The images couldn’t have been more different. The cover of the September 20th, 1969, issue of Rolling Stone showed a man and a child bathing in the nude in a lake, the essence of hippie gentility. A few months later, the photo on the cover of RS 50 [January 21st, 1970] was a grim antithesis: a huddled, anxious-looking crowd, shards of sunlight trying to poke through the mist. The cover line for the earlier issue – WOODSTOCK : 450,000 – was celebratory. For the latter, it was far more ominous: LET IT BLEED . By early 1969, multi-day festivals had become part of the rock & roll landscape. But as the magazine’s staff would learn, preconceptions about what a festival could be – or how wrong things could go – were about to go out the window. The publication’s coverage of Woodstock and Altamont tested the staff like never before – and proved definitively that Rolling Stone was a home for serious journalism, no matter the topic and no matter how close to home it hit. … [Read more...] about Rolling Stone at 50: Shaping Contrasting Narratives of Woodstock, Altamont