Thus, the pop generation’s weekly magazine Rock and Folk just made history with Mick Jagger as its standard-bearer (he also has a fifty year career). Not only the history of pop music, which shook the codes and customs, inventing styles, carrying with it the youth of the entire world. The echo of this phenomenon was orchestrated in France (“words for sounds”) by a magazine, Rock and Folk, and its uninhibited adventurers of the pen were christened rock critics.
Traveling to the mandatory places (London, New York, Los Angeles), they gave an account of a new free world supported with images of a generation of photo-takers whose personal history would often get mixed up with that of a rock group in the process of building their legacy. For example, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, Anton Corbijn and U2, Kate Simon and Bob Marley, and Derek Ridgers and Lyn Goldsmith in England.
In France, many images came from the “impressive” lenses of Jean Pierre Leloir, an anachronistic character in a feverous context, being a smoker of pipes and a jazz buff like his friend Philippe Koechlin. Others followed, with Claude Gassian, without a doubt, being the best of this new wave. Not to forget those who gladly chose studio photography, like Jean Baptiste Mondino, who made covers for Prince and Madonna.
It is on this anniversary, a strange coincidence, that Bob Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was this young folk star who was on the first “experimental” issue of Rock and Folk fifty years ago. Each page of this great story reflects this remarkable compilation made by Christophe Quilien. Nothing and no one was forgotten, from blues to techno, from German rock to new wave to soul and funk. And all that laid out, at the time, by Philippe Koechlin, creator of Rock and Folk. All those who were on its team, in the good old days of fine quills and photographers, have not forgotten it.
Paul Alessandrini
Paul Alessandrini is a journalist, writer, and travel photographer. He participated in the creation of Rock and Folk in 1969 and was the editor-in-chief of Match International in 1987. He lives and works in Paris, France.
Paul Alessandrini est journaliste, écrivain et photographe voyageur. Il a participé à la création de Rock & Folk en 1969 et a été rédacteur en chef de Match International en 1987. Il vit et travaille à Paris, en France.
Christophe Quilien, 50 ans de rock
Published by Editions du Chêne
35€
