- This article is about the music magazine. For the rock band, see The Rolling Stones.
Rolling Stone is a music and music industry magazine.
Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason (Wenner is still editor and publisher). Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, the magazine embraced and reported on the hippy counterculture. Rolling Stone's rise to fame was synchronous with that of such bands as the Grateful Dead. It was so popular during this era that a song dedicated to it, "Cover of the Rolling Stone" by Dr Hook and the Medicine Show, became a hit single.
By the 1980s, despite still nominally employing icons such as Hunter S. Thompson and the infamous rock-journalist badboy Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone had become institutionalized and adopted mainstream ideas that it had shunned earlier (e.g., employee drug testing). The magazine moved to New York to be closer to the advertising industry, and many date its change in culture from this point.
In the early 2000s, facing declining revenue due to the rapid rise of young men's magazines such as Maxim and FHM, Rolling Stone reinvented itself, targeting a lower age group and offering more sex-oriented content. In 2002, they published their list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2004, Rolling Stone put out a list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. That same year, the magazine stated that it would continue to put out special issues occasionally.
International editions
Further reading
- Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History - Robert Draper
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