Customer Reviews

Rolling Stone: The Complete Covers

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This book is a virtual history of American rock'n'roll. Each cover says something about the times, such as the now rather melancholy shot of Nirvana, form early 1994, on the verge of a huge comeback, just months before Kurt Cobain shot himself, or Annie Leibovitz's moody 1971 study of John Lennon, then deeply into his Working Class Hero phase. Rock'n'roll stars compete for cover space with politicians and film stars, depending upon what the issue or the hot stuff of the day was - Warren Beatty and Jerry Falwell both feature in political and pop-cultural contexts (the shot of Beatty is from 1975, when he was promoting Shampoo, a film set just days before the Kennedy assassination) and the text is sprinkled with plenty of choice quotes form both camps, making this a book to be slowly savoured for its pictorial and historical content time and time again.

In the words of Mick Jagger to Rolling Stone, "You set the tone of a magazine by the cover - that's very important". He is correct. From issue #1 of Nov. 1967, John Lennon launches Rolling Stone in war garb and continues to grace more covers with and without the Beatles. "The Complete Covers" is a time machine of photographs (most from acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz) reminding us of the issues that we faced and the climate of the music. We can watch our rock heroes get older with us and witness the new birth of music groups over again. Politics are always included at critical time periods and, of course, our more liberal movie stars are here to set another kind of tome for the period. Although ending in 1997 with the cover of 'Women In Rock', you can bet that Rolling Stone gives us another in 2027. Enjoy!

The book is a graphical historical document, showing all the covers from Rolling Stone magazine until the time of its edition. It could be argued that this is nothing more than a marketing gimmick to leverage off the work of photographers of the stature of Annie Leibovitz. But in fact, just like the Rolling Stone magazine has been since its beginning, this is about the history of music since 1967 until 1997. The deaths and triumphs of everyone are in it: Morrison, Hendrix, Lennon, Cobain, alongside Madonna, U2 and all your favorite stars.

from the very first opening of the cover you know its gonna be a high-classmagazine cover book. It features new artists, and old, with very rich photos and informative captions on many. Very rich color, so rich you forget you're looking at a book on magazine covers. Features Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson, Green Day, Hole, Nirvana, the Wallflowers (hense the back) and more for those who like the artists. Others such as Elvis, Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan (hense the cover) and Sharon Stone, exploring all the intimate stories behind some of the MOST famous covers. Documents every, or almost every cover in the history of the infamous Rolling Stone Magazine in their run. An essential for cultural info buffs and makes a nice present.

Seeing many of the covers again (I was a subscriber in the seventies) is like going back in time - and seeing many of the covers for the first time makes me wonder why I stopped being a subscriber.
I bought this book after having seen an exhibition of Annie Leibovitz, and to me she is still one of the greatest.

I have owned this book for a few years now, and I still cannot get enough of it. I use it as a coffee table book, and it is a great casual flip book. My friends come over all the time and browse through the years and years of covers. I am a huge fan of Rolling Stone magazine and all of its history, so this was a great book for me. I have only been reading the magazine for five or ten years now, so I enjoy viewing the pop culture icons of the past. My favorite covers are those from the sixties' era, with people such as Janis Joplin and the Beatles. I also love the more recent early nineties' covers because those are the issues I used to steal from my parents and sneak reading. However, I will say, that I read a Rolling Stone special issue in which they showed the most influential photographers and gave brief stories, anecdotes, or reasons of the photo's importance, and I would have loved to have seen those type of stories in this book. Also, a newer edition has been released and includes even more current covers than this book. I would have upgraded if the size had been the same as this book. I like the large, wide pages, and the newer book does not show the actual size of the photographs on the covers, with a more pocket-sized edition of the pictures. I have eyed the DVD 40th anniversary box set for some time now, and I am looking to invest in the set to learn more about the stories behind the covers and their issues. All in all, this is a great picture book of an iconic magazine for browsing amazing people in pop culture history.

The covers of Rolling Stone Magazine have been controversial, memorable and are a marker for musicians that they have made it. Some covers have created a stir such as a teenage Britney Spears posing in a provocative outfit, a topless Janet Jackson with a pair of male hands covering her and the last photograph session of John Lennon in which he is naked on a bed next to a fully clothed Yoko Ono. Most of the covers are simple photographs of everyone from Bob Dylan to Richard Nixon and even Dr. Hook who sang a song called "Cover Of The Rolling Stone", but they are some of the best works by the some of the best photographers in business like Annie Leibovitz and Herb Ritts.

One Magazine that has covered Pop Culture for so long.while Rolling Stone has Been as Lame as MTV for almost a Decade now in it's past Glory the Covers were as Interesting as the Story's that were being told.Music&Pop History on display here.I Like TO Remember when Rolling Stone actually Kinda Mattered.

The cover alone forfiets the ability of this book to rest upon the coffee tables of most. Yes, we all understand the sociological insight the editors have leapt to with the twin placement of a Scraggly Alice Cooper on one side and a Demonic M. Manson on the other -- but the book is not a pantheon to demon music, so why put these two as the only options to show the world what the last thirty years of entertainment were all about. Amazon shows an alternate cover with a peaceful J. Dylan on the cover (my guess is the parallel would have his dad on the flip side of the book). While also not exactly genius-level insight, it would still be a heck of a lot more presentable than the tome shipped to me. ONE BIG AAAACK.

This book was one of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books for Young Adults 1998. It was originally reviewed in SLJ in August of 1998.