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To save as a PDF, click "Print" and select "Save as PDF" or "Print to PDF" from the Destination dropdown. On a mobile device, click the "Share" button, then choose "Print" and "Save as PDF".
How the iconic publication's unruly first decade rewrote the rules of journalism.
Rolling Stone's first decade was truly rock and 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 21-year-old college dropout, Rolling Stone and its editors were steeped in the Bay Area's counterculture and viewed rock and 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. Always more than the definitive rock magazine, Rolling Stone leveraged the power of popular music to deliver groundbreaking coverage of historic events, setting a new standard for the next generation of American journalism.
"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
"Magazines may be struggling, but histories of the most impactful of those publications—and the people who put them together—continue to fascinate appreciative readers. Rolling Stone, a rambunctious, playful child of the sixties, became a bible not just of rock, but of popular culture, and rocketed from San Francisco to Manhattan and to higher highs, until numerous phenomena—competition, demographics, high tech—halted the ride. Richardson chronicles that ride by doing what the best of Rolling Stone bylines offered: diligent research, deep reporting, revelatory background stories about the major players, and perceptions on what it all meant. What it all means. To paraphrase and counter Bob Dylan: it ain't over yet, Baby Blue."—Ben Fong-Torres, former senior editor, Rolling Stone
"Once upon a time, Rolling Stone was required reading for Americans. Its first decade brought us a wonderland of intelligent journalism from Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and others, such as Ben Fong-Torres, Annie Leibovitz, and Grover Lewis. Richardson, the Bay Area's historian laureate, takes us back to those golden days when the magazine hit the note in every issue. Back then, when the magazine arrived I'd go into my Rolling Stone coma, not regaining consciousness until I'd read every word. I miss those days, but Richardson's fantastic book brings back that delightful illness. What a time it was."—William McKeen, author of Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson
"Here, we finally—finally—have the real story of the beginnings of Rolling Stone in 1960s San Francisco, from its birth in the counterculture and radical politics of the time to its belief that music could set you free and its enthusiasm for new literary writing and the New Journalism. Rather than relying on the tired old tropes of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Richardson's serious research recontextualizes history to describe the motley group of young writers, editors, and staff—led by a charismatic editor—who put out a publication that went up against the mainstream. Brand New Beat captures the facts and the spirit of the times."—Sarah Lazin, literary agent, founder of Sarah Lazin Books and former director of Rolling Stone Press
"These days, some of the historic figures in Richardson's book must wag their fingers, like that Bush-era bumper sticker says, 'Never thought I'd miss Nixon . . . ' With mass deportations and the assault on law, the academy, and logic itself, some of what Rolling Stone founding editor Jann Wenner waded into now looks like kid stuff. Beginning with its special issue on the violence at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in 1969, the magazine covered stories the mainstream (establishment) press ignored: Karen Silkwood and Patty Hearst just for a start. Along the way, Rolling Stone let music chart a new map, one that we shouldn't take for granted. Eavesdrop as Hunter S. Thompson and Lester Bangs plead for more money and space, and Wenner steers record labels toward their ideal audience. Brand New Beat recaptures the times, and the inspiration behind them."—Tim Riley, author of Substack's riley rock report and Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music—The Definitive Life
"A must read! Richardson's Brand New Beat is illuminating, engaging, and important. Moving beyond the usual narratives of Rolling Stone focused on Jann Wenner, it instead tells the more complicated (and long overdue) story of the geographical, social, political, and media culture that made Rolling Stone and its massive success possible."—Kimberly Mack, author of Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White