‘50 Years of Rolling Stone’: Photographic gems and memorable moments you missed the first time around
Jann S. Wenner needed a job. It was as simple as that. He was 21 and a die-hard music fan, he writes in “50 Years of Rolling Stone,” and the idea that clicked was a rock ’n’ roll newspaper. Which is how in 1967, a ragtag, biweekly newspaper called Rolling Stone got its start, published out of a San Francisco warehouse.
“50 Years of Rolling Stone,” a large-format coffee table book, chronicles the magazine’s history in photographs and articles spanning music, politics and pop culture.
Many of the images, from photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Baron Wolman, Richard Avedon and Mark Seliger, are beyond familiar. They’re visual touchstones seared into our collective consciousness: a bare-chested, scraggly-haired Jim Morrison defiantly staring down the camera; a naked John Lennon curled in a fetal position around his denim-clad love, Yoko Ono; a pore-defining close-up of John Belushi’s stubbly face, wrapped in vintage aviator’s goggles; a blissed-out Bette Midler splayed out on a bed of fresh, thorny roses.
Here’s a sampling of some of the lesser-known images from the book.
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