daughter's wedding was Sunday, we had a
house full of relatives, etc. 

Yes, there was a lot to like about Rolling Stone during this period,
including its design, photography, and long-form interviews. 

I'm not sure there was a tipping point as such when Rolling Stone
broadened its coverage. It was always interested in politics and
film, for example, but as it grew, it began hiring more and better
people to write about non-musical topics. By 1975, it considered
itself a general magazine with a special interest in popular music. 

Around that time, it also hired people like David Weir, Howard Kohn,
and Lowell Bergman to do investigative stories. David and Howard had
worked at SunDance, which was supported by John and Yoko after their
split with Jann. But only three issues of that magazine appeared.
David and Howard worked together at Rolling Stone on the Patty
Hearst story, which required lots of investigation and appeared in
two parts. Howard went on to cover the Karen Silkwood story and
others. David and Lowell did a piece on the death of American Indian
Movement activist Anna Mae Aquash. Lowell (and David?) also did one
on Ronald Reagan's so-called kitchen cabinet, the group of wealthy
Southern California businessmen who took care of Reagan financially
and politically. 

Only Howard continued to write for the magazine after it moved to
NYC. David and Lowell stayed in the Bay Area and cofounded (with Dan
Noyes) the Center for Investigative Reporting, which did a number of
important stories over the years and recently merged with Mother
Jones. Meanwhile, Lowell began doing television work, including a
famous stint as a producer with 60 Minutes. Al Pacino played Lowell
in Michael Mann's "The Insider" (1999). That was a game-changer for
Lowell, who began teaching at Cal and turning out work for
"Frontline."  

All of which is to say that the magazine lost some of its
investigative capacity at that point. But the fact that it produced
major scoops during that period is significant. That investigative
work complemented the political reporting of Joe Klein and others,
not to mention Thompson's political commentary. Later the magazine
would hire Bill Greider, who had worked for WaPo before that. 

I'm not sure how many people, even in the media, understand this
part of the magazine's history. Every once in a while, someone pooh
poohs a Rolling Stone story only to find that the reporter nailed
it. Some time ago, I saw a televised exchange between Megan McArdle
and Matt Taibbi, who wrote for Rolling Stone about Goldman Sachs.
McArdle was a business reporter and seemed to think that Taibbi
might yield to her vague claims that that the true story was more
complex. But he was obviously more knowledgeable about the relevant
complexities. In fact, he cleaned her clock. (I miss that Matt
Taibbi.)
  

    
What other publications most influenced Rolling Stone as it started
and evolved? And what other publications have appeared with apparent
DNA from Rolling Stone?
  

    
Congrats on your daighter's marriage! I saw some photos on FB.
  

    

> By 1975, it considered itself a general magazine with a special interest
> in popular music.

- which, I am told, is what led to the founding of RECORD, which was
explicitly a music magazine. It started as a quarter-fold and later went
slick.