gonna see my picture on the cover

 

Washington Post Reader Comments / Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner:

~  Wenner began his downward slide when he moved RS from San Francisco to New York and started taking himself way too seriously.

~  Jefferson Airplane & Grace were just another victim of his personal dislikes, I guess.  Despite all the acclaim heaped on Rollling Stone, back then, some of us weren't convinced it was making a serious effort to be an open forum for wide scale coverage of the rock & roll scene.

But, there were no competitors & we were happy to have something other than the traditional newspapers' Art & Style Sections.

        Too many covers & stories about the same artists and groups in a field brimming with possibilities for inside stories eventually led to folks dropping subscriptions and not buying the paper.

~  Well, there was Creem but it never had the circulation that Rolling Stone did.

~  Joe Hagan, author of a book about Rolling Stone's history, said in a recent interview:

"Wenner was part of a generation that believed rock and roll was revolutionizing and liberalizing culture to be more inclusive and free, but the realities of capitalism quickly supplanted that idealism as advertisers followed Wenner's audience--and Wenner followed the money.  

He never looked back.  

For a time, his magazine expressed something genuinely new and authentic; for a longer time after that, it did not.

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♫♫ ♪

Oh-ho-ho, I don't believe it

Tah, thah, ah, oh

Don't touch me

Hey Ray, hey Sugar, tell 'em who we are

Well, we're big rock singers, we got golden fingers

And we're loved everywhere we go (that sounds like us)

We sing about beauty and we sing about truth

At ten thousand dollars a show (right)

We take all kinda pills that give us all kinda thrills

But the thrill we've never known

Is the thrill that'll getcha

When you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone

Wanna see my picture on the cover

(Stone) wanna buy five copies for my mother (yeah!)

(Stone) wanna see my smiling face

on the cover of the Rolling Stone!

That's a very (whoo!), very good idea

Ah-ha-ha

I got a freaky old lady, name-a Cocaine Katy

Who embroiders on my jeans

I got my poor old gray-haired daddy

Drivin' my limousine

Now it's all designed -- to blow our minds

But our minds won't really be blown,

Like the blow that'll getcha

When you get your picture -- on the cover of the Rolling Stone

Wanna see our pictures on the cover

(Stone) wanna buy five copies for our mothers (yeah!)

(Stone) wanna see my smiling face

On the cover of the Rolling Stone!

Hey, I know how, rock and roll!!

Oh, that's beautiful

We got a lotta little teenage blue-eyed groupies 

Who'd do anything we say

We got a genuine Indian guru

Who's teaching us a better way

We've got all the friends, that money can buy

So we never have to be alone (no)

And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture

On the cover of the Rolling Stone

Wanna see my picture on the cover

(Stone) wanna buy five copies for my mother (I want one)

(Stone) wanna see my smiling face

On the cover of the Rolling Stone

On the cover of the Rollin' --

gonna see my picture on the cover

I don't know why we ain't on the cover, baby

(Stone) gonna buy five copies for my mother (we're beautiful fellas)

(Stone) gonna see my smiling face (I ain't kiddin' ya, oh, we would make a beautiful cover)

On the cover of the Rolling Stone (a fresh shot, right up front, man, I can see it now)

We'll be on the front smilin' man, ahh, beautiful

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{"The Cover of 'Rolling Stone'"

written by Shel Silverstein

recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show

released in 1972}

Jann Wenner   ("in the day"...)

-30-