Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll
Before 1970, Rat was deeply involved in "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" as well as revolutionary politics. Censors were incensed, but newsstand sales shot up by 50%, when the cover featured a full-frontal-nude "Slum Goddess" rising from a toilet to liberate Manhattan (March 1969). Photo editor Elliott Landy commented in the July 1–15, 1968 issue: "Last time we ran a naked chick on the cover (4th issue) we temporarily doubled our circulation. Thought we'd do it again." In the next issue Jeff Shero offered his own thoughts: "Sex is the magic commodity in New York. Everytime we print a nude on the cover circulation jumps five thousand" and in the following issue someone wrote: "Two weeks ago we put tits on the cover and commented that the previous cover we did with tits doubled our circulation. It happened again, not quite double but a considerable increase in sales—the paper sold out on many, many newsstands."
Profits from Pleasure, a pornographic tabloid, published separately by one of Rat's founders, may have paid some of Rat's printing bills. Rat's financial news from "The Street" charted market fluctuations in the street prices of various drugs.
Rat was perhaps responsible for the most peculiar footnote in the history of rock music. Some recent Internet writers have claimed that Rat was the source of the 1969 "Paul is Dead" rumor, which had millions examining Beatles albums for cryptic clues that Paul McCartney was actually a ghost.
There was an exclusive interview with Jimi Hendrix, and another with John and Yoko during their Toronto "bed-in" to promote peace. It seems probable that Frank Zappa was inspired by a sign painted on the front window of Rat's 14th Street office, originally the previous tenant's advertisement reading "photostats made while you wait," now neatly altered to proclaim "Hot Rats made while you wait," in early March 1969; Zappa's first solo album appeared in October with that title in similar typography.
"Hot Rats" was scraped off the glass soon after the takeover by W.I.T.C.H. - Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell - and its sister groups. A sign that had once advertised Rats "hot off the press" had quite different implications on the window of an office now filled with intense young women - who were there, and intense, precisely because they'd had enough of "all that".
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Famous quotes containing the words drugs, rock and/or roll:
“To possess your soul in patience, with all the skin and some of the flesh burnt off your face and hands, is a job for a boy compared with the pains of a man who has lived pretty long in the exhilarating world that drugs or strong waters seem to create and is trying to live now in the first bald desolation created by knocking them off.”
—C.E. (Charles Edward)
“Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)