The Press: Gathering No Moss

Mascaraed Rock Singer Alice Cooper plans to market a line of men's cosmetics under the brand name Whiplash. George McGovern claims that he was never allowed access to a secret FBI file on Senator Thomas Eagleton's medical history. Mick Jagger will portray Merlin, the Arthurian wizard, in a forthcoming film. Director Bernardo Bertolucci thinks that the average man is a fascist at heart. The hidden structure of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's melodies is a "rotating riff." To stave off a receding hairline, Watergate Principal John Dean once shampooed regularly with a pungent concoction called Grandpa's Wonder Pine Tar Toilet Soap. It took 19 federal and county lawmen, aided by an Army helicopter, to trap and finally kill one young hippie; the drug mill he was suspected of operating never existed.

This rich mix of trivia, gossip, music criticism and serious general reporting is now the standard offering of Rolling Stone. What started as the bible of rock, operating on loans, credit and optimism, has become the West Coast's major purveyor of the New Journalism. Along the way, Stone has become solvent and earned the trade's respect.

The voice is still vaguely radical, and the reportage is usually sympathetic to counterculturists. But last month's piece about the murder of a drug suspect, written by Associate Editor Joe Eszterhas, was not mere anti-cop propaganda. A federal agent has been charged with homicide in the case.

Groupie Gossip. Unlike the underground sheets that it still outwardly resembles, Stone resists becoming obsessed with one type of story. Tom Wolfe recently wrote a perceptive rumination on the terrestrial thoughts and problems of the astronauts. When Truman Capote failed to come up with a commissioned article on the Rolling Stones' U.S. tour last summer, Stone assigned Andy Warhol to interview the writer. The result was a 20,000-word opus long on groupie gossip, insights into Capote's creative process, and epic banalities ("Wait, wait, wait, wait. We want two more double Margaritas, and I want some ice in my drink, and ...").

Some facets of Stone remain unchanged. It still meticulously notes the musical chairs played by rock groups famous and unsung ("Ronnie Lane, Face, has been replaced by Free's former bassist, Tetsu Yamauchi"). Record reviews bristle with formidable expertise. Stone still looks like something put together the morning after. Color pictures on rough newsprint turn flesh tones green or shocking pink. Endless columns of small print seem as inviting to the eye as coils of barbed wire. But the old foldover format−which enables readers to open one cover and find another is on the way out, a victim of the biweekly's growing affluence. Limited by its present design to 80 pages, Stone will switch to regular tabloid style this summer, making room for a waiting list of prospective advertisers.