Peter Richardson, "Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine" (U California Press, 2026)

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Peter Richardson, "Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine"

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Peter Richardson
Date: April 7, 2026

---

Overview

In this engaging episode, Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews author and historian Peter Richardson about his latest book, Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine (University of California Press, 2026). Richardson offers a rich exploration of Rolling Stone's origins, its growth as a cultural and political arbiter, and how it both shaped and reflected the counterculture from the late 1960s onward. They examine the magazine's evolution from a Bay Area upstart to national powerhouse, discuss internal dynamics and editorial choices, and reflect on Rolling Stone's ongoing legacy.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Roots and Motivation

• Richardson’s Background: Born in Berkeley in 1959, with deep personal and academic ties to the San Francisco Bay Area, Richardson was drawn to Rolling Stone as a subject both by nostalgia and scholarly interest.
  • Quote: “Exploring Rolling Stone and its history was a way of understanding the world that I was born into.” (02:09, Peter Richardson)

2. Origin Story and the Bay Area Influence

• Founders and Early Context:
  • Jan Wenner (UC Berkeley student, campus newspaper columnist)
  • Ralph J. Gleason (San Francisco Chronicle jazz columnist)
  • Both dissatisfied with their stints at the political magazine Ramparts, eager to capture the Bay Area’s unique cultural energy.
• The Bay Area’s Distinct Flavor:
  • “In many ways, you could say it started in Berkeley, even though its headquarters were never there...” (03:56, Peter Richardson)
  • Countercultural ferment was largely misunderstood or disparaged by national media, which presented an opportunity.

3. Editorial Vision: Beyond Just Music

• Rolling Stone was always “more than a rock magazine”; it covered the culture and ethos around the music, not just the music itself.
  • Quote: “They understood that it wasn’t just the music they wanted to cover... it was the whole culture around the music, which they thought had all kinds of redeeming features.” (08:14, Peter Richardson)
• The founders believed the counterculture was not a passing fad, but an “animating spirit of a social revolution.”

4. Business Model and Staying Power

• Key to Early Viability:
  • An immediate and strong advertising base thanks to music labels targeting Rolling Stone’s readership.
  • Shrewd editorial instincts—publishing striking stories and covers (e.g., John and Yoko’s nude photos) boosted sales.
• Editorial Breadth:
  • Willingness to cover both music and broader societal issues; uncovered stories mainstream outlets missed (e.g., the violence at Altamont, leading to their first National Magazine Award: “for telling the truth about the counterculture” (12:45)).

5. Internal Growth & Staffing

• Editorial Hires:
  • Charles Barry (longtime editor), John Birx (brought political/current affairs focus), Ben Fong Torres (musical coverage).
  • Early ambition to rival the editorial standards of The New Yorker or Playboy, introducing formats like the in-depth “Rolling Stone interview.”
• Diversity Issues:
  • Initially slow to hire women in editorial positions, but later addressed (notably with Marianne Partridge and Ellen Willis).
  • From the start, attempted to carve out unique spaces for racial and cultural commentary (e.g., Gleason’s first column was on US media’s racial double standards).

6. Gonzo Journalism and Political Coverage

• Introduction of Hunter S. Thompson
  • Gonzo journalism’s blend of “invective and satire and hallucination” took off with “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (Nov 1971). Rolling Stone’s masthead became closely associated with the form.
  • Quote: “[Gonzo journalism] sort of takes the magazine to another level. And Hunter Thompson becomes the number one writer at Rolling Stone... he never writes about music.” (21:00, Peter Richardson)
• Transformation into Political Force
  • Thompson’s freedom from traditional journalistic constraints allowed unprecedented candor in political reporting.
    • Quote: “He can tell the unvarnished truth as he understands it...” (24:03, Peter Richardson)
  • Reports were media criticism as much as campaign journalism, demystifying political processes (“the Boys on the Bus” was cited as a turning point in campaign coverage).

7. The 'Golden Age' and Editorial Evolution

• Jan Wenner’s Ambitions:
  • Eagerly recruited other “new journalists” like Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe to broaden the magazine’s narrative power.
  • Staff developed a knack for feeling their audience’s pulse, often without the crutch of surveys or focus groups.
• Peak Influence & Endorsements:
  • From struggling for press passes (1972) to hosting pre-Democratic Convention parties for presidential nominees (1976).
  • Quote: “They’d come a long way. This is only nine years after... invented with a budget of $7,500. An extraordinary rise, no doubt about it.” (29:49, Peter Richardson)
• Internal Struggles:
  • Gonzo journalism’s downside included volatile personalities and the eventual decline of Thompson’s output.

8. From San Francisco to New York: Shifting Identities

• Transition to NYC (1977):
  • The move marked a pivot from countercultural epicenter to media mainstream; the “quieter river” of the counterculture faded.
  • Quote: “We needed to get the last bits of patchouli out of the magazine’s look.” (Jan Wenner, recounted at 36:24)
  • New York provided practical advantages (publishing hub, business reasons) but diluted the magazine’s countercultural edge.
• Adaptation:
  • More focus on celebrity journalism and broader coverage (film, TV, new trends like SNL and the new Hollywood).
  • The magazine thrived financially and continued to win awards, but the deep link with the counterculture was diminished.

9. Reflections: Surprises & Underdiscussed Aspects

• Feminist Critique:
  • Ellen Willis’s 1970 letter expressed frustration with Rolling Stone’s depiction of women (“calling them ‘chicks’”) and lack of female staff—sharply articulating representation problems and doubts about social revolution rhetoric.
  • Quote from Willis (paraphrased): “I’ve benefited more from the women’s movement in two years than I will in ten years of your so-called social revolution.” (40:35)
• Coverage of Gay Culture:
  • Noted as surprisingly direct and underrecognized in historical assessments of Rolling Stone’s legacy.

10. Lasting Lessons & Legacy

• Complex Judgments and Media Memory:
  • Richardson warns of declinist, simplistic readings of Jan Wenner or Rolling Stone due to contemporary controversies; urges deeper, more nuanced appsraisal.
  • Emphasizes the need for readers to understand the real contours of “the counterculture” to truly appreciate the magazine’s innovations and successes.
• The Counterculture’s Fade:
  • Worries about the counterculture being reduced to a two-dimensional stereotype; Rolling Stone’s early years can’t be grasped without understanding the vibrancy and diversity of that moment.

11. Future Directions

• Next Projects:
  • Richardson hints at further work chronicling Theodore Roszak (who coined “counterculture”) and Silicon Valley’s rise, linking the region’s shift from bohemia to tech capital.
  • Notes Rolling Stone’s early prescience on tech trends, notably a 1972 article by Stewart Brand forecasting PCs, AI, and the internet.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “They were pretty sure at that time that the counterculture was kind of the animating spirit of a social revolution that was already in progress. It wasn’t something to be pooh-poohed. It wasn’t a fad.” (08:01, Peter Richardson)
• “Rolling Stone was always more than a rock magazine. It was the whole culture around the music...” (08:18, Peter Richardson)
• "The number one thing, I think on the practical side was they always had advertisers... The average Rolling Stone reader... was buying five or six albums a month. And that's who these labels wanted to reach." (10:06, Peter Richardson)
• "He can tell the unvarnished truth as he understands it, which is exactly what he sets about to do." (24:07, Peter Richardson on Hunter S. Thompson’s campaign coverage)
• “They’d come a long way. This is only nine years after... invented with a budget of $7,500. An extraordinary rise, no doubt about it.” (29:49, Peter Richardson)
• "We needed to get the last bits of patchouli out of the magazine's look." (36:13, Jan Wenner, via Peter Richardson)
• “There’s no doubt that Rolling Stone is the best rock magazine, but I don’t think I’m going to write for it because I don’t like the way you depict women. You’re always calling them chicks ... I don’t want to be the token woman at your magazine.” (40:00, Peter Richardson paraphrasing Ellen Willis)
• “Rolling Stone had to overcome a lot of media complacency and stereotypes about the counterculture. So they were a real breath of fresh air when they came on the scene.” (44:35, Peter Richardson)

---

Timeline of Important Segments

• 01:32 – Introduction to Richardson & his connection to the subject
• 03:55 – Rolling Stone’s founding: the Bay Area, Ramparts, and the counterculture
• 09:56 – How the magazine sustained itself and broke big stories
• 15:14 – Internal dynamics: editorial growth, inclusion, and ambitions
• 19:34 – Gonzo journalism and the rise of Hunter S. Thompson
• 23:32 – Rolling Stone’s transformation into a political player
• 26:59 – The “golden age” and how Wenner built editorial strength
• 32:54 – The risky move to New York and its implications
• 37:32 – Broadening coverage and chasing the celebrity journalism trend
• 39:57 – Surprises from research, feminist critique, and coverage of gay culture
• 42:58 – What Richardson hopes readers will take away
• 46:16 – Next projects: Theodore Roszak and the counterculture’s legacy

---

Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive, engaging look at Rolling Stone’s wild first decade, deftly connecting music, politics, business, and identity. Richardson and Melcher explore how a scrappy countercultural magazine became a national institution, the evolving standards and struggles of its staff, and why its legacy continues to resonate—in both celebration and controversy. For anyone interested in the cultural revolutions of the late 20th century, or the intersecting worlds of journalism, music, and politics, this discussion and Richardson’s book are essential.

---

Transcript

[TaxAct Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Don't do your taxes alone. Join TaxAct's National Admin Night. Admin nights are social gatherings for getting through your to do list, so get ready for a night of fun, finding deductions and filing taxes with TaxAct, where you can file your federal and state return for just $49 through April 8th. Let's get together and get them over with. Visit taxact.comadminknight for details.

[Fandango Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by Fandango. People say fans are too distracted these days, but the truth is, when a great movie hits the screen, you show up. You stay glued, invested, part of the story. And without fans like you, there'd be no cinema magic, no shared moments. So head to fandango.com to get tickets, stream or rent or buy top movies and series. Fandango loves fans.

[Microsoft Excel Copilot Sponsor]

No one goes to Hank's for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs, help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hank says a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn [e-mail] welcome to the New Books Network.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today because we get to talk about an interesting book published by the University of California Press in 2026, titled Brand New the Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine, which pretty much does exactly what it says, right? Helps us understand how how Rolling Stone magazine started and also how it became such a big deal, right? Which I mean, it's still around, right? So the origin story is fascinating, but also the kind of way it went from being an upstart to then maintaining. Right? Starting is one thing, maintaining is another. And this book covers both of those things to help us understand sort of the place it has in culture and how it got to that point. So clearly a lot for us to discuss. The author is with me today, Peter Richardson. Peter, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Peter Richardson]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Miranda, could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?

[Peter Richardson]

The short answer is, I was teaching this material at San Francisco State University. And some of the books that I had written before this were sort of pointing in this direction. So it felt like a good topic to take on, especially the fact that it was focused here in San Francisco, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I'm sitting right now. And it's always been very interesting to me, both as a subject to teach my students, but also I was sort of born into this, in a way. I was born in Berkeley in 1959, and by the time I was aware of anything, I was aware of Rolling Stone magazine. Not really thinking about it very much, but I was certainly aware of its role, especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area, kind of tastemaking role, kind of an arbiter of what was cool and what was worth doing. And so it was a magazine that I read when I was a teenager, for example. So it's very much in the middle of this period. And for me, exploring Rolling Stone and its history was kind of a way of understanding the world that I was born into.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, that gives us a hint then, at least of where the magazine may have started. But can you tell us more about the how and when and the sort of origin story here?

[Peter Richardson]

Yes. In many ways, you could say it started in Berkeley, even though its headquarters were never there. The two co founders, Ralph J. Gleason and Jan Wenner, were both living in Berkeley when they decided to start the magazine. Wenner was a student at the University of California in Berkeley and was working for the campus newspaper. He had a column, it was a music column, and it was modeled on the column that Ralph Gleason wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. So San Francisco is obviously the major metropolitan area, but Ralph Gleason decided to live in Berkeley, which was more bohemian and intellectual. I think it was a little bit more like the part of New York where he went as an undergraduate student at Columbia University, when jazz was the order of the day. So Gleason was quite a bit older. He was in his 40s, and Wenner was his kind of protege when they decided to start the magazine. Both had been working for a magazine called Ramparts Magazine, which was a political muckraker based in San Francisco. Actually, Jan Wenner was working for the spinoff weekly newspaper, which is a job that Ralph J. Gleason arranged for him. And both, for various reasons, were kind of dissatisfied with Ramparts magazine. Gleason for its coverage of the local counterculture in San Francisco. He didn't care for a cover story that the editor of Ramparts magazine ran in the run up to the so called Summer of Love in 1967. So he resigned pretty much in a towering rage. Jan was actually laid off because the editor of the Rev Ramparts magazine decided to shut down the spinoff newspaper. So they both had some time on their hands and they had an idea for a new publication that was going to be a little bit more, you know, more suitable for them, had a little bit more. Much more emphasis on music and the counterculture, which Warren Hinkle, the editor of Ramparts, really didn't have that much use for. Even though he was a rebel and he was born and raised in San Francisco, he was no flower child. And so Ralph and Jan sensed something, sensed an opportunity, and started Rolling Stone magazine in November of 1967.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Got it. Okay, that makes sense. So they have some experience of kind of magazines in the local area, but there's also sort of something distinct that they're looking for. How much was kind of what they were looking for in that counterculture? Sort of what, why it was initially successful? I mean, was it just the two of them kind of going, hey, there's something here, or were they tapping into something?

[Peter Richardson]

Oh, I think they were tapping into something that was playing out right in front of their eyes in a way that it wasn't playing out for national media outlets, for example, who sort of descended on San Francisco during the Summer of Love and wrote about Haight Ashbury and the emergent counterculture. It hadn't yet been named the counterculture, but let's, you know, hippie culture in San Francisco. Ralph was very attuned to, you know, the musical possibilities, but he also approved of this sort of spirit of impertinence, if you will. And Jan saw its importance as well. But the national media outlets were mostly covering it very intensively, but mostly negatively and often disparagingly. So when Time magazine looked at the counterculture, it was a very mixed review. When Joan Didion wrote about Haight Ashbury for the Saturday Evening Post, it was quite negative. So most journalists, even though they covered the San Francisco counterculture, were not really in sync with its virtues, let's say. But Jan and Ralph very much thought very much that the counterculture and its music were important. And I think that was kind of their. Part of their genius was that they understood that it wasn't just the music that they wanted to cover. You know, Rolling Stone was always more than a rock magazine. It was the whole culture around the music which they. They thought had all kinds of, you know, redeeming features. So they weren't alone. Other people saw those things, too. And in fact, there was a whole burgeoning, you know, underground press, both in the Bay Area and elsewhere. But this was a. This was a chance to do a kind of professional, professionally produced, nationally distributed magazine that focused on the counterculture and its music. And they were pretty sure at that time that the counterculture was kind of the animating spirit of a social revolution that was already in progress. It wasn't something to be pooh poohed. It wasn't a fad. It wasn't, you know, a symptom of some pathology. You know, it wasn't a punchline. This was something that they thought would. Was very important and would be even more important. The future.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Got it. Okay, so that's a very clear sort of perspective. Is that what made it sort of more than a flash in the pan sort of magazine? Like, what were the things that made the magazine viable to achieve those sorts of goals? Like, it's a big deal, sort of saying you're going to cover it in a very different way from other people and do it nationally? Like, what was it that made the magazine kind of enough of an enduring success that it was sort of stable enough to go, okay, now what?

[Peter Richardson]

Well, they did a couple of things, right. I mean, they did know how to break big stories and that they got from Ramparts magazine. I think they were always set up to do stories that went beyond rock music. And so that was an important part even of their early success. But it becomes even more prominent in the first five years and 10 years. The number one thing, I think on the practical side was they always had advertisers. I think the music labels, most of them based in Los Angeles, understood that Rolling Stone magazine was reaching the exact people that they wanted to reach. And some early polling showed that. And surveys showed that the average Rolling Stone reader, mostly young, mostly male, often connected to the music business, was buying five or six albums a month. And that's who these labels wanted to reach. So right out of the gate, they didn't have trouble attracting advertisers. And, you know, political magazines, left, right and center, always have trouble attracting advertising. That's a long story. But the point is that because they had, they could lock down advertising, an advertising base, it allowed them to do stories. They could leverage that to do other kinds of stories. I mean, they were always, you know, very early on established themselves as the best rock magazine. That wasn't such a big deal in 1968 or 1969. In 1975, it was so I would say that the advertising part of it was very important. And one of the things I found in my research was all this correspondence between Jan Wenner and these studio. I mean, these studio executives, really revealing. They really spoke the same language. They really understood how they could help each other. And that got Rolling Stone through some kind of scratchy times early on when they had some cash crunches and so on. So the advertising was a big part of it. And the other thing was that they were looking for big stories and they got them. And one of the early stories was they had this idea when John Lennon and Yoko Ono weren't allowed to put pictures of them nude on their album in the United States. They were able to land those photographs and run them in the magazine. One of them on the COVID of the magazine. And that was, you know, just boosted newsstand sales dramatically. And they were always sort of. They were very shrewd about that kind of thing. And then a little bit later, they realized that they could cover stories that the mainstream media either couldn't or wouldn't cover. And those, some of those stories led to their first National Magazine Award words jumping ahead a little bit to December of 1969, for example, the Altamont concert here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which was of course, the. The last concert in the Rolling Stones US Tour that year. And it led to violence, bloodshed, and one murder actually was. It was adjudicated later not to be self defense, but Meredith Hunter, a young black man from Berkeley, was killed by Hell's Angels right in front of the stage kind of famously. But for some reason, the mainstream media wasn't really attuned to that story. They kind of missed the violence at Altamont. And Rolling Stone picked up on it. Ran 11,000 word piece. And when they won their first National Magazine Award the following year, the awards committee kind of commended them for doing a story that had to do with the dark side of the counterculture, that is for telling the truth about the counterculture. So one of the things in the book is I sort of track this relationship, complicated relationship that Rolling Stone magazine had with the counterculture. In some ways, they were a creature of the counterculture. They wouldn't have succeeded as they did if it hadn't been for the size and power of the counterculture. And don't forget, half of the US population at that time was under 25 years old. And you know, they were. There was a kind of ripeness for the kind of approach that Rolling Stone was bringing. So, you know, between the demographics and the Advertising and the kind of unique editorial formula. They would never be mistaken for an underground newspaper, they would never be mistaken for a teen magazine, they would never be mistaken for a trade magazine. But they. They sort of included elements of all those in their. In their editorial formula. Hmm.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, those are a lot of key elements there. But of course, there's also the kind of how it works internally to keep all of that up. So as it's getting successful and growing, obviously it's no longer just two people. Right. Like, how is it working internally to keep all of this going?

[Peter Richardson]

Well, they staffed up pretty quickly. They made some good hires in their. Among their early editors. One of them was Charles Barry, who stayed with the magazine for the first 10 years while it was in San Francisco. Another one was a fellow named John Birx, who helped get them into politics and current affairs more than they were. Another one was Ben Fong Torres, who eventually would take over, you know, most of the musical assignments, most of the musical coverage, which was a big part of the magazine, not the only part, as we've said, but, you know, it was something that Jan Wenner could delegate to Ben Fontores successfully. And, you know, so. And they were going bigger with, in terms of, you know, developing features like the Rolling Stone interview, which was modeled on, you know, similar kinds of interviews that you could see in the New Yorker or Playboy or the Paris Review. So they were setting their sights pretty high and they wanted to be taken seriously by the mainstream. And so their hiring kind of reflected that. John Burks, the fellow who they hired to be the first managing editor, actually came from the San Francisco office of Newsweek magazine. And his. He would later say that what he really wanted to do was de. Trivialize the magazine. He didn't want it to be a rock magazine. He wanted it to be commenting on what was in the headlines at that time because there was so much going on around, you know, around them, around everyone. I mean, you know, the. Politically. The Vietnam war was raging. There was a huge anti war movement. You know, four students were killed at Kent State University. So these were the kinds of things that John. John Birx wanted to see in. In the magazine. And eventually it led to a falling out with Jan, who wants. Wanted to stick closer to the original formulation. But there's no doubt that they were strengthening their position and strengthening their ability to do stories not only about music, but about politics and current affairs as well, and then later about film and other features. But that comes a little bit later. They ran film reviews from the beginning, from the very first issue. And the first issue, too. I should point out that Ralph Gleason, who had a column for the first many years, the first column that he wrote was on racial double standards in the US Media. So from the beginning, they were marking out some territory that would never be mistaken for what was being run in a typical rock magazine of that time or a teen magazine.

[Fandango Sponsor]

To realize the future America needs, we understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this.

[Welch's Fruit Snacks Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Big news for your kids. Lunchbox. Welch's Fruit snacks are now made without any artificial dyes. A snack parents can feel good about and the same delicious taste kids can't get enough of. All made with no artificial dyes. Try Welch's Fruit Snacks today.

[Peter Richardson]

K Pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

It's not a battle.

[Peter Richardson]

So glad the Saja Boys could take

[Palmolive Sponsor]

breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

[Peter Richardson]

It is an awesome honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side and participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, that's definitely different in terms of kind of what stories are being covered. There's also a style element in terms of how those stories are being covered, too. Can we talk about gonzo journalism and when and how that became such a big part of this?

[Peter Richardson]

Yes. So gonzo journalism is strongly associated, almost identified with Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson, for a short time lived in San Francisco, and he was friends with the people at Ramparts magazine, especially Warren Hinkle. And this is during the time that Ralph Gleason and Jan Wenner are in the Ramparts office. So Jan Wenner knew who Hunter Thompson was largely for the reporting that he did on the Hell's Angels. So he did a story for the Nation magazine and then parlayed that into a bestselling book that Jan was very aware of. But Warren, I mean, rather Hunter Thompson was actually publishing his first gonzo piece was actually published in a magazine called Scanlan's, which was edited by Warren Hinkle, the former editor of Ramparts. But Scanlan's went out of business after only eight issues. So Hunter S. Thompson was sort of available and looking for another outlet that he could write for. So when he sees the Rolling Stone coverage of the Altamont debacle, especially at the hands of the Hell's Angels, he's the journalist most strongly associated with the Hell's Angels. He writes to Jan Wenner in January of 1970 and compliments him on the Altamont story. That leads to a correspondence over the course of the year trying to figure out what he can write for Rolling Stone magazine. And he writes a couple stories, but not in the gonzo style. The first couple of pieces that he does for Rolling Stone don't have those kinds of pyrotechnics. You know, the obvious kind of over the top sort of blend of, you know, invective and satire and hallucination and so on. That comes In November of 1971, when he publishes a piece called Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's actually two articles that are published in. In late 1971. And that combination, those two articles and that style, his return to gonzo, if you will, sort of takes the magazine to another level. And Hunter Thompson becomes the number one writer at Rolling Stone shortly after November of 1971. And he never writes about music. That's the interesting thing. By this time, the number one writer at Rolling Stone is actually looking out over the political horizon, writing political commentary. And the next thing that he does, almost immediately after the success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is he reports on the 1972 presidential campaign. And then he takes those dispatches and turns those into a book, as he did with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which those articles were also released as a book. The books become bestsellers, critically acclaimed. So all of a sudden, this kind of upstart, fledgling rock magazine from San Francisco, which is not the center of the American publishing universe by any means, you know, this all of a sudden, out of nowhere, really, this magazine is suddenly, you know, established as a kind of political voice.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's really interesting to think about this sort of transformation and it become.

[Peter Richardson]

It.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

It causes the magazine to become really important to politics. Right. Like, not just kind of, oh, we tried to get into the mainstream, and now some people are paying attention to us, but, like, quite central to politics in many ways. Is that right?

[Peter Richardson]

Yes. And the story of how they did that is really interesting because when they start following the 1972 presidential campaign, and by they, I mean Hunter S. Thompson and his colleague, junior colleague Timothy Krause, they can barely get press passes. No one's heard of them, no one cares What a Rock magazine from San Francisco has to say. But Thompson figures out a way to use all of those liabilities and turn them into assets, because in some ways, he has more freedom than the press that are covering the story, the presidential campaign, for the television networks or the major magazines or the newspapers. They have to worry about their sources that, you know, Hunter Thompson doesn't. He's not. He's not planning to return. He can tell the unvarnished truth as he understands it, which is exactly what he sets about to do. And that includes writing about, you know, basically kind of pulling the curtain back on the campaign and writing about all the stuff that the other reporters know to be true but can't smuggle into their stories. You know, and so there's a kind of act of media criticism at the same time that he's reporting on the campaign. And then Tim Krause also does something like that, writes an article called the Boys on the Bus. It's about the reporters, mostly men, but not only. In fact, some of the women on the campaign trail were doing some of the best work journalistically in 1972. But the upshot was that all of a sudden, this, you know, people get a better picture of what's going on. I'm talking about the readers of Rolling Stone in particular, are saying, okay, that makes sense. That's how it works when you cover the Nixon campaign or the McGovern campaign. And it really changes the way American elections are. Presidential elections are covered after that. You know, we probably don't have time to go into how they were covered before that, but they were. They were not very revealing. They were highly polished, some of these stories from the campaign trail. I'm thinking of a man named Theodore White who basically created a kind of franchise of writing what amounted to kind of novels about each campaign season, and the protagonist is the person who ends up winning, you know, and, you know, that's okay, but. But you never get the feeling that anything was really amiss in American politics. And in 1968, there was a lot that was amiss, and in 1972, there was a lot that was amiss in presidential politics, which we saw almost immediately after the election, which Richard Nixon won in a landslide, but then shortly after that, his entire administration is consumed by the Watergate scandal. Right. Which did not surprise anybody that was reading Hunter Thompson at that time, but it probably would have surprised everybody who was reading Theodore White.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, that's a very big change indeed, given then the impact the magazine was having. Was this the golden age that's what

[Peter Richardson]

Jan Wenner would call it, you know, after this, you know, there was the usual amount of kind of sifting and so on, but. But what happens after the departure of John Virgs is what Jan would call the golden age and, you know, the gonzo. Jan was very quick to lash gonzo journalism to his masthead. I mean, he really saw the upside of this kind of writing, and he went about trying to get other people who were associated with what was then called new journalism. Thompson was one of those people. When he was writing about Rolling Stone, gonzo becomes the adjective after fear and loathing in Las Vegas. But he goes about and he recruits people like Truman Capote or Tom Wolf, and he's working very hard to get major magazine feature writers into the magazine during this time. And he had a very strong kind of bench, too. The people who were. The staff writers were also very strong. And in many ways it. I think, you know, they had. They had strong editors. I've seen the memos that they were sending to each other where they were evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the. Of the articles that they were thinking about running. They were very insightful, and they also knew their audience very well. I mean, they. This. Their. Their targeting was very, very strong. And they didn't rely on things like, you know, focus groups or surveys or anything like that. They kind of felt this in their bones, especially Jan, you know, Jan had a strong feeling for what would work with the. With the Rolling Stone audience. So, you know, and he. And then he hired good people, and they, you know, they struggled. They had some setbacks, especially with Hunter Thompson, whose lifestyle was kind of catching up with him, and they needed to give him a lot of editorial support, which they did. And, you know, the gonzo franchise continued to roll through the 70s and long after that, really. But not so much at Rolling Stone after the move to New York City, for reasons that had to do with some conflicts between Jan and Hunter Thompson and also with Thompson's kind of inability to sometimes get the story that could, you know, the original story that could be edited into a gonzo masterpiece. But really, maybe the peak period for their influence, especially their political influence, was 1976. Thompson declined to follow the 1976 presidential campaign due to a kind of dispute with Young winner. But he did write about Jimmy Carter. And, you know, his. His endorsement, Tom Simone claimed that he never actually endorsed Jimmy Carter, but it was. It was presented as a kind of endorsement, led to some real influence, really. And this is only four years after they could barely get press passes. In 1976, they throw the big party the night before Jenny Carter receives the nomination from the Democrat Party to run for president, which he does successfully. So they'd come a long way. This is only nine years after they were invented with a budget of $7,500. And so it's an extraordinary rise, no doubt about it. And they did have some things that were still sort of keeping them back, but they were working on those as well. One of them was that they weren't really hiring any women. And for a long time, that. That was a kind of. That was a kind of, you know, not a black mark exactly, because not all the other. A lot of the other magazines weren't doing that either. But there was just this sense that they were a little late to the game there. And. But finally they corrected that by hiring a woman named Marianne Partridge. She became a senior editor. She recruited a very strong writer named Ellen Willis, who had been writing about rock music for the New Yorker magazine. And then they began developing their in house talent, too. They had some very talented, smart, hardworking women on the staff who were given more responsibility. And that was happening during this time as well. So a lot of things were kind of falling into place.

[Palmolive Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop [e-mail] there's no one like you,

[Peter Richardson]

and there never will be. From the producer Bohemian Rhapsody. There are many legends, but there is Only one Michael Mc. In theaters April 24th.

[Welch's Fruit Snacks Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get [e-mail], own the dream.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah. Which makes it in some ways, kind of more surprising that they would take such a big decision of moving from California, which so much kind of was coming from to New York, where there's rather a lot of competition. That seems like it could have been a decision that sort of disrupted all of this that was being built. But you talk in the book that they were still able to be part of the counterculture, even from far away. So can you tell us about that transition?

[Peter Richardson]

Yeah, well, I mean, one thing about the counterculture was that people kind of. It wasn't quite the urgent issue. It was in 1969 when the book came out that name, the counterculture appeared called the Making of a Counterculture by a social critic named Theodore Roszak. In 1969. That was something you needed to know. Right. In 1976 or 77, when the magazine moved to New York City, a lot of people were talking about, you know, the death of the counterculture, that it wasn't surviving that, that the conclusion of the Vietnam War sort of took some energy out of that movement, which was always a variegated movement. It wasn't a single coherent movement with a strong, single message. It was always sort of. I mean, a Rosak compared it to a. A medieval crusade, you know, people kind of joining and falling off and, you know, parts falling off and combining, recombining with other social formations, if you will. That happened, for example, in Silicon Valley when, you know, these people who were hippies basically started Apple Computer, for example, and they were very important in other Silicon Valley firms as well. But for the most part, the counterculture was not the powerhouse, the thing that people needed to know. And rock music was also well established and quite welcome in very established parts of the culture, especially the entertainment industry. So rock was not kind of the success to scandal that it had been in 1967. So the magazine needed to think about different ways to kind of pivot and tweak its editorial formula. And the counterculture part is slightly downplayed. They stopped talking about the social revolution partly because politically the country was moving into the age of Reagan. I mean, this is only a few years before Reagan is elected president. So the political prophecy didn't really work out. I mean, socially, there were many, many aspects of the counterculture continued to be very important and shaped American culture in American society. But it was kind of the quiet river that ran through the second half of the 20th century. The counterculture was so. Jan. I mean, the move to New York, you're right, it really did sort of. It might be seen to have been threatened by this move, but it was the center of publishing by that time. Obviously, New York was. The San Francisco energy had begun to subside a little bit. It wasn't in 1977. It wasn't sort of the global rock capital that it was in 1967 when the magazine started. So. But mostly I think Jan and his wife Jane just wanted to be in New York. And there were good business reasons to be in New York, but none of the reasons offered had anything to do with the counterculture. They didn't make sense in terms of countercultural values. They made a lot of sense in terms of corporate values. So there was definitely a little bit of a change and the move represented that change. There was a pivot they needed to do some things differently. At one point, I think they initiated a new design. And Jan wrote in the magazine, no, I guess it was in his memoir. He said we needed to get the last bits of patchouli out of the magazine's look. Patchouli, of course, things strongly associated with kind of hippie culture. So, you know, they, they knew that they were sort of leaving some things behind when they left for San Francisco. No doubt about that.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

And that transition also makes sort of a useful point for you to conclude your analysis of the magazine, is that right?

[Peter Richardson]

Yeah, for me, the interesting part was the first decade. I mean, some of the changes that would, that would be become more clear once they got to New York were already underway even when they were here in San Francisco. And one of the things I talk about in the book is the arrival of People magazine and the power of celebrity journalism that it demonstrated. I mean, People magazine, the circulation and the advertising just skyrocketed immediately when it was launched in 1974. That wasn't lost on Jan. Jan likes celebrity journalists. You know, a lot of people at Rolling Stone at that time were, didn't like it so much. You know, they, they still had some misgivings about that, that, that kind of journalism. But there was no denying, you know, the power of that trend. And you, you begin to see more celebrity stuff in, in Rolling Stone during that time, for example. It covered film in a much bigger way in the 1970s and for good reason. I mean the, the so called new Hollywood was, was going strong at that time. You were getting films from people like Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman and all the way down the line. And film was hot. It came a little bit later, the changes to film. The new generation, let's say, came a little bit later than they did to music. Maybe there was a kind of five year lag. And television was also showing some of those changes. And that was embraced by Rolling Stone magazine once they moved to New York and even a little bit before, they loved this new television show, Saturday Night Live, which was launched during this time. So Jan saw the connections between what was happening across these media platforms and he pursued them, you know, and then that built a broader, stronger magazine. The magazine, once it moved to New York, continued to win awards, it continued to make money, but the link with the counterculture was definitely weakened.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, it's interesting to see that transformation, given then how much was happening in this period that you investigate. Was there anything you found especially surprising, piecing all of it together?

[Peter Richardson]

A couple things. I mean, there was this one letter that I found by Ellen Willis, whom Ralph Gleason had written to in an effort to get her to contribute to the magazine. And it was in 1970, early 1970. And I didn't see Ralph's communication to her, but I saw her reply. You know, basically she said, there's no doubt that Rolling Stone is the best rock magazine, but I don't think I'm going to write for it because I don't like the way you depict women. You're always calling them chicks. There was a story in which, you know, it was a complimentary story, but they ran a story on Tina Turner, for example, that called her an incredible chick. And that really irked Ellen Willis. And also she didn't like the fact that Rolling Stone hadn't really hired any women. And she said, I don't want to be the token woman at this, at your magazine. That change, of course, as I said earlier, when Marianne Partridge was hired as a senior editor and recruited Ellen Willis, who then wrote a couple dozen mag, you know, articles over the next three years or so. But the letter is just so on point and it's so, you know, lucid. And she's right in everything that she's saying about the magazine and it's hiring and also it's politics. She didn't really believe in this whole social revolution. She wanted to see, you know, a women's movement. And she said, you know, I've, I've, I've benefited more from the women's movement in two years than I, than I will or will in 10 years of your so called, you know, social rebel evolution. So that, that letter was just a jewel. You know, you just, every time, anytime you find something like that, it's just, it's, it's stunning. It's also a little time capsule. You know, it's from 1970 and really gives you a Feeling for what's going on, at least among a shrewd observer, you know, like. Like Ellen Willis. So that was one thing. The other thing that almost never gets talked about in books about Wrong Cell magazine and its history is its coverage of gay culture, you know, especially in San Francisco and New York and also in the music industry. Some of that is music oriented, but a lot of it had to do with the bath houses and other things that were happening in gay culture at the time. And they're very hard hitting. You know, this is not, you know, these are not topics that are pursued delicately. And so I was surprised by that and also by the fact that it's never really been given much attention in previous histories of the magazine. So I think those are the two things that stick out the most for me.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, that's very interesting. Thank you for telling us about both of those aspects. In fact, what do you most hope then that readers take away from all of this? This.

[Peter Richardson]

Well, one thing I'm. I'm worried about, I talk about this in the book a little bit, is that due to some publicity that surrounded the release of one of Jan Wen's books called the Masters, I think it came out in 2023. That's when I was in the warehouse kind of going through all. All these documents. Jan had set that up. I'm very thankful for him, to him for doing that. But he had a really rough interview with the New York Times and I saw that he, you know, he was. He just got skewered in the, in the media and deservedly so, I think most people would say. But my concern was that Jan and his remarks and the magazine would all be sort of swept into the same trash can. You know, we have a media culture now that tends to make very strong judgments very quickly without going back and kind of looking at the, you know, with a fresh eye at the material. There was. There's really no time to go back and look and see, Gosh, did Rolling Stone cover female artists and black artists, you know, intelligently and thoughtfully and respectfully during this time. And, you know, of course I interviewed a lot of people who wrote for the magazine during this time. And I really kind of felt like their achievement, their collective achievement with Jan at the head was kind of, you know, it's just one of those things where people just think, oh, well, that's just another thing. I don't have to read about that, you know, because the cause, the people are, you know, don't have, you know, the right. Haven't said the Right. Things about the artist that I care about. So that was one concern. The other is really that I don't think the counterculture as a whole. Everyone's aware of what it is, or people of my generation are for sure. But over the years, it's turned into kind of, it's become a kind of very two dimensional kind of stereotype, frankly. And people haven't really thought about what the counterculture was, what it was dealing with. And in this sense, you know, Rolling Stone had to overcome a lot of media complacency and stereotypes about the counterculture. So they were a real breath of fresh air when, when they came on the scene. And to really understand that, you have to understand what the counterculture was. And so I spent a little bit of time going into that and talking about its importance and talking about the centrality of it to, to the, to the magazine's editorial formula. And without that, without that understanding and that, you know, our sort of familiarity with the counterculture kind of dims with each passing year. You really can't understand what the magazine was trying to do. And if you don't understand what it was trying to do, you can't really, you can't really gauge its success.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, there's certainly a lot there to think about, especially as the magazine continues. So what might you be working on then going forward? Anything related to this or not? Anything you want to give us a sneak preview of?

[Peter Richardson]

Well, I'm still, I'm looking at a few things. The only one that's really related to this is more on this fellow, Theodore Roszak, who I mentioned at the top of the program. He's the person who named the counterculture or at least popularized that term. And he's such a shrewd observer. And, you know, toward the end of the book, I talk a little bit about, about the counterculture and its, you know, afterlife in Silicon Valley. And Roszak was also a very shrewd observer of Silicon Valley Culture in 1984, I think it is. He writes a book that says, you know, keep an eye on these guys. You know, now they seem like, you know, friendly hippies. You know, in the future they might. He, he didn't see any way that, that the, that big tech was not going to be put to service in the national security state, you know, ever more intensive surveillance and control, which is another aspect of his prophecy, I think. Now, Rolling Stone had been great at. They ran an article in December of 1972 too, predicting the arrival of the personal computer and robotics and the Internet and artificial intelligence and natural language processing and on and on. That was an article written by a guy named Stuart Brand, which turned out to be incredibly prophetic, considering that it would be another five years before Apple would be formed and they would put their first personal computer out on the market. So, you know, Rolling Stone has a role to play in all this, but there's something about Roszak, too, that I, that I'm attracted to. So I feature him in the book as well. And I just think he had a lot of shrewd insights about the counterculture and then also about Silicon Valley, which really kind of replaces the counterculture in the San Francisco Bay area in terms of its kind of global identity. You know, we used to be famous for being, you know, bohemian outpost and a, you know, a global rock capital, a gay mecca and so on, and then some, you know, somewhere along the line in there, I think people around the globe began to think actually what that place really is is a tech capital. And that's, that's kind of been our identity now for the at least a generation. But there's a whole story there about how, how those two cultures are related. I'd like to get at that a little bit too.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, that certainly sounds interesting and relevant. So best of luck with that investigation. And of course, while you're doing it, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Brand New the Wild Rise of Rolling Stone magazine, published by the University of California Press in 2026. Peter, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

[Peter Richardson]

Thank you so much for having me, Miranda. Foreign.

[Athletic Brewing Company Sponsor]

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in with a full lineup of non alcoholic beer styles. You can enjoy both old flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half, stock the fridge for tipoff with a variety of nonalcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing. Com. Near Beer fit for all times.