CLASSIC ROCK-JOURNALISM

“Jerry McGuire” writer-director Cameron Crowe, who was a Rolling Stone mainstay while still in high school in the ‘70s, isn’t the only significant figure to start out in rock journalism before moving into other realms. Among the notable are Mercury Records President Danny Goldberg, guitarist-producer Lenny Kaye (of Patti Smith fame) and science fiction/fantasy novelist Patricia Kennealy-Morrison.

All three are represented in the archives of the old Jazz & Pop magazine, highlights of which are just now being made available on the Internet via a Web site overseen by Kennealy-Morrison, who was married to Doors singer Jim Morrison in a pagan ceremony and ran the seminal magazine from 1968 to 1971. Pieces that can be accessed on the site include a December 1970 Goldberg interview with the already-irascible Van Morrison and a December 1969 Kaye essay on a cappella rock that Patti Smith says first inspired her to combine music and poetry.

There’s also a February 1971 interview with Jerry Garcia by folk-blues guitarist David Bromberg, in which Garcia, who passed away in 1995, gave this assessment of death in regards to Janis Joplin’s then-recent demise: “You see, the payoff for life is death,” he said. “You die at the end of your life, no matter how, and it’s always appropriate in the sense that no matter how you die, that’s it, you’re dead.”

The Web site is at: https://www.wwonline-ny.com/ ~lizardqueen.