Peter Richardson’s Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine

Peter Richardson has given us a sharp, concise history of Rolling Stone, since its beginnings. When Ralph Gleason and Jann Wenner teamed to found Rolling Stone in 1967, the US was mired in Viet Nam, the media was trumpeting the “Summer of Love” and a counterculture  it barely comprehended, and the Manson murders were to serve as a journalistic “scoop” that made Rolling Stone bankable and a record company source for advertising dollars.

This is a book rife with anecdote and a mini history of Jann Wenner’s long career. Gleason was a well respected music critic and Wenner an ambitious 21 year old passionate about rock music and the Counterculture for which rock was the soundtrack. The San Francisco music scene put the two writers at the heart of a music and cultural bonanza that was to finance the publication.

Wenner formed an early relationship with Hunter Thompson who was to use Stone as a format for what became Gonzo journalism, through an early piece on convention politics and though short on facts the high powered prose and Thompsons innate acuity turned him into a cultural force–and helped make Rolling Stone a serious journal. Brand New Beat doesn’t stint on Thompsons sometimes problematic drug intake.

Editor Ben Fong Torres then husbanded a series of writers, Cameron Crowe and Thompson among them, into literary pundits with clout. With scoops on the Manson murders and the SLA shootout and the Hearst kidnapping – Rolling Stone made it  into serious reportage and journalistic acclaim-with an ease and art envied by those in the Biz.

Richardson is good on the business side of Wenner’s editorial decisions-which kept the journal solvent despite an overall decline in magazine and newspaper readership.  There is a good analysis of the Weather Underground and the ins and outs of the bravado and  “Custerism” that was to prove fatal to its cause. Richardson delivers a sharp critique of the Weather Underground’s FBI problems and the Bureau losing its way as it broke laws in its fervor to capture the Weather leadership. 

Record companies were quick to realize that Rolling Stone was  both a marketing and a cultural tool that brought credibility to that lowest of literary life forms: the rock critic-and careers, think Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs, suddenly blossomed. Rival journals like Creem and the Underground Press were rife with Rock wisdom and this brought more advertising dollars. Wenner proved a savvy businessman with income streams in addition to Ad revenue. The bling market proved a bonanza: t -shirts, jackets, jewelry and running gear were suddenly assured sales revenue and band logos were everywhere. Even Andy Warhol brought his formidable marketing prowess to the UK’s Rolling Stones. His phallic symbolism proved the perfect Rock bling, while hinting at the band’s bi-sexual rep. The Stone saga had moved from Rock promo and criticism to hundreds of millions in CD and Rock gear sales and Winner moved from writer critic to marketing millionaire-whose income streams were now rivers of Gold.

If Rock had once been seen as pushing an egalitarian agenda, the Communard’s legacy had become ancient history and though Gleason and Wenner had been influenced by the genuine radicalism of Ramparts magazine the hard lesson soon learned was that politics was poison-and not just what closed on opening night.

The book takes a long look at Straight Arrow Books, Stones publishing arm. Wenner has hewed a very fine line between the commercial and the radical-and the magazines posture has been, oh most terrible of cliches, “balanced” but “fair.”  The book’s review of Rock as business and entertainment force raises some ,good questions as to Rolling Stone‘s sure-footed editorial policy as planned at Wenners urging.

But truth to tell-what these days remains to be said about Rock? The Record/CD biz has been impacted by alternative media—; the record companies can no longer break stadium safe acts but for Springsteen; the myriad styles that pass for commercial music are not generating hits; performers with a media presentable following just don’t pull the numbers they used to; and a weariness has crept into even the previously enthusiast press.  The Spanish markets now rival the English speaking acts in numbers. And what will happen when the Stones reach 90? 

Richardson brings a long history of reportage to the book, and he has a good look at Wenner’s career. Brand New Beat is clear on Rolling Stone‘s Rock savvy editorial moves and the added weight that popular writers provided Wenner as he steered a twisting course through Rock’s often tortured history of band break ups and fading Stars whose time in the limelight was long over. Even Elvis sad finale gets a mention.

But even if the glory and paydays have faded Rock remains-as music- in the hearts and minds of millions-and even small town America still produces its share of good bands playing passable dance music with some of the old flair and elan. Rock had its beginnings in the Delta-and rural Blues of Son House and Blind Willie McTell, and it traveled to cities like Chicago where it was amplified as dance and vocal music which the LP made worldwide; hence the first wave of English blues bands like the Stones,Animals, and Yardbirds. It has since been reformed, fractured and reborn as Rap, Hip-Hop, Kraut Rock,Reggae and thousands of subsets in between.  Yes in but a few decades its elevator fodder and product enhancement; jive promo- TV and film soundtrack; Vegas casino tourist freebie; and so-much more for so little.

The Rolling Stone story is one of the media markers for our time: the 60’s now legendary for their politics and attempts at communal alternatives to an increasingly ruthless Capitalism that has hedge funded the world and left some Americans still wondering why an ideology of slash and burn profitability has left the USA isolated and reviled. Mr. Wenner’s biography via the journal he leads provide all the answers the disaffected require.

Here’s a book that delivers both story and analysis to a genre that’s often degraded to Pop cliche.