Available From UC Press

Brand New Beat

The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine

Peter Richardson

How the iconic publication's unconventional first decade rewrote the rules of journalism.

Rolling Stone's first decade was truly rock 'n' roll: chaotic, wild, and unpredictable. Brand New Beat charts the origins and evolution of the magazine during its formative early years in San Francisco. Founded in 1967 by a twenty-one-year-old college dropout, Rolling Stone and its editors were steeped in the Bay Area's counterculture and viewed rock 'n' roll as the animating spirit of a social revolution. Reaching beyond music, the magazine delved into the tempestuous culture and politics of the time.

Acclaimed author Peter Richardson takes readers inside the iconic magazine during an era of legendary events, major cultural figures, and unforgettable music. Showing how Rolling Stone became a journalistic juggernaut—nurturing music-focused writers like Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, and Greil Marcus as well as New Journalism giants Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe—this book reveals how Rolling Stone both exemplified and critiqued the counterculture. More than just the definitive rock magazine, Rolling Stone leveraged the brand power of popular music to deliver groundbreaking coverage of historic events, setting a new standard for the next generation of American journalism.

Peter Richardson is author of Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson and the Weird Road to Gonzo as well as critically acclaimed books about the Grateful Dead, Ramparts magazine, and radical author and editor Carey McWilliams. His essays appear in The Nation, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.

"Brand New Beat is a highly engaging, deeply researched, and sharply etched account of the early years of Rolling Stone magazine, told with greater acumen and detail than any other account. This is a tantalizing and fantastically gossipy book, full of stories and anecdotes that are a delight to encounter for the first time."—John McMillian, author of Beatles vs. Stones and founding coeditor of The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture

"Colorful and riveting. Peter Richardson makes a convincing case for Rolling Stone's continued importance while acknowledging the voices who were unjustly written off from behind its boys'-clubhouse doors."—Evelyn McDonnell, author of The World According to Joan Didion

"The San Francisco Bay Area was ripe for Rolling Stone in the 1960s and '70s. Counterculture and pop culture had briefly merged. Jann Wenner and company were smart to deliver music and sociopolitics as a heady brew on newsprint that college kids found intoxicating. Richardson beams you back to that zeitgeist."—Pat Thomas, editor of Evergreen Review: Dispatches from the Literary Underground, 1957–1973

414 pp.5.5 x 8.5Illus: 24 b/w plates

9780520399396$27.95|£24.00Hardcover

Apr 2026