Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

Volume One, Number One

November 9, 1967– Rolling Stone Magazine Publishes its First Issue

“Magazines that depend on photography, and design, and long reads, and quality stuff, are going to do just fine despite the Internet and cable news.”

Jann Wenner

It is now geared mostly for geezers, but in its day, Rolling Stone was revolutionary. 50 years later, the magazine still publishes biweekly (plus a website) with a focus on Rock Music, Politics and Pop Culture. It was founded in San Francisco by Jann Wenner, who is still the magazine’s publisher, along with music critic Ralph J. Gleason.

I am still just crazy about magazines. Even with some of my favorites biting the dust (I really miss Spy), I still gave up on Rolling Stone about a decade ago, when the Artist Of The Year was someone I had never heard of, making me feel impossibly old. It was Wilco. I know who they are now, but you get the drift. But, when I do happen upon a copy somewhere like the doctor’s office, I become absorbed and read it cover to cover.

Wenner set up Rolling Stone Magazine in 1967 in a small loft in San Francisco with help from a $7000 loan from friends and family. The first run was 5000 copies. Since then, Wenner has won a bunch of awards and transformed his magazine business into a multimillion-dollar global publishing empire, licensing Rolling Stone in 20 countries and setting up two other lifestyle magazines.

By 1967, Rock ‘N’ Roll was evolving and maturing at a fast pace, and Wenner provided a written platform that reflected and even shaped those changes. Wenner wrote many of the articles, columns and reviews for Rolling Stone and facilitated penetrating interviews with popular figures such as John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs and dumb-fuck Donald Trump. Wenner says that the name of magazine is an homage to the 1950 blues song, Rollin’ Stone by Muddy Waters, the band the Rolling Stones, and Dylan’s hit single Like A Rolling Stone.

Wenner made it clear that Rolling Stone was not just about music:

“It’s also about the things and attitudes that the music embraces…”

That’s what he wrote in the very first issue, dated November 9, 1967. Some of those other things include films, books, politics and celebrity gossip, anything that might interest a literate readership. Wenner described Rolling Stone as “sort of a magazine and sort of a newspaper”. Prior to the launch, Wenner had worked as a journalist for NBC News and the political/literary Ramparts Magazine. Despite the Rock music theme, he brought a professionalism that set Rolling Stone apart from the other counterculture periodicals of the era.

Under Wenner’s guidance, some of admirable writers became famous in its pages: Tim Cahill, Joe Eszterhas, Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, Joe Klein, Patti Smith, Michael Hastings, Matt Taibbi and P. J. O’Rourke. Hunter S. Thompson wrote for the magazine’s political section. Thompson first published his most famous work Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas in Rolling Stone, where he remained a contributing editor until his passing in 2005. Tom Wolfe wrote a four-part series in 1973 titled Post-Orbital Remorse about the depression that some astronauts experienced after having been in space. The material eventually became his non-fiction book The Right Stuff (1979). Wolfe’s first novel, the satirical Bonfire Of The Vanities (1987), with his take on ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s, appeared in serial form in the magazine to critical acclaim.

Wenner’s keen eye has brought a strong visual focus to Rolling Stone, where the great photographers Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon and Mark Seliger made an art form out of celebrity photography.

Never shy of covering controversial subject matter, Rolling Stone has brought some controversy of its own. In the November 19, 2014 issue, the story A Rape On Campus about an alleged gang rape on the campus of the University of Virginia was printed. Separate inquiries by Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity accused by Rolling Stone of facilitating the alleged rape, and The Washington Post, revealed major errors, omissions and discrepancies in the magazine’s story. Reporter Sabrina Erdely’s piece was subject to intense media criticism. The Washington Post and Boston Herald called for magazine staff involved in the report to be fired. Rolling Stone issued three apologies for the story. And lawsuits are still being litigated.

The August 2013 Rolling Stone cover, featuring then-accused, later convicted, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, brought widespread condemnation. Critics claimed the magazine was “glamorizing terrorism”. The online edition of the article was accompanied by a short editorial stating that the story “falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day”. The controversial cover photograph that was used by Rolling Stone had previously been featured on the front page of The NY Times.

Rolling Stone gets it right most of the time. In July 2010, it ran an article by Hastings, The Runaway General, quoting criticism by General Stanley A. McChrystal, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan commander, about Vice President Joe Biden and other members of the White House. McChrystal resigned shortly after his statements went public. That same year, Taibbi documented illegal and fraudulent actions by U.S. banks in the foreclosure courts, Invasion Of The Home Snatchers.

With all the stories about impossible deadlines, all-night writing sessions and general debauchery he experienced with rock stars and hard-living journalists like Hunter S. Thompson, Wenner really should have been a goner years ago, or at least showing a bit of wear and tear at 71-years-old. Instead, he and his magazine look handsome and strong than ever.

Photograph by Baron Wolman. Courtesy of Rolling Stone Archives

Photograph from CBS News, via YouTube

In September, Wenner Media announced that 51% of Rolling Stone is up for sale, in case you want to get into the media business.

Wenner came out of the closet in 1995. He is in a longtime relationship with fashion designer Matt Nye. Together, they have have three children. Rolling Stone has always done a first-class job of covering LGBTQ issues.

Some artists have been featured on the cover many times, and some of these pictures became iconic. The Beatles have appeared on the cover more than 30 times, either individually or as a band. The first 10 issues featured, in order of appearance: John Lennon, Tina Turner, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Otis Redding, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Monterey Pop Festival, Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Eric Clapton.

The Ten Best Albums Of All Time:

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

The Beatles – Revolver

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

The Beatles – Rubber Soul

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On

Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street

The Clash – London Calling

Bob Dylan – Blonde On Blonde

The Beatles- The Beatles

Ten Best Albums Of 2016:

Beyoncé– Lemonade

David Bowie– Blackstar

Chance The Rapper– Coloring Book

Car Seat Headrest– Teens Of Denial

Frank Ocean– Blond

Radiohead– A Moon Shaped Pool

Rolling Stones– Blue & Lonesome

Kanye West– The Life Of Pablo

Leonard Cohen– You Want It Darker

Young Thug– Jeffery

The post #OnThisDay: 1967, Rolling Stone Magazine Publishes its First Issue appeared first on The WOW Report.

BBC, via YouTube

November 10, 1945- Terence Davies

“I’m gay, I live alone and I’ve been celibate for 30 years.”

Davies, the terrifically talented film director/screenwriter seems to have a thing for stories of unfulfilling marriages set in the 1950s. Not surprising really, when you consider the harrowing story of his parents’ marriage. Davies:

“My mum had a terrible life because my father was a complete psychopath. She never once complained. She got on with it. That’s what you did. It moves me more than I can say. Where do you go with 10 kids? There were no women’s refuges. If you had a bad marriage, that was it. Women did not leave their husbands.”

He goes back to his childhood in the slightly fictionalized films Distant Voices, Still Lives(1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992).

I found his The Deep Blue Sea to be the best film of 2011. It’s an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play from 1952 that had already had a film treatment directed by Anatole Litvak in 1955, starring Vivien Leigh. The Deep Blue Sea is the story of what happens when a wife walks out on a marriage in the 1950s. Rattigan’s original production shocked audiences because the wife, Hester, played perfectly by Rachel Weisz in the film, does not leave her husband because he abuses her, but for something even more socially unacceptable back then. At 40-years-old, she discovers sex and it absolutely overwhelms her. She is married to a rather nice, cultured man, played by openly gay Simon Russell Beale. But he is also sexless and under the thumb to his mother. Davies:

“That combination of love and sexuality makes her say, I’ve got to go with this, I’ve got to follow my hormones. If only I’d done that in my life. But let’s not go there.”

He was asked to adapt this new version of The Deep Blue Sea by The Rattigan Trust to mark the 100th anniversary of the playwright’s birth. Rattigan, who was also gay, set the story in austere postwar Britain. Davies is especially gifted at depicting this period. Davies:

“Because I grew up in the 1950s, I know not only what it looked like, but what it felt like. It was drab, but what you had you kept well.”

Davies may say drab, but his The Deep Blue Sea is visually sumptuous. It reminds me of the heartbreaking Brief Encounter, David Lean’s lovely film from 1945 that was based on a play by Noël Coward. But, Brief Encounter’s wife, heartbreakingly played by Celia Johnson, returns to her dull marriage after her afternoon dalliance, while The Deep Blue Sea’s Hester has no way to go home. Her decision to follow her sexual desires proves disastrous. She tosses off her marriage when she falls for a sexy RAF pilot Freddie, played by my boo Tom Hiddleston. Hester tells her husband, a wealthy, sophisticated judge: “You can’t go back to living on the plains after you’ve discovered something so …” He says: “Primitive?” Hester replies: “Shall we say natural?”

Why did these two successful gay playwrights, Coward and Rattigan, choose to portray womens’ frustration with marriage? Davies:

“Perhaps they have a closer sensibility to women. I certainly know I feel that closeness, especially to northern women because they’re funny.”

The Deep Blue Sea may also have been a way for Rattigan to deal with the grief over his lover who killed himself. All the main characters want a different kind of love. None of them can reciprocate, and that’s the tragedy.

You also really have to see Davies’ adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House Of Mirth (2000). I don’t understand why this film is so generally ignored. It has an unexpected intensity and a genuine passion in its adaptation of Wharton’s novel about love, cruelty and guile in early 20th century American High Society. Gillian Anderson is astonishing in the lead role. She is somehow able to convey a calibrated, technically accomplished range of emotions, from mischief to erotic rapture, from despair to self-loathing. Sometimes she is sleek and sunny and sometimes sick, puffy and bathed with cold sweat. The House Of Mirth has a remarkable ability to render a profound sense of past, like all of Davis’ films. It also has such a strong contemporary resonance that you nearly forget about the horses and corsets and lamplights.

Davies was born in Liverpool, with working-class Catholic parents. He was the youngest child in a family with ten children. Though raised Catholic by a deeply religious mother, he describes himself as an atheist.

He left home when he was 16-years-old and worked for the next decade as an office clerk before leaving Liverpool to study at Coventry Drama School. At school, he wrote a screenplay that eventually became his first autobiographical film, Children (1976). He found that he was well suited to making films and he transferred to National Film School where he made Madonna And Child (1980), the second story of Davies’ stand-in, Robert Tucker, about his years as that clerk in Liverpool. Three years later, he completed the trilogy with Death And Transfiguration (1983), where he imagines the circumstances of his own death. These three short films became known as The Terence Davies Trilogy, winning many awards when shown together.

Because of his gay sensibility and gay-themed screenplays, Davies’ has only eight more feature films so far.

One of them, Neon Bible, is also a literary adaptation, this one from a novel by gay American writer John Kennedy Toole, whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy Of Dunces (1980) won the Pulitzer Prize. Toole’s writing was rejected during his lifetime. After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he committed suicide in 1969. He was just 31-years-old.

In 2015, there was Sunset Song, his a visually stunning movie about a rural Scottish lass growing-up just before WW I. It is one of Davies’ finest works and a smart example of traditional techniques and modern sensibilities coming together to create a challenging and unique film. It feels as if it might have been made in the 1940s… if there had been no censorship. There is graphic sex and violence, and it doesn’t hold back from difficulties of living in that time and place. But there is so much empathy for the characters and such awareness of the social, political and historical forces at play during that era.

Last winter saw the release of A Quiet Passion about the life of American poet Emily Dickinson, starring out and proud gay actor Cynthia Nixon. It has Davies’ usual sumptuous photography, and respect and love for its subject.

Davies is currently finishing shooting a biopic of gay poet and WW I veteran Siegfried Sassoon titled Benediction, timed to be released a year from today, the centenary of the end of the that most terrible of wars. He is yet to make a film set later than 1955, and he joked:

“If I did a car chase, it would be two cars going very slowly.”

An adaptation of Richard McCann’s novel Mother Of Sorrows (2005), a gay man’s elegy to his mother, is set in the 1980s and begins filming next year.

Davies has written that his kind of elegant films are out of step with today’s culture, and that producers are reluctant to fund them even with the awards he has gathered during his 40 year career.

“I don’t know why people go to the cinema any more. People don’t run around with guns blowing things up in my films. If I did a car chase, it would be two cars going very, very slowly. I was once sent a gangster script and I said, ‘What do I know about gangsters? Or drugs?’ I take the odd junior aspirin when I’m not supposed to. But nothing stronger.”