Looking back, the achievements of Rolling Stone as a countercultural beacon in the 1970s may be taken for granted. But a closer look reveals how unlikely it really was.
That’s part of what writer Peter Richardson hopes to show with his new book, “Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine.” Richardson, a San Francisco-based author of previous books about the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stone writer Hunter S. Thompson, takes a deep dive into how the magazine shaped the narratives around music, politics and cultural identity during a tumultuous time in American history.
Richardson will visit Bend to talk about his book on the OSU-Cascades campus May 13.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, where Rolling Stone was born, Richardson was eight years old when the first issue came out in 1967 and in high school in the mid 1970s, when the publication arguably reached its peak influence.
The book focuses on the first 10 years of Rolling Stone, before the magazine moved to New York in 1977. After that, the media landscape changed quickly with the rise of music videos, cable TV and the internet, Richardson said.
“For the first 10 years, they had an incredible run,” Richardson told the Source. “They had a great run afterwards too. They won awards; they made money; they were the #1 rock magazine and much more than that. But the first 10 years, I think, were the most interesting. I think a lot of people think that.”
In many ways, Richardson said, the rise of Rolling Stone was a longshot: it didn’t have much money, it was based in a relatively smaller market and focused on the counterculture — a movement most mainstream media scoffed at. Furthermore, the man who started it, Jann Wenner, was a 21-year-old University of California, Berkley dropout.
Luckily, he had the help of his mentor Ralph Gleason, a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle who shared Wenner’s passion for rock ‘n’ roll.
Wenner and Gleason had another advantage, Richardson said. Though San Francisco may have been far from the center of the media universe, it was at the center of a culture-changing movement of which the rest of the world had little awareness.
“Rolling Stone went all-in on the counterculture and its music,” Richardson said. “They had a kind of front-row seat in San Francisco. They could see what was happening in the Haight-Ashbury and the bands that were coming up.”
To report the book, Richardson got access to the magazine’s earliest records, which are locked in a warehouse in New Jersey. He quotes from correspondence between editors discussing the magazine’s writers.
“There’s some really incredible stuff in there,” Richardson said. “It was extraordinary stuff to be able to go through. I quote or sample a lot of it in the book.”
He also chronicles the role of the magazine’s early writers such as Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus, as well as New Journalism giants Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe.
Richardson said he aimed to take readers beyond the stereotypes and caricatures that dominate today’s public perception of the counterculture movement.
“I try to give that a little bit more time than it usually gets,” he said.
After Richardson’s talk, Natalie Dollar, an associate professor of speech communication whose research focuses on the cultural identities of musical communities — especially the Grateful Dead — will join in a discussion with Richardson.
Author Peter Richardson
Wed., May 13, 6-7:30 p.m.
Charles McGrath Family Atrium in Edward J. Ray Hall, OSU-Cascades campus
1500 SW Chandler Ave, Bend
Register here
Free
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