"The Only Girl - My Life and Times on the Masthead of Rolling Stone":
tinyurl.com/5xcn4xum I'd never heard of this book, never mind its author, Robin Green.
Then again, I had. I saw her credit for years, as a writer and executive producer on "The Sopranos." What? That's quite a career!
Now this is not a self-published tome, it was put out by Little Brown. But it flew under my radar, and whether or not I read these rock books, I'm certainly aware of them. But in the brouhaha after Jann Wenner's unfortunate remarks, an article I read went through the various books about "Rolling Stone" and said this was the best. Huh? I immediately reserved it at the library, I wasn't going to buy it, what were the odds I'd even read it.
But I did. I finished it in less than 24 hours. Primarily because Robin Green delineates the era better than any book written by a person in music.
Yes, the sixties... They're fading. But if you were alive and kicking, it was the opposite of today, it was an era of possibilities. And you certainly didn't live your life by rote. Green graduated from Pembroke, which was to Brown as Radcliffe was to Harvard, and then...tried to fly straight in New York City, but on a whim moved to California with an old boyfriend.
Come on, do you know anybody who graduates from an Ivy and makes career decisions on a whim today? Hell, people have their careers planned out before they even take a class. And the goal is to make money. To set the world on fire. Personal fulfillment? That's way down the list. But in the sixties and early seventies, that was everything.
And you could afford to meander. You could live on minimum wage. And not only did people do this, they were itinerant, as in moving from place to place. You didn't fly across the country, you drove. You didn't just see places on the internet, you went and experienced them up close and personal. And if a friend was going somewhere, even hundreds of miles away, you might decide to accompany them, and it might change your entire life.
So Robin is in Berkeley working a day job, and then she finds out she has a connection at "Rolling Stone," so she borrows a car and drives over the bridge for a meeting with this bloke where she offers herself up as a secretary, a low level employee, she just wants to get in the building, to be close to the action.
But this guy doesn't understand it. Why would she want such a lowly gig, didn't she have more ambition, why didn't she want to write for the magazine?
It had never occurred to her.
But she had a meeting with Jann, who found out she was an assistant to Stan Lee at Marvel during her brief tenure in New York, and he said if she wrote an article about Marvel and he liked it, he'd pay her five cents a word, if he didn't, he'd kill it and pay her half. And seeing as how she was going to the east coast anyway, she took the gig.
And it became a cover story.
And from there...
I remember Robin's story about Dennis Hopper and "The Last Movie," it was in one of the early issues after my subscription to the magazine took hold. And its creation is retold in this book, and Hopper doesn't look good. So many don't look good, not even David Chase, Robin lays it down straight.
And you may not actually like Robin, but she was there, she lived it.
She had sex with many men. One night stands. She wouldn't submit her story about the Kennedy children to "Rolling Stone" because...
But these were the days. Before AIDS. During women's liberation. When women were demanding and living with the same power as men.
Green is far from subservient, she was one of the boys, but she maintained her female identity.
Green writes about the legendary "Rolling Stone" conference at Esalen. About Hunter Thompson. About the trials and tribulations of the "Rolling Stone" staff. It didn't play out pleasantly for so many of them. But they were bedding each other, even if they were married to other people.
As for this focus on sex... You've got to know, at this point sex before marriage was seen as taboo, even divorce was. But the birth control pill came along and everything changed. There was freedom.
Green ultimately is demoted from the masthead of "Rolling Stone" after refusing to deliver that Kennedy piece and she went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop and then moved to Los Angeles and once again worked at a low level until she caught fire in TV. And this ultimately led to "The Sopranos," and more.
This is not a typical tell-all. It's more than the facts. And Green can certainly write. But it's like it never came out, no one ever talked to me about "The Only Girl." That's what Robin was, again and again, the only girl amongst a group of men.
You'll have a hard time putting "The Only Girl" down, especially if you lived through that era, the years have been bastardized and pooh-poohed, but if you read Green's book, you'll learn how it all really went down, from a perspective you don't usually find. You've got men writing about the era, and you've got people who weren't there writing about the era, but Robin Green was there, and she holds nothing back.
There's just something about this book. It's not like it's hot or sexy, yet it's far from dry. It's kinda like a peek into Robin Green's brain, her inner world. A perspective you don't get too often, especially without judgment and a moral.
When looking for the Amazon link I saw that right now they're selling the Kindle version for $3.99. That's not much of a commitment. But if you do buy it, I know you'll read it, I know you'll finish it. Because you want this perspective. You want a book that is more than I did this and that, met this person and that. You're thinking all the time, and so is Robin Green, but she laid her inner feelings down.
A big thumb's up!
P.S. This book is not only about "Rolling Stone," actually the best parts are about her family and friends and growing up in Providence. And it does go into "The Sopranos" and...just wanted to let you know.
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