R

ock Journalism is People Who Can’t Write Interviewing People Who Can’t Talk for People Who Can’t Read

The musician Frank Zappa said the most shockingly funny quotation:

 “Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.”

He believes that the perfect place to say this would have been during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. But I do not know if he really says it anywhere because rock journalism people are now able to write interviewing people, can talk for people and read as well.

Frank Zappa made this remark in 1977 during an interview with a staff writer for the Toronto Star newspaper known as Bruce Kirkland. The dateline of the story was Mount Pleasant, Michigan where Zappa was playing in a concert.

In 1932, the legendary comedian Will Rogers published a funny article that was talking about authors who wrote for the movies. He made a comment that was thematically linked to Zappa’s later observation [WRSR]: The successful author is the one who can write for the ones who can’t read.

In 1958, The Cavalier Daily, a student newspaper reprinted a humorous article from The Arkansas Traveler, other student newspaper. This article incorporated a joke about two prominent periodicals from the famed publisher Henry Luce [CDTL]:

In the Luce stable besides Time, the magazine was designed for a person who can’t think is Life, who can’t read. I think the problem might be that in the past people were not educated that’s why they were unable to write, read and talk.