Stuff You Should Know - Rolling Stone Magazine

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Part celebration and part take down, this episode on Rolling Stone magazine dives into the highs and lows of one of America's iconic rags.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody

Yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye. Bye. Bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Welcome to stuff you should know a production of I heart radio Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Chuck. It's the one o'clock hour I just had a nice Caesar salad. So that means it's time for stuff you should know How do you dress yours lightly or do you like it soggy? I do it smartly No, I start out light and then add as needed

Okay, cuz you know I've I've experienced the regret of too much salad dressing. All right, you can't take it away No, you can't unring that bell Rolling Stone magazine, what's your history with this rag? It's a couple it goes back a couple of days at least Oh, you were never into the magazine at all. No, I mean, I've read plenty of like Rolling Stone articles over the years like Matt Taibbi stuff Some a hundred Thompson stuff and of course, you know every once in a while I'll just run across a really good article from like years back, right? But that was it never had a subscription never bought it At the magazine rack or anything like that. Okay, you know, I just wasn't into it

I didn't hate on it or anything like that. I just was never into it not like you're going to today. I Will hate on it today. I'll just reveal facts Yeah, so my history if you care is I I always loved Rolling Stone magazine and I continue to digitally subscribe and You know, it is as we will learn it is not a magazine without its downs and Controversies. Oh, yeah, for sure And you know, it's as Ed even points out in this research like it's sort of been sport over the last

Two decades to sort of debate when and if Rolling Stone has lost its way But it's a magazine that I always I Just took what I took from it right like when I was reading, you know At the end of this we'll get to some of their biggest controversial articles and like very poor shoddy journalism like I never read any of those so I've always just sort of taken from it what I wanted to and And Not really thought about it a lot until this research man. There's nothing more rock and roll than that But I do want to plug another magazine what?

Cream magazine is back. Oh really? Yeah, I've seen people be you know, the the the ones in the know Like cream was always better than yeah stone. Well, it was and Like my magazine of choice for music since the Probably early 2000s was magnets, which I still oh, yeah. Yeah, you know went away then it came back and then But cream is back now and you I think you get I subscribed immediately You get four paper copies per year like a quarterly issue, which is kind of cool. Sure But what's really cool, dude is if you subscribe you get access to all of the archives So it's really fun to go back and read like a contemporaneous Lester Bangs or Cameron Crow piece

From cream magazine, so I highly recommend here at the beginning of our Rolling Stone article To subscribe to the new cream, right? So yeah, cream the impression I have is cream is the one that like really was True to what it was going for pretty much from start to finish While Rolling Stone was viewed as more like the corporate version of that almost from the outset Yeah, the reason that it was viewed as that and still is today is because the guy one of the founders Jan Wenner Was super corporate like that was his goal. He was an ambitious Hippy hanger on basically who happened to be in San Francisco

when the summer of love happened when psychedelic rock broke out when like the 60s like really were Like happening in San Francisco was the epicenter and that's not to say he like didn't dig it and was moved by it But he also saw that this was a really important thing at least to him And a lot of other people and he saw that he could probably sell ads against this So he did what he know how to do and he started a magazine as we'll see Yeah, that's a nice little intro and for those of you who don't know Rolling Stone is a music largely music magazine Mm-hmm, but also in over the ensuing years is since November 9th 1967 has branched out into all manner of pop culture and politics and

You know, we we didn't want to not mention what it was in case you'd happen to live under a Rolling Stone Oh, man, is that written down on your notes? No, I just I was off the dome. Yeah, whoa So should we go back in time a bit? Yeah, let's so let's get in the way back machine and go back to the 60s in San Francisco And there's dusty in here Contact buzz from some grass that's being smudged. They called it grass back then So, yeah, you know Ed is very astute to point out that the origins of Rolling Stone is kind of born out of this sort of Certainly 1960s, but maybe even before left-wing alt

rags that are self-published these sort of Poorly printed black-and-white magazines about the counterculture that never really desired to make money And you know, most of them were super regional and never like went outside of Usually the city that they were in as far as distribution But Rolling Stone was kind of born out of this idea and in particular got a lot of its influence from a San Francisco Based magazine called ramparts. Yeah, which was like far far left radical left politics magazine

There was a headline and I think 1968 maybe even earlier than that that ramparts ran it was ramparts offers $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any cop who has murdered a black man That was on their cover, but it was on their cover and there's like a cop pointing a gun at you the viewer from the magazine's cover And that's you know, okay It's you know shocking especially for for even back then But it's even more shocking when you realize that just a few years before Ramparts have been lost launched as an intellectual Catholic quarterly. Yeah, I mean, I don't even know why they kept the same name

That it was a complete redo. It really was and the guy who redid it was a guy named Warren Hinkle And you can't talk about Rolling Stone without talking about Warren Hinkle That's right He transformed that magazine into that, you know, that leftist rag that they knew and it was you know, obviously big in San Francisco but it reached national levels of fame if not like widespread fame like the writers were like featured on talk shows and Other kind of notably I guess when you're a magazine being written in by other magazine being written about by other magazines you've definitely made your mark and

Time magazine even had a very famous article called a bomb in every issue I think it was a cover article on Ramparts magazine, right? And though it would exist alongside Rolling Stone for a little while in the 70s it was not a big widespread financial success and And obviously because his politics had a pretty Just by nature of what it was a sort of limited audience, right? And so Jan Wenner who was one of the founders of Rolling Stone and who basically Personified Rolling Stone over the decades because he was the CEO for years and years and years

He was involved in Ramparts through a guy named Ralph Gleason who will meet in a second But the upshot of this is that Jan Wenner saw Ramparts what it was doing how important it was and that it never really took off that I saw it blew through at least two personal fortunes Rampart magazine did before it declared bankruptcy and He noted that and he kind of took it to heart for his magazine Rolling Stone and the lesson for him was Reflect the counterculture without actually like furthering the agenda and you can probably be Absorbed by much more people and be palatable to advertisers too Yeah, and as far as Wenner goes he himself was a college dropout from Berkeley

He is sort of the personification of what we now think of as like the boomer generation Which is to say that he And probably still does you know Just sort of laud that generation and everything they did as of the utmost importance and the music of the time and the movements of the time were truly historic and not to be trifled with and Also in a sort of a boomer-esque way

Said it, but you know, it's great as making tons of money Right being a capitalist and loving Coke Sure Yeah, I'm sure that was not I'm sure they were not in short supply No, they weren't he was very famous for his ability to put put away bags of cocaine All right, so you mentioned Ralph Gleason who we're gonna meet He was a jazz critic a music critic who also dabbled in the rock and roll world, but he was not a boomer

He was born in I think 1917 so he was 30ish years older than Venner and they met at a Jefferson airplane concert and Became buddies and I think a young winner really looked up to him and they sort of developed a mentor Relationship mentor mint minty. Is that what it is? It depends So if if Gleason was strictly kind of advising and training and teaching Yon winner that would make him a mentee

But if he did anything to further Yon winners career, which he ended up doing that would make winner his protege Okay. Well, let's just say it was a mix of both. Sure. I just I looked it up and I really wanted to share that I Gotcha. Okay. There's a distinction sure, but they were friends and I Believe it was Gleason that also worked for ramparts Some and then when ramparts fell apart They hatched the idea for Rolling Stone magazine Well, it so Gleason left even before ramparts fell apart because Warren Hinkle did not love the psychedelic rock era did not love hippies and

Ralph Gleason did even though he was a jazz critic. He definitely got the psychedelic movement and was very appreciative of it and wrote very kindly about it in his columns and in ramparts But they're falling out happened when Warren Hinkle ran the social history of the hippies Yeah, which was a pretty unflattering cover story about hippies and the summer of love and how basically he accused them of falling down on the job of taking over the Responsibility to steer the country and instead they were just off like dropping acid and shirking their responsibility which would pan out to be really prescient when you're talking about the baby boomer boomer generation, right and

Ralph Gleason didn't appreciate that at all So he left in disgust he quit ramparts and that was about the time when winner was like, hey, let's make a magazine together Summer of love 1970 you can forget. I know. Oh wait. No, it was 72 Yeah, cuz John Travolta played at the Woodstock for that summer of love concert in 72. Oh Boy always feel bad for people who don't pick up on the inside jokes. Yeah, we'll get some emails. That's all right. It's fun Yeah, so they again hatched this idea together and they really Kind of borrowed a lot from ramparts. Not the least of which was their logo If you look at the ramparts logo, it's I don't know if it's exactly the same font

I'm sure there's they probably technically might have made a new font But it looks a lot like that font and not the original Rolling Stone magazine font because the the earliest issues it was definitely a little bit different But the one that we all know today is the Rolling Stone font looks a lot like ramparts They definitely hired away a lot of people from that magazine including You know, some of the designers some of the writers some of the some of the editors Photographers and even the office space they they raised they wanted to raise 10 grand

But they ended up raising seventy five hundred dollars from a variety of investors including Jane winner in her family who was Yon winners wife who actually had a much larger role in the early days of the magazine then I believe she's Usually giving credit for yeah, I saw it described in I think it was an Atlantic article. Is that where it was? Yeah, that was a great article. It really was I think it was called the rise and fall of Rolling Stone or something like that and Jane Shindelheim winner is described as basically being that she was so cool that her Her personality was what attracted those, you know, cool photographers and cool musicians and just people to the magazine

That they wanted to be close to her basically or she knew how to behave around them basically Yeah, and they had a Interesting marriage. He came out of the closet in the mid 90s Much to her well, I say much to her surprise apparently she had heard rumors over the years and things like that But I think it was sort of a sudden thing for her and did not go down well And I believe he's been in a partnership with the same gentleman since then. Yeah It was a it was a sudden surprise for Jan winner too because I read that he was outed by the Wall Street Journal without his permission or even Interesting even a heads up really just outed him in the pages of the Wall Street Journal

The the the author even pondered like wow is this is this scandal going to be the thing that sinks Rolling Stone? But it was 1995 by then or 94 and everybody's like who cares, you know, it's I don't think that qualifies as a scandal Yeah, absolutely so They have this money they got the 7500 Ed is points out that young winner kept his Porsche though. It's not like he sold his Porsche to raise money for the for the magazine Mm-hmm So they got the money together and they hire a bunch of the ramparts people. They in fact used a lot of the same equipment

The magazine was the same size had a bit of the same look. They had a bunch of unused paper From ramparts that they were able to use and they even used the Offices where they printed it. I think the loft above the office was where they first made their home So yeah, they really had a bit of a head start Yeah, and so if ramparts had spun off something called the Sunday ramparts newspaper and that's what had gone to funk So ramparts the magazine is still going at this time But they used all the Sunday ramparts newspaper stuff including staff, right? So they have well when it worked for them

Yeah, and and when Gleason quit in protest and I think shortly after that the Sunday ramparts newspaper folded That's when they got together and did this and like you said they did it with 7500 bucks and they were able to print I think 40,000 copies of Rolling Stone number one There was a last-minute decision to put a production still of John Lennon in the from the movie how I won the war Yeah, wearing like a like a fatigues and like a helmet with netting on it and everything he's looking at the cameras a very famous photograph and they said that it was like a perfect mix or perfect Metaphor for the mix of like politics culture and music all rolled into one

It really was a perfect photo for Rolling Stone number one's cover for sure I think so and maybe we could take a break and talk about how that first issue fared How's it does that for a cliffhanger? It's great. All right, we'll be right back Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb You might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it

But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb dot c a slash host Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god. Seriously. I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband Michael Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

Step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody Yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Mangeh Shatikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology But from the moment I was born it's been a part of my life in India It's like smoking you might not smoke, but you're gonna get second-hand astrology and lately

I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast Tantric curses major league baseball teams canceled marriages k-pop But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology My whole world can crashing down situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father And my whole view on astrology It changed

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are gonna change too Listen to skyline drive in the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts Did it sell no did it sell no chuck now that first 40,000 I believe 34,000 issues were returned I think a lot of this was in part to the fact that they tried to be their own distributor Mm-hmm, which they realized right away was not a good idea and so they quickly signed deals with distributors and newsstands and Realized that you know at 25 cents a copy weren't gonna make a lot of money with that sort of distributor partnership model

No, so I mean they did the sensible thing and they gave up a pretty significant chunk of their their margin To that district distribution company, but in return they were able to grow grow grow like from issue number two or three I'm not sure exactly when they took on that new distributor, but it was pretty soon after the failure of the first issue Yeah, and then they started selling pretty well As far as the name goes they did get uh, I think sort of threatened Legally speaking by the Rolling Stones music group But they sort of got out of that pretty quickly. I think they may have realized Hey, maybe it's good to be friends with this up and coming music magazine. I don't really know for sure

But yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, I saw a That it was I saw it described as a letter writing campaign or correspondence between that was initiated by Mick Jagger To yon winner basically saying hey, man, you can use this but how about some free advertising and lots of really good coverage and all that That's exactly Yeah, and I guess it got dropped or something like that supposedly only that initial letter survives So no one knows exactly how it panned out, but yon winner was definitely the kind of person to trade You know space for something else like maybe advertising dollars or you know a fair sure a favorable review of a record

In return for that record company or the parent company advertising and Rolling Stone He was definitely not only not not above doing that. He was actively chasing that kind of opportunity Yeah, and you know, I don't think there's a lot of people that would stand up and say that yon winner was the greatest boss They ever had especially back in those days. I think he might have cleaned up his act, you know later on but In the 60s and 70s. It was very well known that he would like you said make these sort of under the table deals He would play labels and writers against one another Add sales people against one another. He was apparently a pretty cruel editor He was never the best writer in the world. He wrote some reviews and things here and there but

that wasn't his strong suit, but Yeah, he was known as being fairly misogynist and sexist and sort of all the things you might imagine from a Sort of magazine editor-in-chief in the 1970s. Yeah, like a good example for the first issue in early on in Rolling Stone's life A guy named Michael Leiden was the managing editor and he used to write for Newsweek And he brought his wife Linda along who was also a writer and an editor And yon winner made Linda answer the phones because she was one of the few women working there, right? It's a good example Yeah, and this isn't a hit piece. There's a very well known biography of yon winner out there that is Also, while not a hit piece not very kind to him at all the sticky fingers one that came out

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so he had been apparently yon winner had been shopping his his story around for You know to be written initially by a ghost writer and then finally a biographer Like he couldn't get anybody to do it because he was just known as such a control freak and everybody was like I do not want to be involved with you for three or four years writing your story Like he would pick apart line by line Captions under photos in magazines. This is in the 90s. He was still doing this, you know, like he was that kind of boss So you can just imagine what a train wreck nightmare. He would have been if you were his biographer He finally got somebody to do it, but that somebody said dude, you've got to give me creative control over this

You have to give me freedom and the you know the guy like you said it wasn't a hit piece But it also wasn't just a fawning and flattering like Apparently yon winner had kind of hoped it would be right, of course Um, as far as circulation goes they say that it peaked in 2008 with a circulation of 1.4 million uh, and is around 500,000 today about 27,000 of which is actually I believe like, you know paper copies Uh, although maybe that's just Newstand and not uh subscription. Yeah, I was wondering if that number reflects their um digital subscribership because that's kind of low actually

It is and Honestly, I never really knew what magazine distribution Equaled anyway, so I was surprised that It peaked at 1.4 million, which just seems for such an iconic magazine that just doesn't seem like a lot of human beings Reading a magazine. No, I mean think about it. We're not too far off from Rolling Stones peak. You know, I didn't want to say that But that's what I was thinking I was like wow I had a Caesar salad for lunch, so I'm feeling rather chuffed

Anyway, um Yeah, I don't know what I thought it would be I figured it'd be like 10 million or something like that But no, that's still rather respectable 1.4 million that's subscribers to I believe yeah, or it's circulation I think that includes newstand sales, but the the reason I'm wondering whether the web Um or the digital subscribers are included in that later number the recent stuff Is because they very famously or I should say Jan Wenner very famously Shunned the idea of moving Into the digital realm. Yeah, and even even as well his son Gus was the guy who was running the digital arm

He still wouldn't give them resources to support like a genuine website Yeah, an example I saw is that Rolling Stone broke some story I can't remember what story it was, but it was a big story and Everybody had to go read about it on other digital news sites because they hadn't posted anything or the story On Rolling Stones website like it was like that interesting they've also changed format just size-wise over the years they They started out, you know as this sort of regular size smaller magazine or should I just say average magazine

Um and it was in black and white with the with a little bit of color here and there like a single color process and then in the early 70s switched to a four color process and went to that glossy Large format style that Rolling Stone Like to me was really known for it was always just different because it was a big Large magazine, but also the it was glossy, but it wasn't like that glossy slick magazine pages of today Wasn't it glossy newsprint basically? Yeah So that that gave it its own feel too along with the size like it was definitely its own own thing

Right, but then it went back to the small and then now is back to the big. Isn't that right? Yeah in 2008 they went to standard magazine size in 2018. They said uh forget it. We're going back to the 10 by 12 I'm glad they did. I mean that's I don't again. I don't buy the uh paper version, but I just always associated that sort of Iconic 10 by turns out 11 and 3 quarter size It's a quarter inch really bugs me. Yeah, it does. You just made me snort man well good, so um Initially Rolling Stone was like a national magazine that was centered in San Francisco because again That was the epicenter of the hippie movement of everything that was going on that was important in the late 60s and early 70s, right?

But then Jan Wenner kind of spiritually decamped from San Francisco even before the magazine did And then finally Ralph Gleason remember Ralph Gleason the jazz critic who kind of co-founded Rolling Stone He kept a column in every issue where basically he was just talking about San Francisco goings on or whatever and he eventually was like the last tether to the origin the roots in San Francisco and when he died in 1975 Jan Wenner waited a couple more years and then moved the whole thing to New York City And it was officially a gen a bona fide national. You can even say international magazine around that time Yeah, and I think from what I understand when Gleason died. He was sort of battling with uh, Wenner at the time

uh, and that they had Fallings out and I believe I'm not so sure if it was personal, but maybe it got personal, but it was Definitely over like the direction of the magazine. I think Uh, I always got the feeling that Gleason Was a little less likely to be accused of Some of the sort of sellout things that Wenner would eventually be accused of he was a jazz critic That's not exactly a that kind of says it all pursue when you're an ambitious money hungry, you know wall street type Yeah, I think that's a good point. So, um Ed makes a really good point here

I've seen it elsewhere too and it's kind of like something that people have realized in the last like few years maybe last decade or so and that is that Rolling stone is possibly the most important mouthpiece For the boomer generation. Yeah, and that it was so important It's entirely possible that things like woodstock or the Beatles or the summer of love or all the stuff We associate with the beginnings of boomers and then onward and onward um That rolling stone amplified it to a way that now we think of those things as like historic events, but

They might not be we might think of them as historic events because rolling stone amplified it Yeah, I don't I don't agree with that But I do agree that it has been a boomer mouthpiece for sure for sure But I don't think that one could reasonably make an argument that the Beatles wouldn't be the Beatles I have not been for rolling stone magazine coverage. No, no, no, I don't think that's the point I think the point is would would the would we consider the Beatles as having changed the world If rolling stone had never been there. Yeah, I definitely think so. All right. That's just my opinion. Okay Um, what about wings?

Oh, I love wings man Jet give me that all day long Uh, one thing rolling stone was definitely at the forefront of even though they did not create Uh, what's called? um, the new journalism and this was basically when journalism went from kind of anonymous style reporting to putting the writer Right in the middle of the story and sometimes

The story was even about the writer in the case of hunter s. Thompson who was also at the forefront of new journalism and it was very, uh literary style writing it was very Uh, not flowery because that sounds kind of haughty, but just sort of a kind of a higher caliber Literary style writing than typical journalism had been Um, I love it. I've always been a big fan of new journalism I think it has its place And shouldn't be confused with other kinds of journalism, but I've always been a big big fan

Yeah, it's amazing. Um, and there's so hunter Thompson He was so he was so at the forefront of it. He actually spun off his own sub-discipline called gonzo journalism which is, um New journalism to the extreme Like when you spell extreme starting with an x kind of thing, right? Why haven't we done an episode entirely on him yet? I don't know weird. We will someday It just seems very strange for us, but he so um, yon winner did not discover hunter Thompson um

He was actually kind of introduced to the magazine world. He'd already written hell's angels in 1968 So he made a name for himself, but the the first piece of gonzo journalism is considered Um, the kentucky derby is decadent and depraved. Uh-huh. That was commissioned by um, Warren hinkle Who had gone off and started another magazine right former ramparts chief? Yes, exactly. And warren hinkle was the genius who put ralph stedman and hunter thompson together And they first appeared together in the um, I can't remember scan lens. I think it's the name of the magazine Uh with the the kentucky derby is decadent and depraved and so yon winner saw this

He's like this guy needs to come right for me or I think it might have been the other way around. I think hunter thompson showed up at rolling stones offices and basically Demanded that he'd be made a writer for that magazine Yeah, and was certainly, you know, one of the the most famous writers they ever had along with um Cameron crow, of course was well known as a teenage writer for rolling stone magazine. I know he got a cover assignment age 16 To follow the almond brothers, and that's what almost famous is based on Yeah, and he very famously too was sort of based on his work with the band eagles

You mean the eagles It's eagles and I always just like to annoy people by saying eagles That's awesome because it's like Who else was it or I might have already talked about this. It's eagles and uh, oh holla notes It's like daryl hall has a big Be in his bonnet about the fact that they're not holla notes. They were always daryl hall and john oats Oh, really?

And he's like people just called us that and that's not it's not on any of the records They're out. They all say daryl hall and john oats, huh? And the eagles don haley was always like it would never was the eagles. It's eagles. That's funny. I'm like, all right just Just relax another way to annoy people chuck is just to play eagles music, right? I came back around with the eagles. Did you yeah, I mean I took I took off I love them growing up and I took off probably 20 years Two solid decades of no eagles. That's great. And then I came back around. I was like, I love this music What am I doing? You're back off the wagon

Uh, so anyway, hunter s. Thompson a very famous writer for them, obviously And he did something which other writers In the new journalism school would do which was including one tom wolf Was used the magazine as not a testing ground, but It's sort of the beginnings of what would become books by writing these sort of chapter like installments every issue and hunter s. Thompson did that tom wolf did that with Uh, his early work on what would become the right stuff and the bonfire the vanities. Yeah, um, man Tom wolf. I think is my I prefer tom wolf to hunter Thompson these days. I think he's interesting. Yeah

I just like him more but hunter tomson's um fear and loathing in los vegas Was it was born out of two different assignments where rolling stone sent him to los vegas first to cover the mint 400 And then to cover that then to cover the right the police convention on drugs That's where the book came from was those his submissions for from those two assignments I think tom wolf is the natural graduation point from Like you like hunter s. Thompson more in your 20s and 30s, maybe Yeah, but I also read electric kool-aid kool-aid acid test. Yeah around the same time And I was just like I love hunter Thompson, but tom wolf is just I think by far the better journalist

Yeah, electric kool-aid acid test is the only thing I've read by tom wolf. Actually, uh, the right stuff is really amazing, too the thing about tom wolf is He because he's a new journalist He writes about things where he can be kind of involved or like he's there or it's really kind of Like he puts you in the middle of what's going on sometimes in people's Like bedrooms at night when a guy's talking to his wife And he does it so well that you forget first of all that you're not there, but then you forget that he wasn't there either Right, like he's working off interviews sometimes other authors notes

Um, and he just gives the he's he's so good at it You just assume like he was there for all this stuff and he wasn't there for any of it There's like a couple in bed and it just pans over and tom wolf sitting there in his seersuckers Yep, exactly, but his legs crossed very interesting. That's right. Can you say that again? uh, other famous, uh Writers early on that went on to have outsized careers elsewhere is uh, mtb's curt loader Uh, joe esther house Screenwriter and filmmaker of what?

Oh esther house was he was fatal attraction, right fatal attraction. It just goes downhill from there. Basically instinct. Yeah. Yeah sliver showgirls Jay girls, of course, but it's weird like he had a real type his his screenplay was a real Like, you know, like hey, you want to see some some boobs 12 year old kid come see my movies That was the show esther houses jam. Yeah, absolutely Uh, lester bangs from cre magazine wrote for rolling stone and then, uh, of course the legendary journalists Being ben fong torrez who uh was one of the greatest rolling stone writers in their in their history for sure Yeah, for sure and all these people like were legitimately great writers

Um, and they were contributing to this music magazine that really just also had its finger on the pulse of really good journalism too Yeah, so in that um article on the uh from the atlantic they do quite a bit of speculating on um, sort of when they think rolling stone might have started selling out and become something Uh untrue to its roots and and they basically talk about even in the 70s and 80s Uh, basically, you know, yon winner saw the writing on the wall and said, hey, we can't just be a boomer archive and a nostalgia jam

And I want to sell magazine. So we're going to start writing about tv shows and comedians and and uh, I mean they always write about politics, but you know really expanded beyond the sort of mission statement, which was a largely music magazine which also wrote about politics And it it became something else entirely and really became a popular hugely popular magazine. Yeah, because I mean Like the rolling stone as an institution was just keeping up with the times um, if it if it was, you know, looking backward to like the the The greatest moments in boomer history, you can thank yon winner almost personally for that. And so it's kind of weird as as yon winner who was like controlling everything

He he had to let the magazine reinvent itself even though he personally, you know, he you know, I'm sure he did He went to studio 54 and stuff like that in the in the 70s and like, you know Went to sardis for lunch in the 80s and all that stuff But he like I saw an interview with him in 2017 and he just casually tosses out the stones and the Beatles and it's like It's 2017 man, and this guy's still citing like the big three Whenever he brings up music from the 60s, right? So which were who? it was

The Beatles probably it was the Beatles the stones I think I automatically question somebody who uses the stones and that's it And then um, man, I'm trying to find this quote. It was like a an interview with NPR But oh the the Beatles the stones and Dylan. That's another thing too If you just say Dylan in the stones I say both those things. All right, Chuck But my my point is that yon winners frequently accused of what's called rockism

Which is we talked about it in our rock and roll hall of fame episode this idea that rock is white guys Using a bass an electric guitar drums, maybe a rhythm guitar and a lead singer They probably use a lot of hair product and like that's rock and nothing else matters Apparently one yon winner really personifies that and one of the reasons why people get snubbed from the rock and roll hall of fame inexplicably is because of him specifically it seems Yeah, I mean he's is he the head chair or is he just on the board? He's definitely high up in it enough that he can be like no, I don't even want them on the ballot kind of thing Yeah, and if you remember our rock and roll hall of fame episode we talk about snubs and

A lot of people have had very personal beefs with winner over the years because of this um, I'm going to read a couple of choice quotes from his This is from the Atlantic article, but from his biography. Yeah Uh winner was a little barbarian who's lust for money drugs and sex threatened to outpace his razor Intellect and turn him into augustus gloop falling into the chocolate river of the 1960s Rolling stone was an expression of winners Pursuit of fame and power a magazine more than occasionally at the mercy of his editors unembarrassed appetite for stardom and excess with me which made him an object of scorn and parody

Mm-hmm, and basically he said it was a parable for the age of narcissism Uh, and then one final little bit here As newsstand sales rose winner became hungry for still more sales By the mid 70s the focus of rolling stone had shifted from what the editors determined to be the best in pop culture To what was measurably the biggest Yeah, and I think that was where a lot of people say he lost his way. It was like, well, what's hot? Let's just write about that not what's great. Yeah, I saw there was a dust up years back I guess in the 90s maybe where one of his music reviewers didn't write a flattering

review of hoody and the blowfish's latest album And yon wetter himself killed the the review and had assigned it to another writer who wrote a much more favorable review And they were like, well, you know this this record company is a huge advertiser with Rolling stone and that's I mean, that's what he just did that You know, I think people see him as a founder of this like really hip Magazine that was like a voice and a reflection of the times and it kept reinventing itself And they want him to be like legit and grounded in like that kind of ethos And he just wasn't like people wanted to pigeonhole him like that and he just was not like that

I don't know him well enough And I haven't read his biography to see if he tried to put himself out there like that And that's why people expected him to be or if it was just because he was so closely associated with rolling stone People mistakenly assumed things about him and then found out he wasn't actually that way. I don't know which is which All right, so uh, let's take our second break and we'll talk about some of the biggest Uh controversies in rolling stone history right after this Hey everybody when you're staying at an airbnb You might be like me wondering could my place be an airbnb and if it could what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse And the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an airbnb too find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host Hey, i'm lance bass host of the new i hard podcast frosted tips with lance bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Oh, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself?

What advice would lance bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because i'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an sos because i'll be there for you Oh, man, and so my husband michael um, hey, that's me Yep, we know that michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life Step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody you everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen

So we'll never ever have to say bye. Bye. Bye. Bye Listen to frosted tips with lance bass on the i heart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm mangesha tequila and to be honest. I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born It's been a part of my life in india It's like smoking you might not smoke But you're gonna get secondhand astrology and lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you It got weird fast Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, k-pop But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology My whole world can crash down Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father And my whole view on astrology It changed

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to skyline drive and the i heart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts Okay, we're back chuck and we're here to talk about now Some of the low points of rolling stone history. This isn't a hit piece No, but I mean, I think all of the things that we're going to talk about in the last bit here can be Classified under one in one big bucket, which is bad journalism lazy journalism, abandoning journalistic integrity For the sake of an article and it's really a shame that they've done this kind of repeatedly

Yeah, Joe Esther Haas is rolling over on top of showgirl right now On top of showgirl right now Oh boy, that's a sight Uh, so I guess chief among these um Sort of high profile instances is uh the 2014 article a rape on campus by Sabrina Erdley, which made all kinds of news. It was a story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia at a fraternity house And the more the story sort of was investigated the more it came out that

Um, not only were there a lot of big time journalistic flaws Um, but you know, eventually uh lawsuits and a full retraction of the story and police investigations that the story was was made up I mean journalism 101 flaws like um The the author Sabrina Rubin Erdley did not interview friends Um, who came out publicly and said hey, what this what this story is saying is not what Jackie the pseudonym of the woman who claimed to have been I think gang raped even at a fraternity house Um, that's not what she told us that night. There wasn't even a party that night

Um, and apparently it just became more and more clear that the entire event did not happen And that the the Rolling Stones journalists who they sent out to do this really important story Did not Didn't do some basic fact-checking and as a result just bought the whole thing hook line and sinker Yeah, and in the end Rolling Stone ended up either losing or settling a bunch of lawsuits with administration at UVA some of the students and the fraternity at UVA um, it came out during this process that Uh, apparently there were text messages that seemed to support the idea that

This young woman made this up to gain the affection of a boy on campus Um, I tried to look as much into it as I could but um in the end they completely retracted the article Which is a really big deal for a major publication to like fully retract and say all right this article We do not stand by it. We're taking it. You know, we have takes these backs these privileges and they even commission I guess to their credit a colombia university school of journalism

review And published that uh the findings of that review which were not kind No, the review was titled tisk tisk tisk But even worse than you know rolling stone losing face and credibility and millions of dollars is that like This was used as shorthand for people who kind of yeah Who were like we shouldn't really believe you know rape survivors And uh that keeps that has a chilling effect on actual rape survivors from coming forward And like naming their accusers. It was a huge huge

Problem that was created by this that you know, I think it would even came up in the Brett Kavanaugh hearing Somebody basically used it for that to that end too Camille Cosby talked about it on the courthouse steps. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. Wow. So yeah Yeah, so it was a big deal. It was a big fall down and you can really easily point to that as the biggest Mistake in the history of rolling stone magazine by far Yeah, another big one was an article in 2003 from Gregory Freeman about what's called bug chasers, which is

What appears to be a very fringe thing where gay men want to be hiv positive And and try to have unprotected sex with people they know are hiv positive and Basically the same kind of thing not a lot of fact-checking um, he interviewed a couple of doctors who he says they uh, they said that they um Said it was like 25 of the the gay male community are bug chasers and both of the doctors said

I never said that at all like I said the opposite and then the author later came out and said no I remember those conversations explicitly and they're just not admitting to it and I didn't record The interviews which you should probably always do right and so that that was obviously another big sort of black eye on the magazine Yeah, um, and then so And I think it was they were saying 25 of new hiv cases come from bug chasers or something. Yeah. Yeah, I think I mistake But it's still it's just a that's just a ridiculously A ridiculous amount. So chuck. Um, this was in the past, right? There was another big one too another big flub. They sent Sean Penn to interview el chapo

Like the most powerful vicious drug cartel leader in the world They sent Sean Penn to do it and Sean Penn sent back a dispatch that was really flattering Really sympathetic and really one-sided and so they were really criticized for that as well No, but that's all in the past Rolling stone has refound its footing, correct? And it's everything's it's all good now. Uh, no, apparently not correct Uh, just recently I remember just reading this in my subscription not too long ago They wrote an article about taylor hawkins after he'd like very soon after he died That um, a lot of the people in the article, uh, like, you know famous musicians that were quoted came out and said wait a minute

This is really taken out of context. I didn't I didn't mean this stuff. I didn't say this stuff The article kind of basically said that the foo fighters kind of killed him With their schedule and that dave girl wouldn't let up and it was you know, had a big It was a big reason why he died and that was a very recent stain Uh, they also did a hit piece on maryland manson that didn't preside present Any of his side of the story he was accused of sexual abuse by an ex-girlfriend of and rachel wood and it was um Yeah, very one-sided and a lot of people came out and said like the the ones who were quoted were like

I gave them paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff and they used one sentence You know because I was speaking out in defense of maryland manson Um, there was also one that was considered having given a moral victory to anti-vaxxers They posted a story about how oklahoma's Emergency rooms were being overrun with people who were having toxic reactions to iver mekton Who were taking that that cattle dewormer when they caught kovid and apparently it was just fake wrong Not only that they ran a picture of people lined up wearing masks in winter coats And the events that they described were took place in summer

So it was just from top to bottom a terrible story and that seems to be what's going on and I read an article on um A website called saving country music and this this um author basically points to the hiring of noah schachman From the daily beast to take over and noah schachman said we're going to start making our journalism more immediate more visceral And faster louder and harder and this saving country music person is like that's the opposite of what Uh journalists are supposed to do when you do things fast and immediate You're sacrificing like follow-ups getting secondary sources fact checking And that seems to be where a lot of the most recent like flubs and um biffs are coming from Yeah, like

I think it's that digital journalism thing where you want to be the first to break a story And that's where It's just a the minefield if you try and operate that way, you know Yeah, but I also get the impression that it's also they're it's clickbait. They're fanning the flames of outrage culture and Like at the expense of society's sanity basically is how this saving country music person put it And they're trying to save country music. Yeah, but no they had some it was a really erudite amazing Like really insightful post by trigger on savingcountrymusic.com I got nothing else. I mean this could have been a two-parter, but that's a good rolling stone magazine overview

I'm still gonna read it, but I'm gonna take it for what it's worth. Okay. There you go. But get get a subscription to cream Well, that's it everybody for rolling stone and since chuck said get a subscription to cream Of course, that means it's time for listener mail This is a great email from a mum in new zealand And uh kia or a josh and chuck. I'm writing you all the way from new zealand and it's currently 10 53 p.m. And I need to thank you you my friends Are my last bargaining chip my last resort and more often than not the best thing to get a bit of peace

Sounds like an insult, but let me explain. I have two wonderful beautiful enthusiastic uh intelligent girls 11 and 9 years old in a frequent occurrence in our house is the reluctance to go to bed Mm-hmm. Sometimes sleep just eludes them. I get it. It eludes me too. However, if all else fails What about josh and chuck will usually get them to where I need them to be? Uh tucked up in usually my bed with your two comforting voices Teaching them about animal science and random things. They settle and relax enough to let old sandman take them away Although your content is incredibly interesting Your tones are soothing and comforting like a big hug to settle into and you are often my go-to when I need a comfort food

Podcast and it seems you have the same effect on my girls Keep being awesome. You're very much appreciated from a tired mum bethany And uh, I wrote bethany back and asked if she wanted to name her girls and she said absolutely that is allison page And uh, she had just written me back after I believe using our show to get page to sleep very nice Allison page also known as thing one and thing two That's right. And allison page, uh, give mum a break Cooperated bedtime. Yeah, let's get it together kids. Get it together kids. Uh, well, thank you. Who was the mum? Uh bethany, thank you very much bethany

Uh, that was very nice to let us know that and I'm glad we could help out and hello to alice and page and everybody there down under Uh, was she from new zealand? New zealand. Okay, the downest of unders exactly Um, if you want to get in touch with us like bethany did you can send us an email even from new zealand It'll get here wrap it up spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuff podcast at iheartradio.com Stuff you should know is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the iheart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Hey, i'm lance bass host of the new iheart podcast frosted tips with lance bass

Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would lance bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because i'm here to help And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody you everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with lance bass on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm munga shtigler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe

You can find it in major league baseball international banks k-pop groups even the white house But just when i thought i had a handle on this subject something completely unbelievable happened to me And my whole view on astrology changed whether you're a skeptic or a believer Give me a few minutes because i think your ideas are about to change too Listen to skyline drive on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts Listen to new episodes of love country talk to chuck every monday and thursday on the national podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcast