And say, do you want to make a deal?
September 19, 2017 7:45 AM   Subscribe

Just a few months shy of 50, Rolling Stone has been put up to sale by co-founder and publisher Jann Wenner. Better known as a reference in music journalism, it also fostered a number of political writers, becoming one of the main features on the magazine during the second GW Bush term and the 2008 Financial Crisis, as smaller internet outlets occupied their place as trendsetters in music.
posted by lmfsilva (66 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Rolling Stone did so much good in the 60's but it doesn't make up for launching the career of mediocrity apologist and human spoiled mayonnaise sandwich Chuck Klosterman.

Nothing makes up for that. Nothing.
posted by lumpenprole at 7:59 AM on September 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Better known as a reference in music journalism, it also fostered a number of political writers, becoming one of the main features on the magazine during the second GW Bush term

on the mountain slopes below Aspen, the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson swirl and coalesce into a grim figure that periodically howls, "remember meeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
posted by the phlegmatic king at 8:05 AM on September 19, 2017 [54 favorites]


Fingers crossed for future survival and not some grim "pivot to video".
posted by Artw at 8:06 AM on September 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I hope that the terms of the sale require the new owner to give five star reviews for every future U2 album. I mean some traditions need to be upheld.
posted by octothorpe at 8:08 AM on September 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


And put them on iPhones.
posted by Melismata at 8:10 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:19 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


The 50-year Rolling Stone retrospective exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is still up. I saw it back in July.
posted by emelenjr at 8:22 AM on September 19, 2017


Who knows what this will bring, but kudos for a great post title. (Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?)
posted by languagehat at 8:22 AM on September 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


human spoiled mayonnaise sandwich Chuck Klosterman.

I think of him more as "human noisome pudding pop Chuck Klosterman."
posted by octobersurprise at 8:24 AM on September 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm still trying to recover from the fact that they included Brad Paisley's "Welcome to the Future," a deeply uninspired song that is literally about Paisley being amazed he can play Pac Man on his cell phone, among their 100 greatest country songs.

I mean, I probably shouldn't have been looking to Rolling Stone for opinions about country, but, even still, jeez.
posted by maxsparber at 8:24 AM on September 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I've met Chuck Klosterman before. He was really nice and funny and one of those rare people who seems to be really interested in everything you're telling him, rather than just half-listening for an opening to tell you something about themselves.
posted by saladin at 8:28 AM on September 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


The post title should really be a quote from The New Dylan, not the old one.
posted by thelonius at 8:31 AM on September 19, 2017


First Toys R Us and now Rolling Stone.

Not a good week for the Letter R.
posted by Fizz at 8:36 AM on September 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm sorry. I shouldn't be jocular at Klosterman's expense. Lord knows, it must be enough of a burden to go through life with an evil identical twin.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:40 AM on September 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Rolling Stone did so much good in the 60's but it doesn't make up for launching the career of mediocrity apologist and human spoiled mayonnaise sandwich Chuck Klosterman.

Nothing makes up for that. Nothing.


Not even Cameron Crowe?
posted by rocket88 at 8:44 AM on September 19, 2017


I read an essay barfed out by Klosterman where he opined that the way I grew up wasn't as "authentically American" as the way he did. So he strikes me as neither nice or funny.
posted by haileris23 at 8:49 AM on September 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


I mean, I probably shouldn't have been looking to Rolling Stone for opinions about country, but, even still, jeez.

It can't all be Johnny Cash.
posted by Artw at 8:52 AM on September 19, 2017


Have we tried?
posted by maxsparber at 8:54 AM on September 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Pretty sure that if you play fair and only use his stone cold classics you'd only fill the top 50 or so, the rest will have to be murderyFolk songs from other sources.
posted by Artw at 8:59 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Huh. I was about to write that the Rolling Stone story that had the greatest effect on the young me was Kurt Loder's "Night Creatures," about the Deuce, Bill Landis, and his Sleazoid Express, when, trying to remember the story's date, I found Michael Weldon's remarks about the story at his Psychotronic.com. (It was the July '84 summer double issue, not the August as Weldon mis-writes. I bought that issue specifically to read THE START OF TOM WOLFE'S NEW STUFF!!!) I had entirely forgotten that Weldon is in "Night Creatures." Now 30+ years later, I see him not infrequently at his store in Augusta, GA.

I was also going to write that I was never much of a Stone reader, that it was already largely a dinosaur when I discovered it. But, actually, looking at the cover wall, I'm reminded that I did read it fairly regularly for a while and how thrilled I was at the time to read many of those issues.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:17 AM on September 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


I am of two minds: there have been some great individual pieces of journalism in RS in the last fifteen years, but by and large it seems to me a magazine to find out what that guy who used to be in The Eagles is doing now.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:23 AM on September 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Maybe now The Monkees will have a shot at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
posted by Lucinda at 9:26 AM on September 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


to find out what that guy who used to be in The Eagles is doing now.

Bernie Leadon is alive and well.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:29 AM on September 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Based on what I recall of the one or two years I actually had a subscription, it was mostly bad music reviews rated in a weird star system I could never understand and sarcastic Matt Taibbi articles about the middle-east and whoever is currently in the Oval office.

Anyone who has a current subscription, feel free to confirm or deny that any of this has changed. My subscription was active in the mid 00s.
posted by Fizz at 9:36 AM on September 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Spin was better, at least in the 80s and early 90s, for music reviews.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 9:44 AM on September 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I am of two minds: there have been some great individual pieces of journalism in RS in the last fifteen years, but by and large it seems to me a magazine to find out what that guy who used to be in The Eagles is doing now.

Being a tortured artist somewhere, no doubt.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:45 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Based on what I recall of the one or two years I actually had a subscription, it was mostly bad music reviews rated in a weird star system I could never understand and sarcastic Matt Taibbi articles about the middle-east and whoever is currently in the Oval office.

Anyone who has a current subscription, feel free to confirm or deny that any of this has changed. My subscription was active in the mid 00s.


There was the Jackie debacle in 2014, which was not good but was certainly something...else.
posted by carbide at 9:46 AM on September 19, 2017


In the late 80s, Forced Exposure back when it was still a zine did an interview with the painter Robert Williams, and one of the things he said seemed prescient for 30 years ago, or at least it did to me at the time: Just like our recent ancestors lived in the jazz age, we live in the rock and roll age, and eventually there will be kids who will not be interested in rock and roll, they'll have invented something else that belongs to them, not their parents.

That's been on my mind again since hearing about Rolling Stone being put up for sale. It's fifty years old. The music that spawned it and the era it chronicled is old. Rock is not the future of music any more. Something else is, and something else will be recognized in hindsight as its chronicle.
posted by ardgedee at 10:28 AM on September 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


Even in their "golden age" Cameron Crowe years they were disgustingly sexist creeps. Joni Mitchell was "Old Lady Of The Year" to them.
posted by Bee'sWing at 10:30 AM on September 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Not to be all land-of-contrasts, but the magazine's quality has varied greatly over the years--yes, there were the HST years and some other good articles, even some of Taibbi's before he got infatuated with his own shtick, and generally did better with their musician interviews. But then there were those reviews; I soured on those when I was a teenager and paged through a book of them and it seemed like some obviously superior work was downrated in favor of any random power pop band's. Besides the Jackie debacle, there was the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev "rockstar" cover, and Peter Travers has always been a hack as far as I can tell; I would (and did) rather read Roger Ebert when he was wrong than Travers when he was right.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:31 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Does this mean Gisèle MacKenzie and Snooky Lanson are out of a job?
posted by jim in austin at 11:14 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe someone will buy Rolling Stone and turn it into a magazine about rock and roll.

And death. Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Death. They could make the cover stories nothing but obituaries now.

Let's see... Fats Domino, Phil Spector, Little Richard, Burt Bacharach, Berry Gordy, Petula Clark, Yoko Ono, Quincy Jones, John Mayall, Frankie Valli, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Wyman, Keith Richards, Don Everly, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Gordon Lightfoot, Garth Hudson, Sam Moore, Chubby Checker, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Neil Sedaka, David Crosby, Pete Townshend, Grace Slack, ...
posted by pracowity at 11:23 AM on September 19, 2017


Whatever magazine is published without Jann Wenner will not be the original Rolling Stone but ...

... a cover of the Rolling Stone.
posted by DanSachs at 11:32 AM on September 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


pracowity: "Let's see... Fats Domino, Phil Spector, Little Richard, Burt Bacharach, Berry Gordy, Petula Clark, Yoko Ono, Quincy Jones, John Mayall, Frankie Valli, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Wyman, Keith Richards, Don Everly, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Gordon Lightfoot, Garth Hudson, Sam Moore, Chubby Checker, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Neil Sedaka, David Crosby, Pete Townshend, Grace Slack, ..."

Yes, the stars are dropping like flies, but I have been assured that the heart of rock'n'roll is still beating.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:43 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


(Also a lot of the folks you are listing are not dead yet which kinda takes away from your intended effect, I think?)
posted by caution live frogs at 11:44 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think that they're all alive.
posted by octothorpe at 11:51 AM on September 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The list of Still Alive Legends is not as long as it should, but as long as we have 50% of The Beatles, 50% of The Who and 100% of Weird Al, things aren't too bad. (And Yes' Jon Anderson is living just down the road from me and occasionally getting his voice back... when he does you can hear him from Pismo to SLO)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:03 PM on September 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Safe to assume that five-star reviews for any future Mick Jagger solo albums will be written into the terms of the sale.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 12:05 PM on September 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Safe to assume that five-star reviews for any future Mick Jagger solo albums will be written into the terms of the sale.

I just looked up their review of "She's The Boss", which I guess was his best one, and they gave it 4 stars.
posted by thelonius at 12:09 PM on September 19, 2017


A big five stars for Goddess in the Doorway written by Wenner himself:
... Goddess in the Doorway finds Jagger taking a giant step — not away from the shadow of the Stones but beyond what that understandably history-bound band has been able to achieve on record in recent times.

In terms of consistency, craftsmanship and musical experimentation, Goddess in the Doorway surpasses all his solo work and any Rolling Stones album since Some Girls.
---
It is a clear-eyed and inspired Mick Jagger who crafted Goddess in the Doorway, an insuperably strong record that in time may well reveal itself to be a classic. World, meet Mick Jagger, solo artist.
posted by octothorpe at 12:26 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


No nasty words from me. I was a subscriber as a young adult back in the late 70's and it served me well.
posted by davebush at 12:26 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Peter Travers has always been a hack as far as I can tell

I won't dispute that, but after all these years I still relish this bit from his review of Star Trek V:
Let me merely note that heaven looks disappointingly like what it really is, the California desert tinted red; that the talking head on view there resembles an angry Max Headroom more than God, Satan or the personification of man's vanity; that the evil Klingons pursuing Kirk also deliver more blather (in Klingon, with English subtitles) than action; that the film is devoid of grace, wit or the excitement needed to rouse a justifiably dozing audience; that Shatner can't direct for diddly.
(I mean, it's not really insightful or even particularly witty, but God did look like an angry Max Headroom.)
posted by octobersurprise at 12:29 PM on September 19, 2017


I work in the same building as our journalism school. I saw a copy of Rolling Stone on top of the recycling bin yesterday and decided to take it home with me. It was so thin I thought that some pages must have been ripped out. It felt like one of those special editions they hand out for free in bags with, like, Axe.

But no. It was 58 pages. 58.
posted by St. Hubbins at 2:15 PM on September 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


This is so bogus man. Wenner's just another sell out. Looks like I'm gonna have to switch to Crawdaddy to find my sweet tunes now. Bummer.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:27 PM on September 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I probably would have felt differently about this before I learned about Matt Taibbi's serial abuse/assault of women and gleeful sexism. Which, of course, he bragged about - because it fit into his "bad boy" image. And of course this didn't affect their decision to employ him, because I guess that's just rock n' roll or whatever.

So I don't feel bad. The sooner the fuckers burn, the better. Can't even particularly care if they're burning for the wrong reason.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:45 PM on September 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think that they're all alive.

Yeah, that's a list of who's going next.
posted by pracowity at 2:57 PM on September 19, 2017


Grace Slack...

When the truth is found to be lies,
And all the joy within you dies,
Meh.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:04 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I probably would have felt differently about this before I learned about Matt Taibbi's serial abuse/assault of women and gleeful sexism.

I was about to say, "Well The eXile was pretty much founded on sex, drugs, and rock 'n Russia." then I clicked the link and read:
I just learned today that he takes the same ferocious, scathing approach to women. He and Mark Ames were columnists writing for an expat paper in Moscow years ago ...
It's hell getting old.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:06 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Well The eXile was pretty much founded on sex, drugs, and rock 'n Russia."

I mean, I get the shock of finding out that more time has passed than you expected - but I think that the real shocking information should be what passed as "sex, drugs, and rock 'n Russia."

It's true that misogyny has been part of rock culture for a long time, but it's time we stop shrugging and start demanding change. I mean, what's less rock than turning your heads as the powerful abuse the powerless? What's less rock than being one of those abusers?

Maybe this is a "no true scotsman" fallacy. I don't know. What I do know is I have so little sympathy left for Rolling Stone. Their political coverage pretended to speak truth to power, all the while they gave work to men who admitted - admitted!!! - to using their positions of power to abuse the powerless. I am so fucking sick of the hypocrisy.

What makes me feel really old is ... how fucking old all of this is. And how little sympathy I have left.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:18 PM on September 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


The only thing I really remember about Rolling Stone was back in 1986, when I read Firestarter, it was the magazine that Charlie went to at the end. I had no idea of the significance of that ending.

My opinion really hasn't changed much.
posted by happyroach at 3:20 PM on September 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Their political coverage pretended to speak truth to power, all the while they gave work to men who admitted - admitted!!! - to using their positions of power to abuse the powerless.

Oh I don't disagree. The eXile's brand of fashionable nihilism mixed with occasional purer-than-thou politics was very 2017. I remember when Taibbi moved into the mainstream press thinking that maybe he wasn't quite the libertarian asshole that I thought he was.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:48 PM on September 19, 2017


They used to offer you an LP album if you subscribed. I remember you could have gotten The Who's Tommy at one point.
posted by Peach at 8:11 PM on September 19, 2017


(I mean, it's not really insightful or even particularly witty, but God did look like an angry Max Headroom.)

Hmmm... not really. The scene also proves that the movie wasn't totally devoid of wit.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:27 PM on September 19, 2017


Yeah, it's more like Zardoz goes electric.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:13 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Which is pretty appropriately really.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:16 PM on September 19, 2017


Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith. Rolling Stone and HST at the top of their game.
posted by TedW at 12:33 AM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Um, didn't Spin launch the career of Chuck Klosterman?
posted by Dokterrock at 12:56 AM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


The End of Rollng Stone As We Know It
posted by TedW at 8:27 AM on September 20, 2017


Akron Beacon Journal, really.
posted by maxsparber at 8:33 AM on September 20, 2017


I'm still trying to recover from the fact that they included Brad Paisley's "Welcome to the Future," a deeply uninspired song that is literally about Paisley being amazed he can play Pac Man on his cell phone, among their 100 greatest country songs.

First off, as you acknowledge, criticizing Rolling Stone for a country music list is sort of like criticizing People magazine for their human interest stories - sure, it's related to their core purpose but only vaguely.

Second, focusing on Paisley's ability to play Pac-man on his phone seriously mis-represents the build of the song which goes from talking about yes, how amazing smartphones are to how his Grandpa fought the Japanese and now Paisley video chats with his Japanese label to the big ending which, especially given the stereotypical audience for country music, makes a pretty powerful statement about how much our society has advanced in light of the election of Barack Obama.

"Welcome to the Future"

I had a friend in school
Running back on the football team
They burned a cross in his front yard
For asking out the homecoming queen
I thought about him today
And everybody who'd seen what he'd seen
From a woman on a bus
To a man with a dream
Hey, wake up Martin Luther
Welcome to the future
Hey, glory, glory, hallelujah
Welcome to the future


Is this song "He Stopped Loving Her Today?" No, of course not (but what is?)

But by modern country music standards, it's pretty powerful, challenging stuff. (Of course, Paisley should've stopped trying to write message songs about racism after this one came out.)
posted by Jaybo at 7:43 PM on September 20, 2017


Good. The magazine has been garbage outside of its first five years.
posted by Chocomog at 5:21 AM on September 21, 2017


Oh no, that final part, in which Paisley calls Dr. King "Martin Luther" and sings about how much better things are for black people, is the worst part of the song.
posted by maxsparber at 7:09 AM on September 22, 2017


The End of Rollng Stone As We Know It

And I feel fine.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:53 PM on September 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


The cover of the Rolling Stone ain't what it used to be it seems.
posted by TedW at 8:58 PM on September 24, 2017


Ha ha.

The dumb fucks really are pivoting to video.
posted by Artw at 3:04 PM on September 26, 2017


"It's OK, Timmy, ScruffyCo isn't gone! It's just virtually officed while it pivots to video."
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:14 PM on September 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


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