Modern times
Back then, The Denver Post was unrecognizable from its current digs. Located at 15th and California streets, the printing press sputtered ink in the same building as the newsroom, where nearly every desk came standard with an ash tray.
That summer, 23-year-old James Pagliasotti was the youngest columnist in the office. A recent graduate of the University of Colorado, he was also, as he put it, “the only man in the building with long hair.” Given those credentials, Pagliasotti’s editors assigned him to what was essentially a youth culture beat that they struggled to grow.
“This whole subculture just emerged out of God-knowswhere,” he said. “If it smelled like tear gas, they sent me.”
With the this new zeitgeist came a strain of rock bands like the Doors, the Who and Led Zeppelin, which pioneered a music scene to match the daring era.
Problem was, at the time, The Post had essentially no pop music coverage. The exception was when bands were so big that their simple presence was a story. When The Beatles played Red Rocks Amphitheatre in 1964 on its first tour of America, for example, the paper dedicated dozens of inches to covering everything from the band’s touchdown at the airport to their digs in town (they stayed at the Brown Palace).
The show itself, which was vintage Beatlemania, even merited a review. Coupled with a photo of an “overcome” woman, it focused on the side show: the screaming legion of 9,000 fans; the “dozens of jelly beans” hucked onto the stage after the show in offering to the band; the kids scaling the rocks to get a better view of the action. Despite the pandemonium, The Beatles “pounded right along expertly,” wrote staffer Bill Meyers in a rare reference to the music itself.
Thanks to Pagliasotti, this coverage would expand immensely. He pitched coverage of a music festival he’d heard of in Woodstock, N.Y. — yes, that Woodstock — but his editors refused to foot the bill, killing the assignment. Af- ter it proved to be the cultural event of the summer, Pagliasotti was given much more leeway to carve out a place in print for music coverage.
Just like that, The Post had its first pop music writer. Pagliasotti covered nearly every major concert in Denver and Fort Collins during his tenure, roughly 1969 to 1972. Even before then, Pagliasotti was a regular in the area’s venues. The earliest show he could remember was Ray Charles at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, an infamous gig that ended in a riot after the artist broke off a truncated set. (Charles, who was late to the show, had been arrested for possession of heroin just months prior.)
Red Rocks would ban rock music until 1971, for a Jethro Tull concert. (The Who had wanted to debut “Tommy” at the venue during that period, according to Pagliasotti, but couldn’t because of the ban.)
Pagliasotti made a quick impression on the beat. In 1969, his first year, he covered famed Denver promoter Barry Fey’s threeday Denver Pop Festival. At the show, gatecrashers who poured in to see acts like Big Mama Thornton, Three Dog Night and Frank Zappa perform brief sets were met by volleys of police tear gas. When the same thing happened the following day, Fey made Sunday’s shows free.
This golden age of rock was in many ways also the golden age of music journalism. Pagliasotti often met up with the artists he covered, who were often around the same age and looking to blow off some steam in an unfamiliar city. He fondly remembered drinking whiskey with Janis Joplin at a south Denver bar called the Family Dog (now strip club PT’S Showclub), and having Linda Ronstdadt slam the door in his face after reading a negative review he wrote. Jim Morrison frequented Denver, and was friends with Pagliasotti’s roommate, who served as a bodyguard for Morrison and Rolling Stone’s Mick Jagger when they were in town.
His review of a Doors concert earned him the ire of the group’s fans in the modern age, as he wrote that the show was more theatrics than music. Little did they know how familiar he was with the band.
“Morrison was a showman,” he said, remembering his time with the singer. “The Doors were an L.A. band.”
Before long, Pagliasotti’s column was attracting new, youthful advertisers that The Post hadn’t had before.
In 1977, Denver Post entertainment editor Dick Kreck brought on a young writer, G. Brown. Brown had caught the paper’s attention after writing an article about Genesis right when its drummer, Phil Collins, stepped out from behind the drum kit to take center stage. He’d become The Post’s first staff pop music writer.
By his account, it was long overdue.
“The Post was the last man in, so to speak (for pop music coverage),” Brown said. “They had to be dragged kicking and screaming (to the idea) that it deserved to be covered on the entertainment beat, or at all.”
That changed with Brown, who would own the beat for nearly 25 years. The 1980s’ angular electronica, the rise of hip-hop in the ’90s and dawn of the internet thereafter — no other music minder saw the paper through so many of pop’s shifts in taste.
Brown was the only music writer to cover U2’s famous gig at Red Rocks in June 1983. Beset by a downpour, the concert would have been called off if not for the video production team slated to capture it for a now-legendary concert film, “Under a Blood Red Sky.” In the review, he hailed it with the same astonished reverence of modern music writers looking back on the show.
“There was not one face in the place without a beatific smile plastered into position,” Brown wrote. “U2 gave a performance that the attending fans will never forget.”
These names are legendary, but the artist that stands out in Brown’s mind was that of a wraith-like goth rocker.
On April 20, 1999, two students at a Littleton’s Columbine High School shot and killed 15 people, including themselves, in a day that would cast a pall over the school’s name. Students interviewed had postured that the music of Marilyn Manson, a bonepale Los Angeles outcast who sang about death and pain as a matter of course, had influenced the shooting, a theory that made its rounds in the media before being disproven.
In the wake of the accusation, Manson canceled his entire tour, including a performance at Red Rocks, slated for just days after the shooting.
After nearly pulling out of his next show at Mile High Stadium for Ozzfest in 2001, Manson decided to go through with the performance. Ahead of that concert, Manson granted Brown a rare interview in his home in Hollywood.
The subsequent profile revealed Manson as a man misunderstood rather than malicious, with a biting sense of humor and thoughtful presence in the music scene.