The premise of Strolling One is simple: Review old copies of Rolling Stone, fifty-ish years after they were first published. Exactly who first said, “newspapers are the first draft of history” is disputed, but that dynamic is on full display in these magazines. Looking at contemporary accounts of what was then the emerging counterculture allow for insights that historians might miss. The new generation was pursuing every available path in an effort to discover its identity, and a lot of those messy attempts at finding meaning are documented in the pages of Rolling Stone. Issue by issue, I’m going through them here as a springboard into music, cultural history, and more.
Origins
This site’s roots can be traced to a phone call I received one day from my friend Sherry Tobin of Broken Space Studio, a talented artist who works with found objects. She had been given several boxes of old copies of Rolling Stone magazine, with the idea that they might be useful fodder for collages. “They don’t work very well for me since they’re not printed on glossy paper,” she said. “Would you like them?” I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them but I had the sense she wanted to get rid of them as part of cleaning up her workspace for an open studios event, so I said yes.
As for me, I’m Jay Hipps. As a writer and reporter I’ve covered a variety of topics including business, international and club soccer, and spirituality, but music is my first love. Thanks for stopping by. I think this is going to be fun.