When 'Rolling Stone' Was Right , When 'Rolling Stone' Was Wrong

I don 't know if it's possible but if someone could dig up and post the magazine's review of Woodstock I 'd appreciate it.
It wasn't a real review per se but kind of a humorous story. They did the same kind of thing with ' Deja Vu '.
Cheers

 

These two articles both appeared in the September 20, 1969 issue:

Woodstock: ‘It Was Like Balling for the First Time’

The Woodstock Festival (9/20/69)

 

Thanks for posting that my fellow Canuck.How's it going , eh?

 

Stephen Davis' review of Lou Reed's Berlin in Dec 1973 is a real doozy. No wonder Lou hated the press!

"Lou Reed’s Berlin is a disaster, taking the listener into a distorted and degenerate demimonde of paranoia, schizophrenia, degradation, pill-induced violence and suicide. There are certain records that are so patently offensive that one wishes to take some kind of physical vengeance on the artists that perpetrate them. Reed’s only excuse for this kind of performance (which isn’t really performed as much as spoken and shouted over Bob Ezrin’s limp production) can only be that this was his last shot at a once-promising career. Goodbye, Lou."

 

Haha, you say THAT like it's a good thing. There is and has never been anything important about Rolling Stone magazine.

But it is entertainment and to that end, it's serves a purpose: "What is and what should never be"

 

Agreed. I haven't heard any other songs by him, but I've always loved People Who Died.

 

I liked the Final Cut at the time. Seemed like an extention of or The Wall pt 2, and i loved the Wall. But, i don't dig the Wall anymore and i got the Final Cut recently to see if i liked it and , eh, it's ok. Kind of like the Wall pt 2 but just not much there for me. Not a great record.

Rolling Stone had a point of view in the beginning. It was unified in the very beginning 'cause it was like zine, covering a small scene. As time went on they became , criticy, which is just being contrarian to the masses and thinking your farts don't smell. I can be this way too. Can't help it if your into something you just look down on stuff. Like a wine snob or my dad, a plumber looking at bad work by an amature.

Now Rolling Stone isn't even People mag. I saw Jann and his kid on Charlie Rose and he spelled out he basically now is just going for the headline really. The flash. The splash. Which is hilarious cause they panned this type of musical thing for years but now it's his goal. When they lost Ralph j Gleason and moved out of the city they lost their soul. Like Motown. But of course both just went with the times. So, nothing else could be. Just is. We are what Rolling Stone has become. It is.

 

The UVA story showed a lack of understanding about what journalism entails. They got it completely wrong.

 

They were right about David Bowie's Low being a five star masterpiece.

They were wrong in their initial panning of Wish You Were Here.

"The cardinal offender is David Gilmour, by most counts the most technically efficient. No championship guitarist, he nonetheless had enough intelligent ideas to maintain the group’s ultraimportant link to the bedrock demands of their mass audience. He oversteps his bounds in several places on Wish You Were Here, however, indulging in protracted solos that present him as just another competent guitarist who thinks with his fingers instead of his head."

Gilmour has always been the exact opposite of the kind of guitarist who thinks with his fingers instead of his head.

 

Mid 1970s
By 77ish done

Missed the boat on too many great albums and praised mediocre “hip” bands

Read and enjoyed their Altamont article 4 years later. Then again I was a naive kid

Jumped off too far on the political bandwagon

Other mags did a better job of following music

That said
I liked Cameron Crow and enjoy Fricke now in his classic albums documentary interviews

RS Late to the party on punk

An ad, fashion and tabloid mag now
In fact for 30 years

Good for a 5 minute wait in the pharmacy

Wenner has been a legend in his own mind for 45 years

 

Not that late, they did this in August 1976 (And a revelation: The article includes the phrase "teenage lobotomy" which they probably borrowed for the song):

The Ramones Are Punks and Will Beat You Up

 

In the 70s radio was prog heavy where I was

Michigan and windsor Canada,
Canadians are well versed and rewarded by prog artists as well

 

Interesting post on Zeppelin

It was actually Cameron Crowe who toured with the band in 73 with an extensive cover story that brought Rolling Stones approval of LZ

 

When i was a young person i lived in a place where Rolling Stone was the only magazine i could find that covered music. There was no MTV on Canadian airwaves, Muchmusic hadn't begun yet, my town had only 2 radio stations - country music and top 40. The big impact it had on my musical life was when they printed some list of the best records of their lifetime sometime in the mid 80's. I went to my local record store and found copies of Marquee Moon and Trout Mask Replica, solely because of this list. I found out about The Replacements, Husker Du, Jane's Addiction and R.E.M. because of Rolling Stone writing about them. I haven't bothered reading the magazine much in the last 20 years or more but I must conclude it had a positive impact on my personal listening habits.

 

Over the years, I've developed a negative attitude towards Rolling Stone. They dismissed a lot of artists unfairly purely because they were the "wrong" genre (not rock 'n roll enough) or had the "wrong" image (not cool enough), and while I used to read RS religiously, I now feel that they were snobbish and elitist, and immensely overrated.

 

Circus, Cream and Trouser Press had already hit that burgeoning scene and more in depth

 

Not Trouser Press-- I was a subscriber than and they were still very prog-oriented in 1976, the occasional single review or club report aside. By early 1977 they crossed over, though. Their thing wasnt punk so much as pub rock, they loved the Stiff label.

 

Never took it seriously, but I did enjoy it occasionally.

 

It is well known that for close friends of Jann Wenner the fix was in for reviews.

This was a particular problem in the 80s and 90s.

 

I don' t know if anyone reading this thread checked out the above but I spent an enjoyable couple of hours doing so. Most entertaining.

 

Beautiful covers and a nice layout. However, I disagree with just about every syllable of content.

 

There's been a few editions of that book, and all have included great essays (and others, not-so-much). There's a great Lester Bangs write-up on bubblegum pop that was included in a few editions. It's a favorite of mine.

 

Brian Hiatt's review of Springsteen's Working on A Dream album was a little over the top

Working On A Dream

5 Stars! And this quote: "To understand the romantic sweep and swaggering musical ambition that define Bruce Springsteen's first album of the Obama era, you have to go all the way back to an artifact of the Ford administration: 1975’s Born to Run."

Wow!

 

" Over the top"? Major league butt kissing !

 

For anyone who has never read Roger Taylor's infamous response to Rolling Stone's "review" of Queen's soundcheck (appropriately written on an air-sickness bag):

"Stunned, shocked, amazed and asleep upon perusal of your "in-depth" story of Queen in South America ("Queen Holds Court in South America," RS 345). I am a member of said group and extremely f*****g proud of its music (not all) and its achievements. I don't even write to my mother, since the written word seems worth less in this day of the telephone and publications such as yours and the National Enquirer. Your peculiar 1970-time-warp attitude, coupled with an innate, congenital miscomprehension of rock & roll, continues to fascinate and annoy. Thank you, oh thank you, for the pseudopolitical slant and personal dishonesty that you continue to peddle in your outdated, opinionated, down-home rag. Thanks also for the finely tuned musical assessment of my group from our sound check! Grow up. You invented the bitterness. I pity you. You suck. You are boring and you try to infect us. Awaiting your charming review of my current album in about eight months!"
ROGER TAYLOR
London, England