The Guardian’s Jon Wilde poses the “where did the good music-magazine covers go?” question today, and it’s a salient point. But any media observer could tell you that the art of the eye-catching magazine cover has seemingly been lost in general, not just when it comes to music rags; subtlety and irreverence have gone out the window across the board, only to be replaced by a stew of numbers, obvious favor-trading, celebrity-name mishmashes, and big-money baby pics.
Two recent covers of American music magazines do, however, break the moribund-cover mold; the Pete Doherty cover of the most recent Spin has a well-shot photo (snapped by French designer Hedi Slimane) and at the very least it represents a risk, having as its centerpiece an artist who’s probably familiar to most newsstand buyers through name only. And the Photoshopped-Britney cover of the most recent Blender did have a bit of a spark to it; too bad that the cheekiness exhibited within will probably be chucked by the wayside in the new, respectful-of-artists regime.
Being a Brit, Wilde’s gold standard for magazine covers is the NME, back in the days when it would actually take chances and get sorta-arty with its covers, while his least favorites were the ones proffered by the forever-out-of-touch Rolling Stone:
Little did I know it [in 1977] but the music magazine cover had entered its golden age, at least as far as NME was concerned. For the next six years, moody black and white shots by Anton Corbijn, Pennie Smith and Kevin Cummins dominated. The best of those covers are etched on my memory as though carved there by a master stonemason. Captain Beefheart in the desert. Ian McCulloch standing next to a horse. A smacked-out Iggy caressing a gnarled tree. Joe Strummer at his typewriter. Kevin Rowland in his dungarees. Paul Weller with loincloth and spear. These are the issues I’ve held onto and stored in an air-tight box at the back of the attic.
At their most striking, NME covers managed to be completely of their time and yet managed to outlast that time. No other music publication came close. Least of all Rolling Stone. Now that Rolling Stone’s entire archive of covers has been made available online, I’m reminded that its covers were the main reason why I tended to give the magazine a wide berth, even when mag-buying became my runaway addiction. With hackneyed typography and a backward-looking selection of cover artists (Boz Scaggs, Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon continuing to hold sway even as punk roared loudest), Rolling Stone’s covers rarely aspired to be timely and therefore could never hope to be considered timelessly iconic. Apart, that is, from their obituary covers that invariably struck exactly the right note.
Likewise, some of NME’s front page obituaries (Elvis, Lennon, Marvin Gaye) proved to be among its most striking and memorable. By the time of their iconic Kurt Cobain death issue, however, the golden age of NME covers was long gone. Some would argue that the baton was passed along to monthly magazines like Mojo. As eye-catching as some Mojo covers have been (New York Punk, Soul Riot, Nick Drake), the mag’s dependency on retro acts means that it’s never far from the comfort zone. When confronted with yet another homage to Beatles/Stones/Hendrix, am I alone in longing for the heady days when NME pushed unsigned bands out front, seducing the reader with exotic obscurities like Pop Group and Gang of Four? Or the days when it would take a rest from music altogether and suck us in with images of Pat Phoenix, Hitchcock and nuclear power stations?
Nuclear power stations? Something tells me that cover would only work if there were members of the Pussycat Dolls hanging out outside. Or maybe if the nuclear power plant was located in Springfield.
Music magazine covers no longer grab me [Guardian]
Let’s be honest here, shall we? Although there are plenty of reasons to criticize Rolling Stone (celebrity worship, Wenner’s nepotism, etc), to dismiss the RS of the late-70s (when “punk roared loudest”) for running covers of Boz Scaggs and Linda Rondstadt is revisionism at best, disingenuous at worst. While punk might have been “roaring” in the U.K. it was barely a blip on the radar in the U.S.
Even when the time came that we could boast of our own homegrown punk scene (1980-81?), it was largely a coastal occurence…people between NYC and LA were still listening to Scaggs and Carly Simon. Of course, we won’t mention the trainwreck that was the RS covers of the late-90s “boy band/pop tart” era…wotta smellbag! But it would be the mid-80s, at least, before Rolling Stone really lost its way as a cultural touchstone (and the covers of the era reflect such).
They’ve been doing that for years, the plain white background thing, haven’t they?
Regarding the specific cover shot shown above, does anyone know the name of that cream that coroners use, they put it under their nostrils when they have to examine a particularly rotten cadaver? They used it in Silence of the Lambs. I’m guessing the poor girls standing next to Mr. Rock had to use it too. Poor dears.
Gotta give a shout out to The Wire if we’re talking about contemporary magazine covers. That magazine is easily the best-designed music mag out there–starting with the cover and ending with every last little detail.
@Marth: Not only that, but they had have been using the exact same color scheme for about a month, although I’m sure the artist-on-white-backdrop thing’s been going for over a year straight now.
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People got dumber.
It’s been driving me crazy that pretty much every Rolling Stone cover for the last year and a half (or more?) has been just the artist on a plain white background. At least try to do something interesting!