Sticky Fingers

Sticky Fingers, by Joe Hagan

No month stated, 2017  Knopf

I remember when this book came out a few years ago; the most notable thing about it was that writer Joe Hagan, who had personally been asked by Rolling Stone honcho Jann Wenner to write the definitive history of the magazine, had turned in a book so displeasing to Wenner that Wenner cut off all ties with Hagan, disavowing the book (and going on to write his own autobiography). Reading the 547-page doorstop that is Sticky Fingers, one can understand Wenner’s displeasure. While the book starts off on relatively sound footing, it soon becomes apparent that Joe Hagan’s goal is to write a modern-day The Lives Of John Lennon (a book that he even references in the text): a malicious attempt at cutting down his subject. But, as with Albert Goldman’s much-detested biography of John Lennon, the subject of Sticky Fingers ultimately comes off as okay – it’s the biographer who comes off like the bad guy. 

Sticky Fingers is at least shorter than Goldman’s epic of a character assassination, but it’s no less vindictive. What’s interesting is that the first half of the book seems relatively even-toned, until the knives come out in the second half. But, at least for this reader, the cumulative effect was that I became sympathetic to Jann Wenner. For, like Goldman in his Lennon bio, it soon becomes clear that, while Joe Hagan has interviewed many people for his book, he has only used their negative comments about Wenner. Just as The Lives Of John Lennon gave the impression that John Lennon was a marginally-talented narcissist who only stumbled into success through luck, so too does Sticky Fingers convey that Jann Wenner is a “star-fucker” and “groupie” who managed to run the definining magazine of his generation only by luck. 

The frustrating thing is that I was looking forward to the book. I’ve long been interested in the very early Rolling Stone, and over the years have picked up several original issues, the majority of the mass market paperback anthologies, and also in 2007 I got the Rolling Stone: Cover To Cover CD-Rom, which features every page of every issue from the first one up through 2007. I also picked up two earlier “unauthorized histories” of Rolling Stone: Robert Sam Anson’s 1981 book Gone Crazy And Back Again, and Robert Draper’s 1990 book Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History, neither of which I’ve read. I’ve also picked up – and reviewed here – a few roman a clef novels about Rolling Stone: Rising Higher and Angel Dust. 

All of which is to say I’m very interested in Rolling Stone, at least the first several years of it, though I admit I lose interest once the ‘70s become the ‘80s and beyond. Reading Sticky Fingers, though, never once did I get the impression that Joe Hagan has ever liked Rolling Stone, and nowhere in the book does he capture the magic of flipping through those early issues of the magazine, the newspaper so brittle from the years as to split in half as you turn the page, to find nigh-endless interviews with rock personalities of the day, epic album reviews, psychedelic art, various feature stories, “dope world” communiques, and occasionally even poetry. There is a definite magic to the first ten or so years of Rolling Stone, and it’s clear why readers of the day “grokked” it, but Hagan can’t be bothered to tell us that. Indeed, when he does comment on the magazine, it’s in a derogatory or mocking tone. 

However, it’s to Hagan’s credit that about 85% of the book focuses on the ‘60s and ‘70s. Indeed, the ‘90s and ‘00s only take up a few pages at the very end of the book. This is because the ‘60s and ‘70s were the prime years of the magazine, something everyone acknowledges. And too, Hagan does provide the occasional interesting backstory about some of the more famous stories from the magazine’s golden years, some of which had me accessing my CD-Rom to check them out. But one wonders if this same behind-the-scenes info is also in Anson’s and Draper’s books. 

For the most part, though, Sticky Fingers is a biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner…but, just as Albert Goldman’s Lennon bio was also about Yoko Ono, so too is Sticky Fingers also about co-founder Jane Wenner, aka Jann’s wife. (And a quite attractive wife at that, if you don’t mind a little toxic masculinity with your review.) As I say, it’s pretty incredible how similar Sticky Fingers and The Lives Of John Lennon are. We even start at Wenner’s childhood, with the same focus on Wenner’s mother as there was on Lennon’s mother in that other book – with the caveat that Hagan is much more enamored with Wenner’s mom than I was, as she comes off as the epitome of the self-involved “upper crust” narcissist. I did appreciate Hagan’s subtext (possibly unintentional, though) that Wenner’s mother decided late in life that she was a lesbian, just as Jann Wenner himself came out as gay later in his own life. 

While I have not read those earlier Rolling Stone exposes, one thing I know they both agree on is that Jann Wenner was not the best of bosses, sort of enjoying the high life with rock royalty and leaving his employees to do the brunt of the work. To which I say, “Who gives a shit?” Honestly, this sort of ignorace about the working world baffles me…it’s like these biographers have never had a real job outside of the journalism industry and don’t understand that this is essentially how it works in the corporate world. So yes, there’s a fair bit of bitching from Rolling Stone employees new and old, but again the humorous thing is, no one would know who any of these people are if they hadn’t worked for Rolling Stone in the first place. But then the same sentiment can be extended to Joe Hagan himself – I’d never heard of the guy previous to this book. 

Writing-wise, Hagan does for the most part keep his narrative moving, but the passive-aggressive tone soon becomes wearying. He also writes in that pretentious style favored by modern journalists; back in the ‘90s I remember getting a subscription to Esquire due to a bunch of frequent flyer miles, and I was immediately turned off by the highfalutin, desperately-trying-to-sound important writing style throughout. Unsurprisingly, Joe Hagan writes in that exact style, doling out sentences like, “When Simon and Garfunkel came to San Francisco to play the Community Theater in Berkeley in May 1966, they made a special trip to Berkeley to meet Ralph Gleason, whose collection of Lenny Bruce recordings, bequeathed to him by Bruce himself, was highly prized samizdat.” To paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy: If you use words like “samizdat,” you might be a pretentious twat. Especially if it’s in a sentence that also has “Simon and Garfunkel” in it! 

As in Goldman’s Lennon-bashery, from the beginning of this epic tale we are to understand that Jann Wenner had no real part in anything that made Rolling Stone great, and any success he enjoyed was either due to someone else’s idea or due to a fluke. So then the origin of Rolling Stone itself is framed as Wenner perhaps ripping off some other underground magazines of the day, then straight-up using the printing plates designed for a defunct paper. Only occasionally will Hagan admit that Wenner might have come up with a good idea on his own, but just as soon as we’re told something positive, Hagan will undercut it with a biting comment – he does this throughout the book, increasingly so as we get a few hundred pages in. Again and again, any time we are told of a good deed Wenner has done, or any time someone else makes a positive comment about him, there will be a single-line sentence that undercuts Wenner. For example: 

Travolta was pleased [with Wenner’s screen test for a featured part in Travolta’s 1985 movie Perfect]. He characterized Wenner’s second screen test “one of the best I’ve ever seen…I’ve never seen a beast like this one on celluloid before.” 

At least that’s what he said in his “actor’s notebook” that Wenner published in Rolling Stone. 

Just like that, throughout the damn book. Speaking of Lennon, Sticky Fingers is even framed around him, opening in 1970 – well after Rolling Stone had become a success – with Jann and Jane Wenner enjoying a brief friendship with John and Yoko. We get the insider scoop that Wenner, despite Lennon’s specific demand, published Lennon’s long interview with the magazine as a book, Lennon Remembers, and Lennon never forgave him for it. Obviously a jerky move, but then again one could see Wenner’s point – the interview would have been the property of the magazine, for Wenner to do with as he pleased. Speaking of which, we get a lot of legal wrangling between Wenner and Mick Jagger over the use of “Rolling Stone,” with Jagger incensed in the early days that it infringed on his band’s name; wranglings which humorously took decades to be worked out between the two men. One wonders how Jagger feels now that this book, too, “rips of” the Stones for its title – but even then, “Sticky Fingers” is a lame title, as it has no real bearing on anything…other than being yet another dig at Jann Wenner, implying that his career has been the result of “sticky finger” thievery and backstabbing. 

Despite being 500+ pages, Sticky Fingers is very shallow in the research department. Again, it’s all written about on the surface level of an Esquire article. We’ll get cursory overviews of some of the more famous pieces that ran in Rolling Stone, maybe a little behind the scenes stuff…but that’s it. There’s no mention whatsoever of more minor figures from the magazine’s early days: no J.R. Young, no Smokestack El Ropo. Not a single mention of either of them – nor any confirmation of my pet theory that early contributor “Elmo Rooney” might have been Steve Martin, who literally portrayed Elmo Rooney in the ultra-weird Rolling Stone 10th Anniversary TV Special. (“Elmo Rooney” was probably really Charles Perry, who was also “Smokestack El Ropo,” but still – it’s a fun idea.) 

One of the things that drew Wenner’s ire upon the publication of this book is Hagan’s strange obsession with Wenner’s sexuality. In a way I can appreciate it, though…I mean Hagan has at least tried to cater to a “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” ethic. But the obsession with Wenner’s latent homosexuality and how it shaped Rolling Stone in its early days – even subconsciously! – gets to be as wearying as the constant single-sentence barbs. Indeed, coupled with Hagan’s other obsession (namely, the insinuation in Keith Richard’s autobiography that Mick Jagger has a small penis – something Hagan refers to several times in this book!), the reader begins to wonder if there’s a little “latency” in Hagan himself. Actually this might explain the increasingly vicious tone the book appropriates toward Wenner. 

On that same note, Hagan is really, really bothered that Rolling Stone was essentially “by white men for white men.” Of course, the white population of the United States was around 90% in 1970, but who cares about such trivialities – I mean Jann Wenner should’ve catered at least a little to the nascent albino trans population, for crying out loud! How dare he go for the majority of the population? I mean what was he, a businessman or something?? But boy, we do get a lot of today’s mandatory white male-bashing; Hagan most seems to be bothered by Joe Eszterhas, who wrote for Rolling Stone in the early ‘70s before heading to Hollywood. Hagan has it that Eszterhas was not only a chauvinist but that he also plain made up most of his stories. To which I say big woop; this is no different than what writers were doing over at the Men’s Adventure Magazines of the day. Kudos to Eszterhas for pulling it off in a more “respectable” periodical. Hagan also mentions that Eszterhas liked to carry around a buck knife, which he’d lay down on the table when in heated discussions in the editorial room – a WTF? note that made me laugh out loud. I think I’m gonna start doing that at the office. 

Hagan is so focused on his white male-bashing that he misses the forest for the trees. For, despite being “by white men for white men,” there were indeed women and “people of color” (in the modern parlance) at Rolling Stone, even in the earliest days. Chief among them would be Robin Green, the first female reporter, and Ben Fong-Torres, a Chinese journalist who was one of the main contributors for years and years. So hey, right there – opportunities for Hagan to expound upon “muh diversity.” 

But in another laugh-out-loud miss on Hagan’s part, we’re told that Robin Green was Jann Wenner’s “resident assassin,” the reporter Wenner would send when he wanted a hit piece on someone, and not really good for much else. And Fong-Torres was even worse, notorious for snooping through the personal belongings of his subjects and also publishing personal material in his stories – like stuff taken directly from a private notebook he spied in someone’s house. And it’s humorous – no doubt unintentionally so – that Hagan does essentially the very same thing in this book! According to Rolling Stone veteran Greil Marcus, Hagan took a particular story Marcus had given him about Jann Wenner and distorted it to make Wenner look bad; Marcus further declared Sticky Fingers to be a “vile” book. 

Anyway, while there was some precious “muh diversity” at Rolling Stone, even in the beginning, apparently Green and Fong-Torres weren’t the best representatives…or something. It just made me laugh, particularly given how incensed Hagan was at Jann Wenner’s race-and-gender faux pas in 2023, more on which anon. 

Despite all attempts to make him appear spineless and craven, Wenner still comes off in a positive light…in particular in a flap in the Rolling Stone offices after the publication of the Altamont special, in 1970. This was, in Hagan’s dramatic telling, a watershed moment in the paper’s origin, as the radical leftists in Wenner’s employ demanded that their boss trounce Mick Jagger for his part in the debacle and death at that festival…pushing Wenner to defy his “groupie” image and go after Mick Jagger himself. Wenner did so…after which, in typical fashion, the radical leftists wanted more: they wanted Rolling Stone to become overtly political, and essentially staged a coup. In a move modern-day executives at Disney and Boeing and etc should learn from, Wenner stood his ground and kicked the radical fuckers out. And Rolling Stone went on to its greatest success in the ‘70s, while those fired radicals faded into the woodwork. Certainly there is a lesson there, but Joe Hagan misses it…perhaps intentionally so. 

Otherwise the mistakes are for the most part minor, like when Hagan tells us that “the first Steve Miller Band album” was Sailor, when in reality it was Children Of The Future. Since stuff like this is admitedly outside the scope of the book, it’s forgiveable. But the goofs about Rolling Stone are a bit harder to swallow, given that this is supposed to be the “definitive story” – I mean, like on page 414 we get a scant few paragraphs on Tom Wolfe’s serialized Bonfire Of The Vanities, which ran for 27 installments in the mid-1980s in Rolling Stone. Not even broaching the plot or telling us much at all about the story or its reception, Hagan informs us that the protagonist is “a Wall Street trader,” Hagan unsurprisingly using the character as an opportunity to take yet another swipe at Wenner, lending the impression that Wolfe was serving up a veiled parody of his editor. There’s only one problem. In the original Rolling Stone serialization, protagonist Sherman McCoy was a writer. It was in the heavily-revised hardcover edition of the novel, published in 1987, that Tom Wolfe changed the protagonist to a Wall Street trader. Hagan has gotten this detail wrong. Which makes one wonder how much else in Sticky Fingers he’s gotten wrong. 

The appearance of Hunter Thompson at Rolling Stone after the Altamont issue was another factor that took the paper to its success, and Hagan writes of the increasingly fractious relationship between Thompson and Wenner. But otherwise there isn’t much here about Hunter Thompson that’s revelatory; I mean he comes on strong, burns out quick, and is soon a shell of his former self. At least this is how he’s presented here; Hagan has it that none of Thompson’s work after the mid-‘70s is worth the paper it was printed on. We do at least get another dig at Joe Eszterhas here, this time from Eszterhas himself (who likely regretted talking to Hagan, given how Hagan made Eszterhas come off in the book), who claims he tried to emulate Hunter Thompson. This is clear just from reading Eszterhas’s pieces, in particular one of his last stories, the infamous “King Of The Goons” hit-piece on Evel Kneivel. 

There’s no denying Rolling Stone lost much of what made it special as the ‘70s wore on, and by the point in Haggan’s narrative where the magazine becane a slick and moved to New York my interest had waned – as had Joe Hagan’s. The ‘80s-‘00s are for the most part rushed through in a few hundred pages, or should I say I skimmed through a lot of it. I’ve never had time for Bruce Springsteen or Bono, and Jann Wenner was a big fan of both, hence there’s a lot of stuff about the two of them which I skipped. That said, the cover of “Blinded By The Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band is one of my favorite songs ever. I couldn’t care less what the Springsteen original sounds like.  Otherwise we just get a litany against Wenner for all the things Hagan accuses him of missing as the century neared its end...like his reluctance to feature rap in the magazine, or how he missed out on the importance of MTV.  Yawn. 

As mentioned as the book goes on the knives increasingly come out, and we get a lot of stuff about Jann Wenner lying to people, or enjoying the high life while his poor employees must scrimp and save, or how he’d take credit for articles others worked on. Again, yawn. (Which rhymes with “Jann!”) We also get too much on Wenner’s sex life, with the curious tidbit that it’s his affairs with men that Joe Hagan most focuses on. (Hmmmm….) On the female front it sounds like the guy did pretty good for himself – I was especially impressed by his involvement with none other than Mary Microgram of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test, a book I read 30 years ago and keep meaning to read again. Aka Denise Kaufman, she was also in the all-female group Ace Of Cups, which was a favorite of Jimi Hendrix. 

But the absolute nadir of Sticky Fingers is the Afterword, in which Joe Hagan essentially pats himself on the back for not turning in the hagiography Jann Wenner apparently expected. And how does Hagan know Wenner expected such a thing? Why – because Wenner would take Hagan to concerts! And Wenner gave him Rolling Stone merchandise…a-and he even gave him the complete mono vinyl set of the Beatles discography as gifts! And Wenner showed Hagan photos of rockstars from Wenner’s personal collection! I mean, the craven bastard!! No wonder Joe Hagan felt justified in sharpening his knives and cutting that fucker up good! Seriously though, this last part is just unbelievable in its lack of self-perception; totally unaware of the ill-will he is engendering in his reader, Hagan basically congratulates himself on the great job he’s done with this book – and he’s also eager to tell us how Jann Wenner stopped talking to him after Wenner read the manuscript, shortly before it went to press. For Hagan stipulated that Wenner would not be able to make any edits to the book – cue another round of self-congratulations for this incredibly wise decision. 

Ah, but if you thought the knives were out in Sticky Fingers, just check out this hit piece from the September 2023 Vanity Fair. So in September of 2023 Jann Wenner published a new book titled The Masters, focused on seven rockers who in Wenner’s estimation were “masters” of the art – and Wenner had the absolute fucking gall to only write about white men. The horror!! In an interview with the pathetic New York Times Wenner further stated that “performers of color” were outside his area of focus, and further – gasp! – he said that female performers weren’t articulte enough in the rock field, or somesuch. 

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the virtue-signalling world of modern journalism. Joe Hagan’s glee at finally getting to really dig into Jann Wenner is almost palpable in this Vanity Fair piece. 

The thing is…well, first of all, Jann Wenner has every right to say what he wants, and if I wore a hat I’d take it off for him, just for how he demonstrated the courage of his convictions. A rare sight indeed in today’s emasculated era. But Jann Wenner has the right to say what he wants because of the little fact that we live in the United States, and we have freedom of speech here. The PC Thugs of Hagan’s industry think they are arbiters of what is “permissible” speech. FUCK THEM. Jann Wenner is free to say whatever he wants, even if it ruffles feathers. If he is guilty of anything it is apologizing for his comments. Curiously, for a bunch of so-called “liberal” types who “just want to breathe,” these modern-day progressives are like sharks with blood in the water when they detect any weakness in their enemies. The woke battlefield is littered with the corpses of famous personalities who have said something “wrong,” apologized for it – and then been cancelled. Jann Wenner is just the latest example. If there is one lesson from any of this, it is never to apologize to the foaming-mouth radicals, and only to fight back. Sadly, only a very few understand this. Jann Wenner himself once understood this…like when he fired those in-house radicals in 1970. 

But the other thing is, Wenner really isn’t in bad company. I’m not sure if he’s been cancelled yet (which could be easy because he’s dead and not around to defend himself), but in 1948 the poet Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess put forward the notion that women could not be poets, that only men could truly write poetry; women, in Graves’s philosopy, were instead the muses who inspired poets. Thus in Graves’s estimation the only poets with a “voice” were men. This, essentially, is the same proposition Jann Wenner has put forward about rock music. And I can’t say I disagree with him. Obviously there are exceptions – glaring exceptions at that – but for the most part rock music is the product of white males. Sure, rock originated from rhythm and blues played by black musicians in the early 20th Century…just as much as it originated from the country music played by white musicians in that same era. But what it came to be – what most people think of when they think of “rock” – was mainly the work of white males in the 1960s and 1970s. Sort of like how Buddhism began in India…I mean, do you think of a person from India when you think of a Buddhist? 

And besides, all this race and gender identity politics bullshit is a modern obsession. Back in the glory days of rock, the musicians didn’t make a big deal out of being white, or being male, and nor did the listeners. Hell, if you listen to the Freeform Progressive Rock Radio of the era, you’ll notice that there was just as much soul and blues played as there was rock. But we live in an era of race obsession, no matter how absurd, thus Jann Wenner’s comments struck such a nerve. 

But then I could have just linked to Greil Marcus’s superbly-argued defense of Wenner.

Personally I think Wenner shouldn’t have backed down…and in fact his “faux pas” was another indication of how he has an innate sense of knowing the direction things are going. Fortunately, we are currently seeing pushback against race and identity-focused ideologies, particularly against companies that espouse these ideologies. As it turns out, most Americans don’t like being told how to think; Hagan’s industry is crumbling as a result of people cancelling their subscriptions to these woke propaganda outlets. In my mind, Jann Wenner’s only mistake was that he didn’t retain control of Rolling Stone and take the tone of the magazine into more of a populist direction. After all, the underground of today is the right. The left has become the establishment. In the ‘60s the FBI targeted hippies; today the FBI targets grandmothers who took selfies at the Capitol. And curiously a lot of those former hippies are now Trump supporters. Even I know a few people my age whose parents were hippies back in the ‘60s but who are now MAGA Republicans…and I hardly know anyone, so you have to wonder how many of them there really are out there. Rolling Stone, just as it had once before, could have become the voice of this new underground. 

If you think that sounds crazy, just remember that Donald Trump was himself once a Democrat. 

I bring up the dreaded topic of Trump because Joe Hagan himself does, in the closing pages of Sticky Fingers. We are told that Wenner was “interested” in Trump’s 2016 candidacy – cue more hue and cry from Hagan, who again displays his coastal ignorance by telling us that those dim-witted Trump supporters only vote for Trump because he’s famous. (FYI, they aren’t voting for him because he’s “famous.”) In Hagan’s mind, Donald Trump is the epitome of the fame-obsessed narcissism Jann Wenner has long been enamored with; there follows the most superficial appraisement of Trump that…well, it gives one an indication of why most Americans are so ill-informed, if they’re getting their “news” from people like this writer. 

This book upset me so much that I actually looked online for a way to contact Jann Wenner somehow, to let him know Sticky Fingers was just a stupid hatchet job and “nothing to get hung up about.” It’s just a vicious screed that ultimately makes the writer look like the bad guy, without showing any true understanding of its subject – again, the similarities to Goldman’s Lennon bio are many and profound. And no doubt the fates of both books will be similar. Hagan seems to have a premonition of how his own book will be treated by history: toward the end of Sticky Fingers he mentions how upset Jann Wenner was with Goldman’s The Lives Of John Lennon when it was published in 1988, commissioning a rebuttal in the pages of Rolling Stone…yet Hagan notes it was all for naught, as Goldman’s book was “destined to be forgotten.”  Surely the same fate has already befallen Sticky Fingers. 

My only regret in reviewing Sticky Fingers is that I’m giving the book any visibility. So I guess I read it so you don’t have to. But if you do get the urge to read it, try getting it from your library – or maybe order a cheap remaindered copy on abebooks.com. Checking there now, it seems there are a ton of such copies available for a pittance. Which is about all this “vile” book is worth.

Angel Dust

Angel Dust, by Lindsay Maracotta

January, 1979  Jove Books

Well friends, somehow I’ve managed to discover yet another obscure paperback original rock novel from the ‘70s. This one promised much, too, following the trash template of the era: a roman a clef about the famous personages of the era, opening in 1974 and then flashing back to 1964, detailing the torid year-by-year events of the age of rock. I mean I was in trash heaven when I saw that the back cover was like so many of the trashy bestseller paperbacks of the era, listing off the characters and noting their kinky proclivities.

But man, first of all, let’s take a look at this uncredited photo cover…and try to figure out what the hell is going on. So I get the guy with the guitar and microphone is supposed to be a rock star up on the stage, but what are the women doing below him? Are they in rock rapture, or are they bending their heads back in cultlike supplication? I guess both things are the same, but still. Then if you look at the back cover, you’ll note the cover is a wraparound, with more “bent back in supplication” heads below the rocker – but the perspective just seems off. Are these “bent heads” people standing or lying on the ground? 

This however isn’t even the big question. TAKE A LOOK AT THE ROCK STAR’S FACE. Here’s a closeup – don’t look if you don’t want nightmares! 

I think I speak for us all when I ask, “What the fuck??” I’ve spent altogether too much time trying to puzzle out what exactly this guy’s expression represents…this insane leering sneer. What is this, “Tim Curry as Mick Jagger?” I mean has the cover photographer ever seen a rock star? Or perhaps the goal here was to mimic (or mock) a shock rocker of the day, like Alice Cooper or something. The only problem is, there’s no shock rocker in Angel Dust, so perhaps this bizarre and lame (but for those very same reasons, friggin’ great) cover is why the book is so obscure. 

And speaking of which, the title of the book, “Angel Dust,” has nothing whatsoever to do with the contents of the novel. Perhaps it is a play on the underworld name for PCP, but if so that is not made clear in the narrative itself. While several characters do get hooked on drugs, it’s the same heroin and speed that is common in rock novels. Also, there’s a bit of a morality tale at play, as the drugs are part and parcel of the various downward spirals the large cast of characters go through as the sixties become the seventies. But then, another theme here is that essentially everyone involved in the rock biz is a self-involved narcissist hell-bent on destroying themselves. Well…so what if they are? I mean the last thing I want is a self-respecting and well-behaved rock star… 

No, the main issue with Angel Dust is that Lindsay Maracotta, to borrow a phrase Kirkus used in their review of contemporary rock novel Rising Higher, “hasn’t even bothered to be inventive” with her story. Basically Angel Dust takes all the topical points of ‘60s rock and filters them through a bland prism of characters who are analogs of real rockers. Bob Dylan going electric, Altamont, the Rolling Stones becoming increasingly “evil” and decadent, Yoko Ono and John Lennon breaking up The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix dying young…hell, even the Redlands bust: all of these and more are here in Angel Dust, only the, uh, names have been changed to protect the (not so) innocent. 

Not only that, but like so many of these contemporary rock novels – ie Triple Platinum, Rock & Roll Retreat Blues, or the aforementioned Rising Higher – actual rock stuff is scant at best. Indeed, the entire “rock” theme could be replaced by any other theme, and the essence of the novel would be the same. By which I mean, this could just as easily have been a novel about movie stars, or hell even opera singers or something. Angel Dust is more of a tepid soap opera than a “rock novel,” having even less to do with the business than those previously-mentioned books. Maracotta spends hardly any time at all on the creative process of the music, or the recording of the albums; other than a handful of too-brief scenes, we rarely see these famous rockers creating or performing. Rather, the focus is on their mundane soap operatic lives, with the caveat that the novel rarely attains the trashy level one might hope for. 

Not surprisingly, given that the author is a woman, the main characters are women, all of them analogs of real women in the rock scene. The male characters – ie the famous rock stars – mostly exist on the periphery, and come off as callous pricks. There’s even a Paul McCartney analog who is a self-involved cad who demands his women to be subservient. The Hendrix analog is a heroin junkie who constantly needs to be told how great he is and walks over women with scorn; a far cry from what the real Jimi Hendrix appeared to be like. To make things easier, I’ll just follow that back cover format and tell you who the characters of Angel Dust are clearly intended to be: 

Jim Destry: The “smouldering eyes” line on the back cover had me hoping Destry was going to be a Jim Morrison analog, as in the 1970 rock novel Cold Iron. But unfortunately, Destry is in fact…Bob Dylan. (Dylan, by the way, was the inspiration for a surprisingly sleazy paperback original in 1970, The Golden Groove.) 

Meredith Fairchild: This is the closest we get to a main character in Angel Dust. A beautiful American gal from a wealthy family who becomes a rock photographer and ultimately marries a member of the most famous rock group of the day, The Shades. Meredith Fairchild is, of course, Linda Eastman. 

Bryan Revere: The guy Meredith marries, the best-looking member of The Shades who all the girls go crazy for – Paul McCartney. 

Morgan Meeker: Lead singer of “the second best band in England,” the Marked Cards, Morgan is the stand-in for Mick Jagger. 

Christina de la Inglesia: This is the Bianca Perez-Mora Macias to Morgan Meeker’s Mick Jagger. 

Averill Sloane: This is the only original character in the novel, a manipulative mastermind in the mold of Jango Beck, from the contemporary rock novel Passing Through The Flame. 

Humorously, the back cover doesn’t even mention some of the more important characters in the novel. Here they are, as well as less-important characters who are based on famous rockers: 

Tom Sampling: This is the John Lennon analog, the lead singer of The Shades, who becomes increasingly gaunt and politically aware as the sixties progress. 

Monica Choy: The Yoko Ono to Tom Sampling’s John Lennon…only she’s Chinese! Otherwise this is Yoko in all but name, or at least the Yoko of the tabloids of the day – a self-involved social-climber with delusions of her own importance, who latches onto famous men. 

Lazarus “Laz” Allen: The Hendrix analog, but a far cry from the real thing; he barely appears in the novel. 

Bill McHale: Aka Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone; upstart publisher of rock magazine Tumbling Dice, though accused by his subordinates of being domineering and not possessing any writing talent of his own; he started the mag to be around rock royalty. 

Sabina: Foul-mouthed and fat-bottomed lead singer of The Psychedelic Invention, “the high priests of acid rock.” Aka Janis Joplin, who was the basis for a much superior rock novel also published in 1979, The Rose. 

Josie James: One of the more curious misses on the back cover, as Josie is a fairly important character, a Joni Mitchell-style folk singer who must sell her soul to become famous – and, this being a trash novel, can only find true happiness in the sack with other women. Her parts reminded me very much of another contemporary rock novel, The Scene. 

Sonny Lanahan: A hot-tempered businessman who fights Averill Sloane for control of various groups – no doubt supposed to be Allan Klein. 

So there are a lot of characters afoot, but Maracotta does a fairly good job juggling them. The only problem is Angel Dust is constructed a little strangely. It runs to 395 pages of small print, but Tom Sampling and Bryan Revere – ie the John and Paul analogs – aren’t introduced until page 295…and practically the rest of the novel revolves around them! What makes it worse is that the majority of this is just John-Paul rivalry stuff (the two aren’t introduced until 1969, long after their group, The Shades, has been a tight unit), with slightly more soapy recreations of the real-life fights between the two. Also, Angel Dust opens in 1974, giving the impression that all the “rock world” stuff was long in the past…but as the novel progresses, Maracotta takes us from 1964 to 1970, before finally returning to that opening 1974 sequence…meaning that the opening is really just four years later! 

The “1974” opening has Jim Destry about to make his long-awaited return concert in Madison Square Garden, and Meredith Fairchild has come here to relive “the old times” or whatever. We learn here she’s married to a “Bryan,” a guy who has a rivalry with a “Tom,” but it won’t be for like 290 pages until we even find out who these guys are. Meredith also runs into old friend Josie James, there to open for Destry and now an angry, hard-edged bitchy type, a far cry from the willowy and idealistic girl Meredith once knew… 

From there we flash back to 1964, and Maracotta actually spends most of the narrative here in the early days of the age of rock. But despite her Cliff’s Notes take on rock, Maracotta still pulls some anachronistic blunders…most particularly with Tumbling Dice magazine. A newspaper-style underground rag devoted to rock and the youth movement and what not, running out of San Francisco…four years before Rolling Stone. And hell, eight years before the Rolling Stones would even release the song “Tumbling Dice!” I mean this Bill McHale guy might’ve been a hack, but he sure did have a knack for seeing the future. 

One unique thing Maracotta brings to the tale is that this group of characters is essentially the main movers of rock; hardly any other musicians are mentioned, though in true roman a clef style we will have super-brief references to real groups, like the Beatles or the Stones or Dylan…or at one point even Rolling Stone is mentioned as a competitor magazine. But clearly this is an alternate reality where those groups are not nearly as famous as The Shades, Jim Destry, or the Marked Cards. Otherwise what Maracotta adds is they all have shared history, beginning in 1964: Jim Destry is in love with Josie James, two folkies in New York, and Chinese-American artist Monica Choy makes her way through basically all of the guys here, until finally scoring her biggest coup in Tom Sampling. But man, if you’ve ever wanted to read some Yoko Ono-Bob Dylan slash fiction, you’ll find it here in Angel Dust. 

Well, sort of. It’s my sad duty to report that the novel is incredibly timid in the sleaze and trash fronts. Most all of the sex occurs off-page and what we do get is tepid stuff along the lines of, “His strokes were quick and hard.” I mean, is this dude screwing or swimming? Also, what with Lindsay Maracotta being a woman and all, there’s zero in the way of the customary female exploitation one might demand from their trashy paperback cash-in fiction. But that’s another curious thing. A not-so-subtle theme at play here is that none of these studly rock gods can satisfy their women in bed! Not only that, but they’re all closet homosexuals; multiple times Bryan is accused of being in love with Tom, and vice versa. On the female front, all the women are latent lesbians; Meredith’s first time is with Morgan Meeker, the Jagger analog, and she finds herself unsatisfied afterward. Despite which, we get the unforgettable line, “Meredith felt a sharp pain as [Morgan] thrust deeper in her body, which increased as the full length of his cock penetrated her.” The Marked Cards, baby! Meredith with also be unsatisfied with Bryan Revere…her only true orgasm in the novel occurs in a lesbian fling in 1969 with Josie James. Hell, even Laz Allen can’t keep her happy – though as mentioned the Laz here is a cad. Jimi clearly made his way through a ton of women, but per the bios of him I’ve read he didn’t go out of his way to brag and boast about it, or flaunt it in the faces of other women. 

The unwieldy construction runs through the book; Meredith is mostly the main character, using her father’s connections to get a gig as a photographer for Tumbling Dice. She’s there for when Jim Destry is still unknown, getting some of his first pictures, and also some of the Marked Cards’s first show in the US. From there we hopscotch through the sixties, with Morgan and the Marked Cards becoming increasingly brutish and decadent, the drugs becoming increasingly commonplace, and an eventual spreading of malaise and boredom through the rock elite. Curiously, Woodstock is the one real-life incident Maracotta doesn’t rip off, though we do have a pseudo-Altamont in 1969…complete with Jim Destry appearing on stage with the Marked Cards. This, confusingly, will be the first of Destry’s two “return concerts,” this one being after a motorcycle crash he got into a few years before (humorously, right after being heckled onstage for coming out with an electric guitar, Maracotta getting double-bang for her real-life-ripoff buck); Destry’s second “return concert” is the opening one in 1974. 

I’m also sad to report that Lindsay Maracotta is another of those rock novelists who makes the curious decision to hardly ever describe the music. This is such a recurring failing of these novels that it almost makes me wonder if there was an unspoken agreement among all rock novelists in the ‘70s. Indeed, the characters here are rarely if ever shown on stage or in the studio; if they are, Maracotta will hurry through the proceedings and then get back to lots of soap opera-esque dialog. One gets the impression from Angel Dust that being “a famous rock star” entails nothing more than looking the part and doing the right drug; there’s no feeling that any of these characters are musicians capable of selling albums – other, that is, than the occasional bit of expositional dialog where characters will tell Meredith about recording or performing. 

Also, like Passing Through The Flame, midway through the novel becomes focused on the mercenary practices of the businessmen who plundered the rock world, “soiling” the art and whatnot…but again, none of these characters seem very artistic, not even Monica Choy, who is an artist. Otherwise the focus is on the increasing torpor and decadence of the rock world, with Morgan Meeker treating Meredith like shit and Meredith gradually becoming a “groupie” who sleeps her way through sundry rockers (all off page), before ending up with Bryan Revere in 1969. Her fling with Laz Allen is barely mentioned, other than a random bit where Laz screws Meredith in a New York City porno theater – one of the few scenes in the novel that does get fairly explicit. As for Morgan, his descent into sexual sadism is hard to understand, given that he starts the novel as a relatively cheery and thoughtful individual, but my assumption is Maracotta’s intent is that the mysterious death of a friend of his, midway through the novel, pushes him into the path – him and Christina, who also gets off on being beaten around during sex, thus becomes a perfect match for Morgan. Also special mention must be made of the arbitrary bit where Morgan breaks the neck of a pigeon before that Altamont analog concert. 

It's funny though how when the John and Paul stand-ins Tom and Bryan make their belated appearance, it’s like Angel Dust has been about nothing but them since the beginning. What I mean to say is, Destry, Morgan, Josie – all of these characters who were important for the past 290 pages are mostly brushed aside, and the stars of the show are now Bryan and Tom as they bicker and banter. It’s almost embarrassing how Maracotta just lifts real-life incidents without bothering to change them up at all, complete even with Monica bringing a mattress into the studio during the recording of a Shades album so she can be with Tom all the time – and also pushing him into more of a radical political direction. 

Monica is also of course duplicitous and vindictive; above I said that Bill McHale could see the future with Tumbling Dice. The same could be said of Lindsay Maracotta herself. In the 1969 section, Monica is getting her hooks in Tom, and has made herself a rival of Meredith, just as Tom is a rival of Bryan. To get revenge on Bryan and Meredith for the latest bantering session, Monica calls in an anonymous tip to the cops that they’ll find a lot of marijuana at a certain residence – the same residence Bryan and Meredith happen to be renting here in England. In the ensuing bust Bryan is arrested and spends time in jail. Angel Dust was published in January 1979…and exactly one year later Yoko Ono, according to Albert Goldman and Frederic Seaman, called in a tip to some friends in Japan to bust Paul and Linda as they arrived in Tokyo, all because the two threatened to ruin John and Yoko’s “hotel karma” by staying at their favorite Tokyo hotel. Now, who knows if this is what really happened; what’s incredible is that Lindsay Maracotta has here predicted something that mirrors what would become a real-life incident. I mean, imagine if John and Yoko got the “let’s get Paul busted” idea from this very novel! 

The narrative gets more interesting, and more sordid, as the sixties progress. The Redlands bust analog is one of the first instances of this sordid nature, with Maracotta again mixing and matching her Rock Babylon material; whereas it was just the Stones in the Redlands caper, here it’s the Stones analogs the Marked Cards, along with Josie James (the Joni Mitchell analog) and Sabina (the Janis Joplin analog). But we even get the infamous “candy bar” bit, but here it’s an acid-soaring Josie who has a candy bar inserted into her nether regions and the Marked Cards take turns taking bites from it – humorous stuff here with one of the Cards being a closeted gay and disgusted by the whole thing, but going along with it. Curiously, a character Maracotta doesn’t even return to in the novel; only her penchant for perspective-hopping even lets us know who this guy is. 

The Altamont analog isn’t a match for its real-world counterpart, though Maracotta tries to amp it up by having one of the characters shot while on stage…sort of a prefigure of The Armageddon Rag. From there we are thrust back into the opening 1974 section, where we learn that Morgan is truly into his decadent trip, having a three-way with wife Christina and a “glitter rock” star clearly modelled on David Bowie. But curiously even this framework section doesn’t work, because Angel Dust opens and closes on a section titled “1974,” yet a few pages toward the end we’re told it’s 1975! Oh and also, this novel features an insane finale that’s reminiscent of Once Is Not Enough in how it seems to come from a different novel. Since Angel Dust is so obscure and scarce, I’ll describe it, but skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. Basically, Meredith accuses Bryan of wanting to fuck Tom and Bryan storms off in a rage. Meredith, losing her mind, takes a ton of drugs and gives her toddler daughter a sleeping pill (Maracotta intentionally leaves the child’s fate vague). Then Meredith, totally insane now, gets in her car and roars off into the night on what is clearly a death trip – truly a WTF? type of bitch-slap finale. 

But man, if only the entire novel matched the sheer bitch-slappery of that finale. Instead, Angel Dust is strangely dull and lifeless, despite being a sort of “greatest hits” of various ‘60s rock-world hijinks. The characters don’t seem real and are pale reflections of their real-world inspirations. And there is zero feeling for the time and the place; essentially Angel Dust is a “rock novel” for people who are only vaguely aware of rock music. As I said above, the characters here could just as easily have been actors or models or whatever, and the story wouldn’t have been much changed – the focus is on soap opera dynamics between the various characters, nothing more. Still, I was super happy to discover the book – I’m always excited when I discover a new rock novel paperback original – so I can’t complain too much.

Altamont

Altamont, edited by Jonathan Eisen

July, 1970  Avon Books

Jonathan Eisen published a trio of rock books in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: The Age Of Rock and The Age Of Rock II, and finally Twenty-Minute Fandangos And Forever Changes. I have all three of them and keep meaning to read them; they’re very long anthologies of rock journalism by various authors. The first one seems to be mostly taken from magazines, but the last two are all new material, and both feature great, super-weird essays by future Blue Oyster Cult lyricsist Sandy Pearlman. These three books are fairly easy to find, however this fourth anthology of Eisen’s, Altamont, is quite rare and overpriced. Luckily I was able to get a copy from Interlibrary Loan, which was pretty surprising given that the book was a paperback original. 

As with the three rock books mentioned above, Altamont only features an Introduction by Eisen, after which the articles are all contributed by various rock writers. The range is much more narrow than the other three anthologies though, limited mostly to various indictments against the infamous Altamont debacle, that December 1969 single-day festival where Hell’s Angels ran roughshod over the cowed hippie audience, where four people lost their lives (one killed near the stage, two run over, and one drowned). In fact the indictments run so thick and constant that by the end of the book I almost felt like that lame old joke, “Yes, Mrs, Lincoln – but how was the play?” Because honestly you don’t get much about any of the actual music that day, it’s just all about the horrific conditions, with Hell’s Angels beating people to pulp, an obese naked man running around, and the Stones in general and Mick Jagger in particular being blamed for just about everything bad. 

Altamont features unusual packaging, sort of along the lines of a few other paperbacks of the era: The Making Of Kubrick’s 2001 and Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book!; like them it’s stuffed to the gills with black and white photos. It also has some very large print; it runs to 271 pages, but you could read this thing in a few hours. Curiously only a few photos are used, but there’s a lot of repetition of them throughout the text. Overall it seems to me that Avon was trying to make the book an art piece along the lines of the Kubrick paperback. Or perhaps they feared their target audience would be put off by too many words and stuff. This runs counter to the three rock books Eisen also edited at the time; some of the collected pieces in those run to inordinate lengths and come off like doctoral theses on rock. None of that is to be found here, though, with all the contributors sticking to a more grounded approach to the Altamont debacle. However it would’ve been nice if there had been some discussion of the music that was to be heard that day. 

Eisen’s intro gives a bit of historical background on the “tribal gatherings” that began in the late ‘60s, culminating of course in Woodstock, and how Altamont was the dark reflection of it. Or the “counter-Woodstock,” as the first page of the book puts it. Eisen at times approaches the “egghead rock journalism” vibe of his other three rock anthologies: “Nevertheless the outlaw cult, while potentially revolutionary, has reached the point where it is helping sunder the national fabric, but in potentially destructive, privatistic directions rather than in ways that can help accommodate new and more humane ways of organizing itself socially.” Yeah, but what about the music, man? Sadly there isn’t much about it. Indeed, “Altamont was nothing in itself. It was not very special except to make people realize how similar we all are to the society we have no choice but to abhor.” This is just a taste of the America bashing we’ll endure in Altamont, but then Eisen’s entire work here is thrown into question on page 22, when we encounter the line: “…the gigantic and insatiable ego of Mick Jaggar[sp].” 

Of course, Jagger’s name is spelled correctly from then on out, but that sole gaffe is enough to make one wonder why the hell he’s even bothering to read the book. (And to be fair, some copy editor at Avon could’ve made the flub.) And also, I want my rock stars to have gigantic and insatiable egos! Eisen though is part of that Jon Landau school of rock criticism where he thinks every rocker should be some hardscrabble man of the people who speaks from his heart and other such bullshit. To hell with that – I want ‘em loaded to the gills on drugs and self-importance. At any rate, the “insatiable ego” dig on Jagger is due to the long-held conviction that murder at Altamont only occurred because Jagger “insisted” that the group not take the stage until nightfall. It wasn’t until the ‘80s that it was revealed, by journalist Stanley Booth, that the Stones came on late because they were waiting for Bill Wyman to arrive. 

Speaking of the murder, it was of a young black man named Meredith Hunter who was stabbed by a Hell’s Angel mere feet away from the Stones as they were performing on stage. There is inconsistency in the book, though, because Eisen in his intro states that Hunter “may or may not have” been pointing a pistol at Jagger when the Angels swooped in on him; the Angels long argued that they’d saved Jagger’s life. Later in the book, though, a study of the Altamont documentary reveals that frame-by-frame analysis of the fated moment “clearly” shows a pistol in Hunter’s hand. That would seem to render Eisen’s “may or may not have” statement a bit moot. The whole affair still seems to be shrouded in mystery; by the by, Sandy Pearlman in Twenty Minute Fandangos delivered a super-long (and super weird) essay titled “Excerpts From The History Of Los Angeles, 1965 – 1969,” apparently the work in progress of a book he never completed, which went into a “conspiracy theory” about the murder at Altamont. 

The first actual piece in the book is pure self-involved late ‘60s Woodstock Age: a poem, with lines line “But Babylon opens/To sweet lies.” It’s titled “Altamont Premonition” and it’s by George Paul Csicsery, who per the credits “writes for west coast publications” and was “one of the most beautiful people [Eisen] met” when he was putting together the book. Okay… Much better is the following piece, “Satan and the Angels: Paradise Loused,” by Andy Gordon. This is one of the best parts of the book, as it’s a long memoir about attending Altamont and so provides a lot more context than the other essays. Per the credits this is an “original piece” for the book; Gordon was a graduate student, and he well captures the nightmarish vibe of Altamont, with the mounting madness of the Angels and the increasingly dire situations. Yet he too has little to say about the music, ultimately ducking out of the concert when he sees an open spot in the massive crowd around him while the Stones are performing: “I drove home the same way I came – alone.” 

“Bye-bye Sweet Brian, So Long Mick,” by Robert Somma is humorous in that the entire thing is a bitch session. Somma literally bitches about everything in 1969, “a very bad year,” in particular the albums that came out. This is of course hilarious given the quality of music released in 1969…here we are over fifty years later and people are still listening to it! Good grief, Somma even complains about “the second Rolling Stones compilation,” saying it’s not as good as the first one was; he’s clearly talking about Through The Past, Darkly, which contained songs like “Paint It Black” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “2000 Light Years From Home.” Yeah, that one really sucked, man! According to the credits Somma was an editor of some magazine called Fusion; his diatribe becomes tiresome (expectedly doling out the usual political complaints as well), but he did make me chuckle with his off-hand dismissal of The Who’s Tommy: “a not-quite-first-rate hyrbrid essay on what it’s like being Peter Townshend.” 

As mentioned we get a few interviews, including a seemingly endless one with Sonny Barger, head of the San Francisco Hell’s Angels. It’s conducted with KSAN, one of the more famous progressive freeform FM stations of the day, but the names of the KSAN jocks doing the interview aren’t stated. It’s presented as a transcript, and humorously one of the KSAN jocks is refered to as “KSAN (Girl).” Barger insists his Angels were just doing the job they were hired to do and also takes a moment to rake Jagger over the coals, something that’s done in practically every article in the book. My favorite part of this one was how the KSAN “Girl” kept trying to ask Barger a question but he just kept talking over her. Otherwise it just goes on and on. Better yet is “The Terror Beyond Death,” by Lar Tusb, a pseudonym of Richard Meltzer (per the credits at the end of the book). This is a satirical piece that puts a darkly humorous spin on the Altamont debacle, complete with b.s. quotes from fictitious characters. Too bad the rest of the book didn’t follow the vibe of this one. 

“Parallel And Paradigm” sort of follows the same lines, but is a little more reserved in the satirical department. This one’s by Bobby Abrams, apparently another Fusion writer, and he gives us a rundown of the big events of the ‘60s, leading into a dissertation on the Stones and Altamont. Per the credits he’s got another piece on the Stones in The Age Of Rock II, which I got years ago but still haven’t completely read. (I mostly got it for the Pearlman stuff.) George Paul Csicery returns with a sort of diatribe titled “The Sound Of Marching People.” This proto-The Greening Of America comes off like a lecture as Csicery goes on about anarchy, the government, the environment, and the like…with not one word about the Stones or Altamont. 

Ralph Gleason, famous critic of the day and author of The Jefferson Airplane And The San Francisco Sound, provides a short narration of his experience at Altamont which practically drips with venom. His anger at Jagger is especially pronounced. As if that weren’t enough, we get more anger courtesy an interview that’s conducted with Gleason later in the book. “Mick Jagger is a revolutionary – bullshit! He’s a rich man...I dig his performance, and I dig his music, and I like the album, but that’s all going to be forgotten; I’m the enemy of the Rolling Stones.” Curiously this gradually leads into Gleason’s pronouncement that “God is dead.” And also that Altamont was “Jagger’s super ego trip.” Also curious that none of the other Stones are ever much mentioned…I think there’s like one or two references to Ketih Richards in the entire book. 

There are a few more pieces here, like another first-hand recollection by “Detroit Annie” (who goes unmentioned in the credits), but overall Altamont comes off more like a quick cash-in on “The Forgotten Festival.” I really didn’t learn much from it at all; much more informative was Robert Santelli’s Aquarius Rising, which incidentally listed Eisen’s book in the bibliography. Altamont fails to live up to the “multiple views” promised on the cover, mostly because every single view collected here is the same. Ironically it’s now this book that is forgotten, not Altamont, which has become a buzzword to describe the death of the Woodstock Nation dream (ie “post-Altamont”).

The Rolling Stone Rock 'N' Roll Reader

The Rolling Stone Rock 'N' Roll Reader, Edited By Ben Fong-Torres

February, 1974  Bantam Books

This doorstop of a paperback is almost like an archive of some forever lost time. Consisting of about a gazillion articles taken from 1967 – 1972 issues of Rolling Stone Magazine, The Rolling Stone Rock ‘N’ Roll Reader delivers an engaging view of the rock era, jumping from one section to the next and offering great writing throughout. I’m not sure how remembered he is today, but editor Ben Fong-Torres was a well-known, guiding presence in the early days of the magazine; he even made a cameo appearance in the cocaine fantasy that was the Tenth Anniversary TV special (he’s the dude in the opening scene who asks “Jann” to approve the galleys for his “Kiss story”). 

First of all, this is not to be confused with The Rolling Stone Reader, which Warner Paperback Library published in 1974; that one was courtesy “the editors of Rolling Stone” and featured articles that weren’t focused on rock music. This book however is completely focused on the magazine’s rock features, articles, and news items, and if you want a bird’s eye view of the rock scene as it was happening, you couldn’t do much worse. Fong-Torres has picked some great articles that are very respective of Rolling Stone’s early days, ultimately delivering pretty much the same vibe as the somewhat earlier anthology Smokestack El Ropo’s Bedside Reader. There’s no true “theme” to the collection, either; you might get a few pieces on John Lennon, or a brief section on the Rolling Stones 1969 tour of America, but really it’s just all over the place…sort of like an issue of the magazine, which no doubt was the point. Unlike the original articles, though, there are no photos or illustrations; we’re talking 783 whopping pages of small, dense print and nothing else. 

Fong-Torres delivers a rather short intro in which he states that this is not a “greatest hits” of the magazine, but rather “a lot of good shit.” He could’ve worked a little more on the opening sequence of pieces, though, as the Reader gets off to a rather haphazard start. I mean the first piece is on Joan Baez. And from there, arbitrarily enough, to a nice essay by Ralph Gleason on The Band performing at Winterland. Then we get into some heavy Beatles material; this is the one section that really is pretty theme-centric, and it covers the gamut from news pieces on the opening of the band’s Apple store in London to their final days together. There’s a lot on Get Back, later to be known as Let It Be, complete with even a review of the documentary film. 

Throughout the focus is really on John Lennon; we get several pieces on his various bed-ins, as well as a few interviews. It’s also interesting to see how news of the impending Beatles split slowly came to press; early articles have one or other Beatle denying any rumors of breakup, then later the same Beatle will announce they’ve broken up. We don’t get into any of their solo careers, though; if I’m not mistaken, if you want the Rolling Stone take on that, you’ll find it in a super-long essay in The Rolling Stone Record Review Volume II (Pocket, 1974), which goes over the state of all the solo Beatle LPs of the early ‘70s. 

After this though it’s back into the haphazard selection; we get a few pieces on the Rolling Stones, like Jann Wenner’s laudatory review of Beggars Banquet (during which he spends most of the time bitching about Their Satanic Majesties Request, which by the way I love to death). This is followed randomly enough by a piece on Johnny Cash and then an interview with Captain Beefheart. Before we know it we are reading a couple pieces on the Gram Parsons-era Byrds, then back to Johnny Cash and over to Joe Cocker! But to tell the truth none of these really appealed to me. Much better was the material on Cream, which follows the Beatles breakup material earlier in the book with one member flatly denying the breakup rumors in one piece, only for the breakup to be confirmed in the next. This portion closes out with an interesting interview with Eric Clapton, where he keeps dissing the Blind Faith album, which is another one I like…even the nigh-endless closing track with its Ginger Baker drum solo. 

One thing I enjoy about these early Rolling Stone writers is you could tell that sci-fi was never far from their minds…the review of the Let It Be Twickenham studios footage says that it’s like the Beatles are “in the land of Silver Surfer,” given the different colored auras that surround them in the studio on film. And later the Cream piece mentions the “banks of amplifiers” behind the group on stage, the red lights of which are like “science-fiction backing” for Cream’s loud “hairy Satanic” music. Another thing I appreciate is that everything’s on the level; there’s no snark or cynicism. The writers may have problems with a certain group’s album or particular concert performance, but there’s never any overt attempt to knock anyone down, and the enthusiasm all the writers have for the subject is very clear. 

The few short pieces on Crosby, Stills, and Nash are also interesting; the first one’s right before the release of their first album, and the second one’s from the release of their second, with Neil Young. And hey, how about an interview with Donovan? You’ll find that here. Surprisingly there isn’t too much on what I’ve always considered one of the greatest ever American rock groups: The Doors. But then they were an LA band and Rolling Stone in its early days was pretty snobbish toward any Californian rock group that wasn’t from San Francisco; in fact I’ve read this is why Spirit was never much covered in the magazine, as they too were based out of Los Angeles. At any rate the Doors material is paltry, and the majority of it concerns the infamous “dick flashing” incident in Florida which threatened to send Jimbo to the slammer. Curiously his death is not mentioned in any of the collected articles. 

Speaking of material I skimmed – I didn’t read any of the Bob Dylan section. I’ve just never got into his music, sad to report. But it might happen someday. The section on Jimi Hendrix is almost as paltry as the Doors material; Rolling Stone also never seemed to care much for Jimi, either. We do get a great profile piece courtesy Sheila Weller, who had some similarly-great pieces in Smokestack El Ropo’s Bedside Reader, but after that it’s straight into the sad reports on Jimi’s death, followed by a belated appreciation of his work once he was gone. Curiously the material on Janis Joplin’s death dwarfs the material on Jimi – but again, she was another rocker based out of San Francisco, so the magazine was just staying true to its snobbery. The Joplin material is almost overwhelming, with material from when she was still alive to overly-comprehensive reactions to her death, complete even with the scene on the ground in SanFran the night her death was announced. 

One of the people contacted here is Grace Slick, who doesn’t have much to say about Janis being gone…Slick’s basically like, “she’s dead, so let’s get on with our own lives.” Speaking of Grace Slick, the Jefferson Airplane section is pretty cool, and again more comprehensive than others given that they were another San Francisco group. We get a few pieces on the Airplane’s psychedelic masterpiece After Bathing At Baxter’s, as well as a later piece in which they can’t figure out what to name the album that would become Volunteers. Ralph Gleason provides another cool concert review, taking us through a 1970 show at Winterland, complete with a set from the Grateful Dead – who also have their own little section, but that’s another I skimmed. Can’t get into their music either, and I’ve really tried! 

Since I’m confessing, I also skipped over the section on “those oldies but goodies,” aka Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis and whatnot. I was much more interested in the later section on the Rolling Stones, which was mostly composed of reviews of their 1969 tour, which of course culminated at Altamont – which isn’t much discussed in the Reader. Rather, Fong-Torres sticks with a positive view of the tour, starting off with a great review from Greil Marcus, then moving into a longer piece that looks at the first four shows. We get to Altamont in the piece on the documentary Gimme Shelter, and here we learn the interesting revelations that no one at the time realized a man was being murdered right in front of the stage; Jagger says he had no idea, and even the cameramen are quoted as saying they just thought they were filming someone being pushed around. 

The section on “Festivals” is pretty cool, and gives the personal touch that was so missing from Robert Santelli’s later Aquarius Rising. Woodstock ins’t much discussed, but we do get a seemingly-endless piece on the Toronto Peace Festival and what “went wrong” with it (spoiler alert: lots of greed). If this festival is remembered at all today it’s for the appearance of Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, their set later released as Live Peace In Toronto. This article is overlong but filled with that awesome late ‘60s vibe, like weird stuff about plans for an “air car” that would be powered by Lennon’s aura or somesuch. We also have Lennon chortling that the Plastic Ono Band was so incredible that following act The Doors insisted on waiting 45 minutes to go on stage. Maybe they were just waiting for their eardrums to heal after the Yoko caterwauling and feebdack frenzy that ended the Plastic Ono Band’s set. 

Even cooler is the following piece, on the “Million Dollar Bash.” This one focuses on the new-to-me “Festival Express,” which is one of the more forgotten festivals of today. It took place in Canada over the last week of June, 1970, and featured Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Band, and various other country-esque bands (save for Mountain); they all boarded an express train, complete with sleeping cars, and ventured across Canada, stopping to play festivals. This was probably the most entertaining piece in the book, with the author capturing all the moments the various rock stars would sit around on the train and jam. One thing not mentioned here is that the Festival Express was such a bomb that there not only wasn’t another one, but the filmed footage was locked away for decades, only released in 2003 (and boy I’d love to see the movie). 

Fong-Torres was an FM rock deejay in addition to an editor at Rolling Stone, so he also includes a few pieces on what was then known as “freeform progressive” radio. There’s a cool article by legendary deejay Tom Donahue, one which practically drips with venom towards the bland approach of mainstream AM pap. Fong-Torres then incldues a few of his own pieces, both of which come off a little too dry and go into the behind-the-scenes squabbling at various freeform stations, all of which were under the threat of “selling out.” Fong-Torres also has a bone to pick with the syndicated “Brother Love” package shipped out to some stations, a sort of plastic fantastic take on true freeform; curiously Fong-Torres does not include a later piece of his own in which Brother Love’s firing was discussed. (I only know of this later piece due to having come across it in the Rolling Stone Cover To Cover CD-Rom archive.) 

Speaking of selling out, we next have some pieces – some of them again by Gleason – on how you could try to break into the rock world by writing songs…in 1967, at least. From there into more business: the financial impact of bootleg LPs. Then we have a mere two pieces on The Who, but the second of them’s pretty cool in that it’s a study of Tommy, complete with Pete Townshend’s typically-eggheaded explanations on which each of the songs mean. Yes of course, McLuhan is mentioned throughout. I mean it wouldn’t be a late ‘60s interview with Pete Townshend if he wasn’t. I had Tommy on cassette tape in the early ‘90s and I’m telling you, it was my favorite album ever when I was 15. Today though if I’m going to listen to the Who it’s going to be Live At Leeds. 

And friends that’s pretty much it – we’re actually in the very last pages of the book. A piece (which I skipped) on Hank Williams, and then the final article in the anthology: an interview with Neil Young. This one I found super cool, as it’s from right when he joined CSN and before the release of Déjà Vu. Young spends a lot of time discussing overdubbing and remastering, to the point that it almost sounds like something you’d read today over at the Steve Hoffman music forum. Young in particular rails against the originally-released mix of his first, self-titled album, saying how a “remastered” version was being re-released. I’ve heard both versions and I kind of like the original mix, though it’s almost impossible to find these days. It’s also cool because you can see here, even though he was only 24, Neil Young already knew the course his solo career would take – he says he has no interest in overproduced, overdubbed albums, a la his first one, in which you could spend months on just one song; he much prefers the live vibe you get playing with a group. 

And with that – not even an afterword! – The Rolling Stone Rock ‘N’ Roll Reader comes to a close. A seemingly abrupt close, which is especially surprising given that it’s nearly 800 pages long. But man, I really enjoyed it. Sure, I have all the original issues, at least in digital form, in the Cover To Cover CD-Rom, but there’s just something undeniably cool about this paperback collection. I could just see countless mid-‘70s hippies lighting up some “good shit” and perusing the pages. It looks like the book is becoming increasingly collectable, though, so if you want a copy I’d advise you to seek one out soon before the prices get too stupid.

Aquarius Rising

Aquarius Rising, by Robert Santelli

August, 1980  Dell Books

This is sort of the nonfiction equivalent of The Rock Nations in that it’s an overview of the rock festivals that occurred across America in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But unlike that earlier novel, Aquarius Rising goes further into the ‘70s, author Robert Santelli documenting how the rock festival concept was basically dead by the end of the “Me Decade.” Santelli also seems to have a clear appreciation for rock music, something you couldn’t really say about the narrator of The Rock Nations, and also he keeps his opinions to himself – though I have to admit I would’ve preferred a bit more color commentary. 

Indeed, Santelli goes for a dry, almost textbook format for the book, whereas the material calls for a bit more personality. You don’t even get the impression Santelli’s been to any of the festivals, as he never mentions himself in any of the sections. This is all well and good if you want to read about the facts and less about some guy’s recollections of them, but still, an “I was there” viewpoint for the Woodstock material in particular would’ve been welcomed. The strange thing is, at least judging from a few of the photo credits herein, Santelli was there…he just doesn’t tell us he was. This is a curious omission, and I can only assume Santelli was going for more of a “just the facts” approach. 

Santelli opens the book with a quick preface in which he states the goal of the book is to document the rock festivals of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and how they were more than just rock concerts for those who attended them – that they were thriving communities in which young people communicated with like-minded heads. The other goal is to show how corruption gradually set in post Woodstock, with the ultimate outcome that by the late ‘70s the rock festivals of a decade before – three-day affairs in which people stayed on the site for the duration – were basically dead and gone, replaced by one-day concerts that lacked any of the community experience of the earlier fests. Also, and Santelli doesn’t broach this as much, but by the late ‘70s the music sucked, too. I mean I could see standing in the rain and mud for three days to see Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, and maybe even Janis Joplin, but Aerosmith or Rush? I think I’d stand in the rain and mud not to see them. 

Another curious thing about Aquarius Rising is that Santelli writes about the great rock festivals as if they were long ago, whereas in reality Woodstock was only eleven years before the book was published. In many ways the tone of the book is akin to one that would be written today, over fifty years after Woodstock; there is a wistful tone to Santelli’s narrative of a time lost, never to be regained. Again, it lacks the immediacy of an on-the-ground sort of report; I know there are multiple Woodstock books out there, but I’ve never read any of them. I could imagine the majority of them give more immediacy to the reporting than Santelli does here. And not to beat a dead horse, but if Santelli really was at some of these festivals – he’s got photo credit for both Woodstock shots and Altamont shots – you would expect a slightly less reserved perspective. 

The book opens with a look at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967, which is generally considered the first major rock festival, setting the template that others followed. It was also the intro of many acts who would play at other major festivals, like Hendrix and Joplin. Santelli documents how the festival was created and set up, dropping some notes I’d not seen before, like how Monterey was one of the only festivals with assigned seating. We learn in this first chapter another important element of Aquarius Rising; Santelli won’t be telling us much about the music, either. Very rarely do we get any sort of description of the sound of these various groups; if anything it will just be sweeping statements about their overall contributions. 

In addition to some detail on Ravi Shankar’s three-hour performance (in which he advised everyone to sit still and keep quiet!), we get a little more color on the two most remembered events of Monterey: Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix’s respective debuts. There’s also some detail on the Who’s destructive set. The Jimi stuff is cool, but not a patch on the Monterey material in Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child Of The Aquarian Age, but then Santelli’s m.o. here as stated is more of a dry overview. Actually I know I wrote this above, but “textbook” really sums it up – I mean this bit on Steve Miller reads like it could’ve come out of a high school Social Studies textbook: 

Miller became a near-legend in San Francisco rock circles. His albums, Children Of The Future and Sailor, both released in 1968, are still considered classic psychedelic albums. But while other San Francisco bands were crisscrossing the country in the late sixties and early seventies, Miller slowly faded from the picture. It wasn’t until 1973 that he resurrected himself with The Joker. The album contained the smash hit single by the same name and helped introduce Miller to the Top 40 AM radio audience. He’s been a superstar ever since. 

Monterey Pop was also a trendsetter in how it proved to be a one-off; once the festival promoters had their fun, politics set in like a rot and another festival was prevented due to legal wrangling, public hue and cry, and the like. In fact the festivals for 1968 were pretty understated, and Santelli only sheds a little light on them. The Miami Pop in December 1968 sounded pretty cool, with unusual acts like Procol Harum and Iron Butterfly (who were supposed to play at Woodstock but couldn’t get there due to traffic – something Santelli doesn’t mention in this book, but which I knew from James Kunstler’s novel The Life Of Byron Jaynes). There was also the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, which was noted for featuring The Doors, an atypical presence at rock festivals. The Sky River Rock Festival in Washington was another trendsetter: gatecrashers led to such a violent scene that cops descended on them with billy clubs smashing hippie faces. Santelli sees in this a prefigure of the later Altamont debacle. 

1969 of course was the pinnacle year of rock festivals, and of course Santelli spends the most time looking at the most famous rockfest of all: Woodstock. We get a lot more detail here, from the origins of the festival to the setting up of the site. Again, some personal commentary would’ve been welcomed, but Santelli does a good – if overly dry – job of describing the hellish conditions…and how these conditions made such little impact on the good vibes of the massive crowd. For that matter, here’s another thing I learned from Aquarius Rising: previous to this I was really only aware of Jimi Hendrix’s set at Woodstock, having picked up the CD released in 1994 when I was in college. What I didn’t know is that Jimi only played to a fraction of the audience; some 400,000 people attended Woodstock, but most of them finally had enough of the constantly pouring rain and hit the road on Sunday morning…right before Jimi started to play. So he only played for like 25,000 people. I mean come on, hippies! Leave during Sha Na Na’s set, not Jimi Hendrix’s! 

Santelli doesn’t give as detailed a look at the performers, but he does provide a list of the pay each act received. Hendrix was contracted for the highest amount ($18,000), with an obscure band named Quill getting just $375 for their set. They were so obscure that I don’t think their set was even filmed, though bootleg audio exists. What Santelli really brings to the fore is how the media made Woodstock sound like a disaster waiting to happen…which it in fact was. Constant rain and trampling feet exposed some power lines, for example, threatening to electrocute a couple thousand long-haired freaks. There were also the downed communication lines, backed-up portapotties, the infamous brown acid (“It’s not poison. It’s just bad acid!”), and etc. 

While Santelli’s account is a little dry, it did provoke me to do something I’d never considered doing before: watch the 1970 Woodstock film. Santelli’s description of it, with the split screens and other filmic effects, got me interested in it, and I’m about halfway through viewing it, though I could only find the 3+ hour Director’s Cut. It seems that the original theatrical release, which Santelli discusses in the book (the Director’s Cut not existing until 1989), is now almost impossible to find. I couldn’t find it, at least, and I can usually find just about anything after some thorough web searching. Santelli presents Woodstock as the apotheosis of the youth movement, the hundreds of thousands of kids congregating peacefully in their own little republic. Unfortunately it was all downhill after that. 

In fact, the post-Woodstock festivals are progressively hellish, with Altamont not even the most violent, though it’s the most often namechecked. Thus Altamont gets nearly as much focus as Woodstock. I’d never realized how poorly planned this thing was; it was a disaster waiting to happen. Santelli opens with the well-documented moment in which a young black man was knifed to death by Hell’s Angels, right in front of the stage on which the Rolling Stones were performing. Santelli well captures the desperate plight of the Stones, who realized their “only choice” was to continue playing, else chaos would descend on the Altamont Raceway. From there Santelli jumps back to how this festival had the most hazy of planning, the Stones only vaguely giving their approval of it…and then the site being decided upon a mere twenty-four hours before the scheduled show. Laborers only had a day to set up the stage, the scaffolding, etc, thus there wasn’t even a bare minimum of safety checks in place…and 300,000 rabid kids showed up. 

Speaking of which, Santelli brings up something here few other Altamont chroniclers have; that the wanton rampage of the Hell’s Angels was just as much the fault of the cowed audience. As Santelli argues, there were only 200 Angels, yet they were “the masters,” smashing hippie heads and even knocking out Marty Balin of the Airplane – the only person, Santelli states, who stood up to the Angels that day. And yet there were like over 300,000 people in the audience. They could’ve easily swarmed upon the Angels and brought them to bear, yet they never did. All it would’ve taken was say for Jagger to call for their aid in the mike – this by the way is not something Santelli opines, though. He just says the fans themselves should’ve come to this conclusion. Santelli does bring up another salient point, that the stage was so important to the Woodstock community, with frequent updates to the throngs of what was going on, what to look out for, etc. But at Altamont, the stage was to be avoided – the only thing up there was a pack of Angels who would beat you bloody if you tried to climb up. 

Santelli also presents the Stones as “partly to blame” for the chaos and loss of life, but he also repeats the oft-stated fallacy that they purposely came onto the stage after dark, to be at their most evil. As it turns out, the Stones performed late for two reasons – the Grateful Dead chickened out of their set and didn’t play, and also Bill Wyman flew in by separate helicopter and was delayed, thus the rest of the band had to wait for him. But likely Santelli wasn’t privy to this info in 1980; as I understand, it was revealed in Stanley Booth’s The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones, which was published in 1984. Santelli does make clear that the Stones played a great show, with some critics opining that it was indeed the best show they’d ever done. 

As mentioned, after this things become almost ridiculously more hellish; there’s Powder Ridge, the festival that never was due to local law shutting down the concert and threatening legal action against any act that played there; it pretty much became a drug bazaar. Another encroaching element that spelled doom for many festivals was politics; leftist radicals tried repeatedly to ingratiate themselves into the planning stages, “demanding” that promoters include shoutouts for various leftwing causes in the shows and to fork over earnings to support those same causes. Many would threaten dire repercussions if their demands weren’t met, and ultimately promoters would either cut ties with them or simply just cancel the festivals. (There may be a lesson here.) Of course Pete Townshend summed it all up the best when he knocked leftist rabble-rouser Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock, an incident Santelli documents here. 

As more and more festivals faced various setbacks, promoters tried novel approaches, like single-day festivals featuring nigh-endless performances from just a few artists; sorry, but three hours of the Allman Brothers just doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. Then there was the uneventful festival in Puerto Rico, Mar Y Sol, held there to get around the increasingly-stifling US laws…and the locals quickly showed skill in fleecing the naïve American hippies who descended on their town (ie twenty bucks for a drive to the festival site, etc). Santelli also bemoans the frequency of hard rock artists who proliferated at festivals in the later ‘70s, finding their aggressive styles far removed from the sounds of the early rockfests. Just imagine how he’d feel if he could see into the future and witness Woodstock ’94! 

Speaking of which, Santelli ends the book with the prediction that rock festivals are forever gone. It turns out he was sort of right and sort of wrong. Wrong because there was the above-mentioned Woodstock ’94, with such diverse acts as a mud-caked Nine Inch Nails and even Bob Dylan (who decided not to show at the original Woodstock), and then five years later there was Woodstock ’99, which seemed to be a new Altamont. (I recall really wanting to go to Woodstock ’94 – I was 19, a NIN fan, but tickets were like a couple hundred bucks or something and I was just a poor self-financed college student. At least I got to see NIN a little over a year later, when they toured with Bowie.) 

But Santelli is correct in that none of these later festivals had the spirit of the originals, and indeed how could they, given the sea change of ensuing generations. Watching the Woodstock movie, one thing that amuses me is that, despite how grungy and unkempt those hippies were, they were worlds more…well, wisened than the kids of today, not to mention infinitely better spoken. I mean there’s this one scraggly-headed kid in the movie who talks about how everything he needs in the world “is right on this roadside,” commenting how his father, an immigrant, grudgingly accepts his lifestyle and even encourages him to pursue it and learn his own life lessons. This kid talks like he’s in his 40s or something, and the irony is the mass belief at the time was that hippies were a stupid, drugged-out lot. Actually, maybe it was the drugs that made them so wisened…I imagine several heroic doses of vintage LSD would turn the average kid into an old soul. What more is there to see once you’ve peered into the cosmos? 

Anyway, Santelli’s book is a success in what it aims to be: a snappily-paced overview of the rock festival era. I forgot to mention, he only discusses American rock fests – no mention of Isle of Wight. Which by the way did factor into the finale of The Rock Nations. To again bring up that novel, it would’ve greatly benefited Aquarius Rising if Santelli had gone for a similar, more lively commentary, with a few personal reflections. So if you’re looking for on-the-ground reporting from the rockfests of the ‘60s and ‘70s, you won’t find it here. But you will find a concise overview with a few notable tidbits you might not find anywhere else.