But Enough About Me by Jancee Dunn Page A

phone.
    In that pre-Internet era, Rolling Stone was one of the few sources for music information, so random callers would constantly phone up the magazine with trivia questions. Typically, a group of bankers from Chicago would have a boozy lunch, get in a heated argument about the name of Neil Young’s first band (that would be the Squires), and then call us to break it up.
    Excitingly, we were often assailed to solve bets, some for serious money. Was the Beatles’ “Martha, My Dear” really about Paul McCartney’s dog? Well, Martha was the name of his Old English sheepdog, but the song was not about her. What was Iggy Pop’s real name? James Osterberg. Was “You’re So Vain” about Warren Beatty or Mick Jagger? Carly Simon has never confirmed, but common wisdom is that it’s Beatty, while Jagger sang background on the song. Did a Led Zeppelin groupie once have sex with a fish? Affirmative. What were the first few lines of Elton John’s all-but-indecipherable “Bennie and the Jets”? “Hey, kids, shake it loose together, the spotlight’s hitting something that’s been known to change the weather.”
    Every morning I loved to watch Jann Wenner sweep into the office as if he were coming down the walkway from Air Force One, unleashing a torrent of good mornings and brisk nods and pointed fingers (“I’ll see that copy before noon, right? Good”). The moment he arrived, his charisma and preternatural energy instantly changed the chemistry of the place and it began to hum and whir. He would usually nod in my direction, but the squadron of young editorial assistants told me that it took a year or so for him to learn your name.
    The assistants were pleasant to me, but I knew it would take a while to penetrate the sanctum, so in the meantime I soaked up the surroundings, desperate for clues on how to behave. For a week, my lunch consisted of granola bars from a vending machine because I was still too cowed to order in. Every time a gaggle of employees would converge to talk, I would surreptitiously listen, noting the bright, quick, banter-y way they spoke, as if they were in a sitcom. Around the second week, I felt comfortable enough to indulge in the time-honored employee ritual of buying a backpack from the promotions department emblazoned with the Rolling Stone logo. Seemingly every staffer wore some sort of item with the logo on it, so that at quitting time we all looked like runners in the same marathon as we poured out of the building with our Rolling Stone bags and caps and T-shirts and jackets. I gloried in the curious, admiring stares that my backpack elicited when I rode the subway.
    The music scene in 1989 was dominated by smooth hybrids of pop, R & B, and hip-hop such as Soul II Soul, Neneh Cherry, and Janet Jackson. Pre-Nirvana alternative was thriving (Bob Mould’s Workbook and the Pixies’ Doolittle were played incessantly in the office) and the gangsta rap of N.W.A. was stomping on its gentler precursors. Hair metal was waning but still hanging in, sucking the fumes of Guns N’ Roses, and cheese pop like Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block still had a stranglehold on the charts. The number one song of that year, lest we forget, was “Look Away” by Chicago. A sampling of Rolling Stone ’s 1989 covers: Madonna (twice), Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals, Uma Thurman for the Hot Issue, Axl Rose, Jon Bon Jovi, the cast of Ghostbusters, Jay Leno and Arsenio Hall, and R.E.M.
    During my third week at the office, I scurried out on my lunch break to buy albums from the Replacements, a pair of Doc Martens, and once, some exotic halvah for a snack. I also added a thorough read of the New York Times to my morning ritual after an embarrassing incident during week two. A group of staffers had gathered near my desk, and as they opened their stacks of mail, which bulged with new music, they began discussing Reagan’s