Madonna on the cover of Rolling Stone’s 1000th issue
When Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner started planning the cover of the iconic rock magazine’s 1,000th issue, knowing it would salute pop culture luminaries who have graced its pages since 1967, The Beatles’ famous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover immediately came to mind.
After all, Wenner says, Sgt. Pepper’s colorful cover pictured people who had influenced The Beatles and the 20th century, and there was some fun involved: You had to look closely to recognize all the faces.
An homage to Sgt. Pepper’s ensued. “We said, ‘Let’s pack it‘ ” with faces, Wenner says.
As a lark – and for the extra $1 million it cost – he also had the cover of the May 18 issue, which hits newsstands Friday, printed in 3-D. “In the back of my mind, 3-D was always in a bag of tricks that somehow I wanted to pull out one day.”
The cover features more than 150 pop icons of our times, from Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin to Britney Spears and Eminem. George Clooney is there, and so are Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. “There are plenty of famous people who are not in there. There just wasn’t room for everybody,” Wenner says. And the Queen of Pop, needless to say, is front row.
The 1,000th issue is a milestone for Wenner, who starting publishing RS on cheap newsprint from a loft in San Francisco, thanks to a small loan from his future wife’s parents. The first issue was Nov. 9, 1967.
Based on an article by Peter Johnson, USA Today. Thanks to bigtitty.