>Despite his and his magazine's avowedly liberal politics, there can be no question that Jan Wenner and the staff during the "classic" era of Rolling Stone Magazine clearly had a slant towards one type of musical expression, which may be politely summed up as "white male rock stars." The magazine seldom covered women artists, or African-Americans, or African-American genres such as soul, funk, and disco--as Greil Marcus once complained, "We pretty much all hated disco and had zero interest in it." (a few small exceptions were made for rock-aligned token blacks such as Jimi Hendrix or Chuck Berry). Until years later the staff of the magazine was almost entirely white (or Jewish) males with no women or nonwhite writers. Wenner was also on record as stating that white men musicians made for the most interesting interview subjects.
>>131710517>Jimi Hendrix’s legacy is only of being a token tap-dancing Uncle Tom sell out>modern blacks and leftists pretend he never existed Grim
>>131710517Wenner was gay as shit, bro. He was mainly interested in musicians he found hot, like Bruce Springsteen.
>>131710517>Wenner was also on record as stating that white men musicians made for the most interesting interview subjects.and he was right
well duh. I always assumed that Rolling Stone was a publication that covered rock music. so its obviously going to feature the people who make rock music, right?its like picking up a magazine about hip hop and saying waaaait a minute all these people are BLACKwhenceuponforth came the quote?
why do leftists end up always cancelling each other?
>>131710517>America 1970s>White people are 90% of the country >White rock music and rock stars dominate the pop music scene>Rolling Stone magazine covers what's relevant at the time to sell magazines and stay in business >50 years later some Amerimutt with no talent whines about itAnd that's why media is dead
>>131710658>White people are 90% of the countrywait didn't they count Jews and Mexicans as white in the census back then?
>>131710678They were statistically irrelevant in 1976. California the most diverse state was 80% white, and that's why you had dozens of rock bands form in California and make it as rockstars. The country is pretty much done and rock music is dead.
>>131710678ignore the mentally ill /pol/shit
>>131710719You're the one who's mentally deficient. You can't communicate if your incorrect worldview is being challenged.
>>131710517Cuckgau was the only major rock critic back then who regularly reviewed black music and he tried to cover a little of everything instead of just rock. Most of them didn't care about it except for Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, and electric bluesmen.
>>131710678Probably Middle Easterners too.
>>131710517don't get me wrong I love disco write about it all you want i'll read it but but we can do without women writers
What is OP beating his gums about?
>>131710541I’ve noticed that the boomer myth is around Hendrix has largely been replaced with the image of him being a token black who sucked up to white people. It’s a shame cause he was a legitimately great guitarist. Not the best ever but still
>>131710895wait didn't Cuckgau claim that back in 1967?
lol they were doing election conspiracy stuff all the way back then
>>131710951That's not a left or right thing before you asked, it's an Amerifat thing.
>>131710939Yeah there were definitely those criticism of Jimi at the time but after he died until the last 15 years the whole boomer legend of him being the coolest greatest guitarist ever was how most people thought of him
Didn't RSM dictate what bands got in the R&R Hall of Fame?
>>131710951This Eric Redman character is a real piece of work btw. Nowadays hugely involved in the green energy scam.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Redman_(businessman)
oldfag anon here. when i was a kid during the grunge era my well-meaning aunt got me a RSM subscription but they never covered any of the music i was into.
>>131711087he just sounds like a generic PNW boomer hippie to me
>>131711013A lot of the attacks on Hendrix at the time were fueled by Motown which had a vested interest in denouncing black musicians who didn't conform to their vision of polite harmony funk.
>>131711206Well they won out in the end cause now Hendrix is seen as a token sell out who kissed whitey’s ass
>>131710745he also sometimes liked stupid music like Village People. RSM back then were very very pretentious and serious business, nothing but sober folk and singer-songwriter rock was acceptable.
>>131713329everyone who knows anything about that rag knows they were only interested in music as a vehicle for New Left politics and if it didn't fulfill that function they panned it
>>131713354>>131713329That's New York vs California lol. You can see that dichotomy in hip-hop: the NYC scene was humorous, the LA scene was pretentious.
>>131713392that was because NYC was such a shithole in the 70s-80s that they could kind of laugh at themselves and be self-deprecating while Cali was rich and self-important.
I love how they retrospectively gave 5 stars to Zeppelin, Sabbath, AC/DC etc after demolishing them in the 70s.
>>131713354^This. My cousin used to laugh at how critics ripped apart practically all his favorite bands back then.
the whole problem with being a critic is that by the time you're an adult who has a job writing about music you're too old to be entertained by music meant for 14 year olds, but 14 year olds are too young and immature to write anything interesting about music
>>131713533Nah Dave Marsh was probably always a bullied cunt nobody liked when he was 14.
like, seriously, guys. Springsteen isn't as awesome and a genius as you make him out to be.
>>131713682He is pretty good though
>>131713574>>131713682DAVE MARSH WAS MARRIED TO SPRINGSTEEN'S PUBLICIST. HE WAS LITERALLY A PAID SPRINGSTEEN MARKETER.
>>131710895The last big completely out of touch thing I remember with the magazine was ranking Prince out of the top 100 guitarists. Then Prince shows up as a guest player at the George Harrison memorial and blows the other guitarists out of the water.Prince was one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th Century but it just wasn't Rolling Stone's "style".Now of course they overcompensate and a quarter of their top 500 songs is rap shit. Don't get me wrong; there's some great rap songs out there. But they have pretty much every significant FEMALE black rap artists represented at least once and it's silly.
>>131713682John Cougar Mellencamp >>>> Bruce Springsteen.
>>131713533i still never get over how they somehow tried to connect punk rock to 50s R&R when the two had nothing alike
>>131714304Basically "does it have an electric guitar" is their barometer for being Rock and Roll derivative.
>>131714304it was more the idea of punk being short, amateurish songs instead of big bucks 70s AOR done at Sunset Recorders in between lines of coke
Who is more overrated by Rolling Stone? The Beatles, or Bob Dylan?(Recognizing both were great but neither the Alpha and Omega of rock and roll).
Jan Wenner had a short list of artists who were not allowed to ever get a bad review which included the Stones and Dylan. Cuckgau didn't love everything they did or even every Springsteen album, but RSM always ensured all of them got 5 stars.
>>131714372The Stones, Beatles and Springsteen all have works that range from brilliant, to just catchy, to not really very good or listenable/pretentious.
>>131714372eg. Greil Marcus's famous one-sentence pan of Self-Portrait: "What is this shit?" Wenner retracted the review in a subsequent issue and gave it a glowing write-up.
>>131710541America's black radio stations wouldn't play him when he was starting out or once he got famous
>>131713682I feel he wouldn't have gotten the dicksucking he did if one of their own (Jon Landau) didn't produce him.
Pink Houses >>> Born in the USA
>>131714451no of course not. as he said, Motown ran black pop with an iron fist back then and if you didn't sound like a way they approved of, you didn't get airplay.
>>131714467Stax and Memphis soul in general was unapologetically southern and gritty and it was enormously popular.
>>131713510it was apparently probably as early as 1970 that critics and average rock fans had two entirely different ideas of what rock was supposed to be. one of them was that average rock fans loved all the live jams and 15 minute solos that critics groaned at.
