“Spin” and “Rolling Stone” Get Into Catfight Over Amy Winehouse

Brian Raftery | May 17, 2007 5:38 am

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You’ll be seeing a lot of Amy Winehouse on the newsstands in the coming weeks–and all because Jann Wenner hates hearing the word “no.”

According to a source close to the situation, Winehouse was booked as an exclusive for the July cover of Spin; such exclusivity deals are common among the music mags, as competing covers with the same subject tends to hurt newsstand sales and cool cred. Winehouse did an interview and a photo shoot with Terry Richardson, and all was well in the Spin world.

That is, until a few days ago, when Wenner decided that the British singer should be on the cover of Rolling Stone; after he was told that Spin had gotten to her first, Wenner circumvented the label’s publicists altogether and personally lobbied Universal head Doug Morris for the cover (UPDATE: Another source says it was in fact Universal president Monte Lipman). The gambit worked, and the RS Winehouse write-up–which we’re told is being put together, like, right now–will now come out in early June, beating Spin by a few weeks.

A representative for Rolling Stone had no comment, and we’re still waiting for word from Universal. But when we contacted Spin editor Doug Brod, he said: “We at Spin are proud to have inspired Rolling Stone’s choice of cover subjects. As always, if there’s anything else they need, they can feel free to call us anytime. By the way, our next cover’s Bob Dylan. But don’t tell anyone.”

And Good Lord, don’t even get us started about the inherent conflicts of this post.