Straight to Video
Rock Art Rock
See more in the Rock Art Rock gallery.
polls
Loading ...
Every Pebble On the Road, It’s By Chance We Met
A few weeks ago, I awoke to a sunny Friday morning in San Francisco. I dropped $2 on a Colombia brewed coffee, loaded into my dusty and dented purple Ford Escort, and headed out of the city for an hour drive to Sonoma to meet Paul Williams, the godfather of rock journalism.
The night before, a calm washed over me. Considering I was preparing to meet a guy who is widely considered the founder of rock ‘n’ roll criticism, underscored by the fact that I’m the new editor of the namesake he created, things felt okay. Really, they shouldn’t have.
A part of me should’ve been ready to crawl in a hole to hide from the crushing reality of it all. The whole thing reminded me of the quote from Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “The decision to flee came suddenly—or maybe not. Perhaps it wasn’t a decision at all. It seems that when one is handed the very thing they have wanted for years, even decades, the tendency is to blink, smile, and run for the hills.”
So, I held onto the calm as a hopeful foreshadowing of what lay ahead. While driving, I was left alone with my thoughts and felt one of those fleeting but assured moments of freedom we’re privy to on occasion in this modern world of ours. I drove on into the scenery’s portrait of Americana for a meeting with one of its gifts…
* * *
Back in 1966, Paul Williams started Crawdaddy!, the first magazine for rock criticism in the U.S., and in the beginning it was really more of a fanzine. He was 17 years old at the time, a freshman in the dorms of Swarthmore College, and he wrote every piece in that first issue that was mimeographed and stapled together three times. This was at a time when the stars aligned, and great new rock music was being made, its audience rapidly growing, and both the music and the audience delightfully discovering each other.
For Paul, putting together Crawdaddy! wasn’t exactly uncharted territory. Around the age of 14, he was putting out science fiction ‘zines and had been reading plenty of folk magazines like Sing Out! and Folkin’ Around. Somehow bored during his freshman year of college, even though he conducted his own weekly blues program and a morning rock program on WSRN, the local college radio station, he had the urge to blend his love of magazines with his growing passion for rock music—his two favorite bands at the time being the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones. One day he found himself in a drugstore perusing a teen fan magazine; reading about these two bands and how they got their start in England at a venue called the Crawdaddy Club. It was in that moment he decided on the name and began to take this idea of a rock magazine seriously.
Paul put together Crawdaddy! with the understanding that there were people out there that wanted to read intelligent writing about rock music—a community both ready and willing to be acknowledged. There was hitchhiking and sleeping on friends’ floors in New York City. There was hustling for 45s at Midtown record companies, pen and ink and paper. There were first drafts in pencil and then subsequently typed up on any typewriter a friend could lend him. He mailed that first issue out, which cost $40 to make, to record companies and radio stations, and waited for something to happen. That was a year and a half before Jann Wenner started Rolling Stone. In the year following, rock writing luminaries like Sandy Pearlman, Jon Landau, and Richard Meltzer got their start with Paul and Crawdaddy!, and it’s where they collectively began to figure out the form of what exactly rock criticism was. Up until this point, it simply didn’t exist.
* * *
The drive to and through Sonoma is all sorts of ridiculous beauty. Imagine massive scoops of green tea ice cream hills and expansive blue sky. I drove and drove and drove about to face this somewhat fantastical trajectory of a career path I set for myself, approaching it all now very seriously. I needed a gesture of my appreciation, so before getting to my destination I stopped off to pick up a potted flower to hand Paul as a sign of respect. Getting out of the car, knees threatening to buckle, I mentally struggled hanging on to my wooly calm.
Eventually, I found the long dirt road that led to the white farm cottage where Paul was staying. Taking a deep breath with the car in park, I conducted a brief pep talk in my head to just get out already and do this. I was parked behind a line of cars that appeared to have been there the better part of a decade. I grabbed my tote bag, said hello to the goats that were hanging out next to a red barn; turned on my heels and walked on towards the cottage. There was a pile of stuff before the porch, and next to the front door the window was broken (again, that way for years, I’m assuming). I knocked on the door several times and waited, but nothing. Repeat. Nothing. I walked around the side of the house and saw that there was a tiny guesthouse in the back. Calling out Paul’s name a few times, there was still no response.
19 Comments
Good
story, thanks! This magazine continues to be about making it up as you
go along. The rock snd roll experience, even in this new age, demands
tobe shared. With honesty and passion.
lyndol, you’re a moron. You’re missing
the point of the whole piece. This is a story ABOUT a new editor taking
over this man’s legacy, and the range of emotion and process involved
with passing that torch. It’s an integral aspect to the re-launch of
this historical magazine. Plus, identifying with the new editor helps
resurrect some of that old magic of Crawdaddy. If you don’t understand
the importance in addressing that, than you’re missing the entire point
of Crawdaddy.
Dear
Writer/Editor. How about keeping yourself out of the next
article.
great piece.
Really looking forward to this site. Great idea.
I never
knew that 1 man could be so influential on rock journalism…
pretty amazing that he started it all considering how many magazines
are out there nowadays. Great read, thanks.
Thanks for the treat, Ms Ed. A fun read. It’s also nice to read
something by someone who appears to have arrived just a couple of days
ago from the Summer of Love in ‘67: No cynicism, irony, post-modernism
or corporate libertarianism. Jossie, you’re outtasight!
A fan
of Paul and the original, this tribute piece would undoubtedly do Paul
proud.
paul
is the man. I love the story about him and bob dylan. New editor, you
are clearly going to make Paul proud. Nice work.
I met
Paul in 1967 in the office next to the Waverly and still have the tape
of the interview. It was published in an international magazine, and, I
hope, helped spread the gospel. Anyway, it was one of the most fun
hours I ever spent – especially considering the
interruptions!
I love the
illustration!
Dear Editor:
Best wishes in your quest to bring an old icon (the magazine) back to
life.
Good to know how
it was to meet a visionary. Crawdaddy was as present as the music
during the late 60’s. Rolling Stone, too, but I always flet more of a
kinship to Crawdaddy due to its humble beginnings and the ability to
pin it all on one person. Paul choose more of the music that I had an
interest in. Jossie, keep up the good work.
I hope this
signals a resurgence of the too long dormant Summer of Love. Right on.
Very interesting, about the rock’n'roll science fiction
connection…
What a great
article on Paul.I’ll look forward to future areticles.Please stay in
touch with Paul and let us know how he is doing. You the
girl.
Dear Jocelyn,
You really painted a beautiful mental picture of this entire
experience. How wonderful it must have been to meet and talk with a
pioneer of rock journalism. A great read!
Crawdaddy! Was a godsend in the 60’s to teens like myself, growing up
on small midwestern towns that had no music scene whatsoever for
literally 100 miles in any direction.Even Rolling Stone had yet to
venture thru its formative years and copies of both mags wree hard to
come by. I even liked the ads for Ampeg amps and various artists whose
records were not to be found in my local department store or music
shop. But I never understood Paul or his editorial musings. I wasn’t
interested in “serious” discussions of rock music, we just wanted to
Rock Out! But it saved my life in a way, just the same…knowing
that someone Out There was trying to do something different and
exciting with the medium of rock music and youth culture in ‘67 and
‘68.
Great article,
Jocelyn. Paul’s legacy is safe with you at the helm. Can’t wait to see
where Crawdaddy goes from here. And congratulations.
hey jocelyn – just wanted to give you a shout out from brooklyn. this article is fabulous.. best of luck with crawdaddy! xoxoxo
What about the Philip K. Dick Newsletters? Where can I buy them ALL?