Today I received a gigantic parcel in the post. It was a whole stack of Australian Rolling Stone magazines (broadsheets) from the seventies. I think my friend who sent it was a subscriber back then and now he thinks I can learn something from reading them. Well, I have. They take up a lot of room and they smell.
Aside from that, they're fantastic. All that cut-and-paste artwork and line and screen bromides on the insides. Not a hashtag in sight. When I think he must have waited patiently for each edition, I'm very lucky to receive them all in one go. They will go under the knife, literally, but I think he expects that.
When I was a kid I was given a cardboard box of American Popular Mechanics magazines from the forties and fifties (not from the same guy who gave me the Rolling Stones) . I would read and reread and re-reread them. Over and over. I was interested in the artwork and the printing as much as the strange writing style and the ads for things like insurance and outboard motors.
Back cover of Rolling Stone October 1976.
Foxing, lady