Music bible expects lads' revolution as British editor arrives

It is an American icon. In its heyday the magazine Rolling Stone moulded the viewpoint of a generation through articles which charted the rise and fall of President Nixon, the trauma of Vietnam and the social revolution of the Sixties.

Now staff at the magazine are bracing themselves for a new revolution. Publisher Jann S. Wenner has decided to hire a brash young British editor to rescue the fortunes of the prestigious but ailing US title.

The decision is not entirely unexpected. Over the past 12 months Rolling Stone has lost 10 per cent of its readers - even though it still sells 1.2 million copies every fortnight. The falling circulation - and the advice of focus groups - has led the owners to kill off the pioneering style of journalism the magazine helped patent in the Sixties and demand a change in outlook and attitude.

The man expected to do this is Ed Needham, 37, the former editor of FHM, a 'new lad' magazine commonly associated with stories featuring scantily clad women, lager and football.

Needham led a publishing revolution in the 1990s when FHM took male British readers by storm. The format repeated its success in the US and sparked a string of copycat publications.

Needham, in his new role as Managing Editor, says he will reflect the US public's appetite for more 'anti-intellectual' and 'laddish' journalism.

He has promised that salacious tabloid gossip and shorter articles will be high on the new agenda. Television, the internet and video will be better represented as well.

'We're definitely a little apprehensive,' said Jancee Dunn, a contributing editor, who said some staffers at the magazine were 'concerned' about the magazine's future. For many Americans Rolling Stone remains the definitive rock music bible and the only Sixties magazine to capture the essence of radical chic.

Insiders say that Needham could encounter stiff resistance to his editorial approach. During its 35-year history, Rolling Stone has become synonymous with the hard-hitting and fiercely rebellious journalism of star writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, Greil Marcus, P.J. O'Rourke and Mikhail Gilmore.

Thompson, the author of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and The Great Shark Hunt is particularly famous for his dedication to mixing politics with rock'n'roll.

In an obituary of Richard Nixon in the magazine in 1994, he wrote: 'If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of LA.'

These days Thompson would be lucky to be so indulged. With commercial considerations overriding almost every aspect of the magazine industry Rolling Stone is simply the latest to have to adapt to survive.

Dunn said: 'The days of the 10,000-word article are over. As a writer I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't worried that features will be getting shorter. I get paid by the word. But there have been definite changes over the past year.

'We test the magazine thoroughly, and all our readers agree they want shorter articles. So we have to give them that.

'It makes me sad that people don't have the same appreciation for the written word any more. Our readers have shorter attention spans.'

Needham is part of a growing British influence on the magazine: six months ago Rolling Stone recruited Andy Cowles - a former art director on Q and Mojo music magazines - as their art editor. British magazine culture has had a profound effect on US publishing in recent years. Two British magazines, FHM and Maxim, have been launched into the American market and have proved hugely successful, forcing US publications to respond.

Older writers who remember the magazine's heyday say Rolling Stone will be hard pushed to regain its former glories.

'Magazines, like human beings, have their infancy, their childhood, their teenage years, their adulthood and their old age,' said Al Young, who was the magazine's book and poetry reviewer in the late Sixties.

'It was a young, wild crowd,' he said. 'This was a magazine that managed to brand youth culture before anyone else did.'

Young believes that Rolling Stone has shown all the signs of advanced age over the past decade. 'It used to be about rock'n'roll. But the music market has changed, and the magazine can't reflect that. The kind of people who read Rolling Stone back in the Seventies now probably read the New Yorker.