The Covers of Rolling Stone
Kurt, Janet, Jay-Z, Britney, and more Icons
For fifty years, Rolling Stone magazine has exhibited some of the most beautiful and iconic pop culture covers in the history of print media. Under the watchful and often brilliant eye of the editor-in-chief, Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone became the touchstone for music fans around the world, delivering articles by important journalists like Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, and movie director Cameron Crowe, who based his film, Almost Famous on his experience working for the magazine as a 15-year-old rock writer.
But the photography is what we believe propelled the magazine to greatness, and made appearing on the cover one of the most coveted achievements in the music industry. In fact, having a Rolling Stone cover was such a huge symbol of having “made it” in the music and pop culture world, a song was written about it, by Playboy magazine illustrator and The Giving Tree author, Shel Silverstein. “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” was a hit single recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show and was featured in a scene in Crow‘s Almost Famous.
Behind the lens of those now-iconic images stood the best in the biz: Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts, Mark Seliger, Matthew Rolston, and Albert Watson, among many, many others. The book, Rolling Stone: 50 Years of Covers, which came out last year, is now available in paperback. We’ve gathered a few of our favorite covers from the last half century. Enjoy the show.
