David Cassidy on the Web

A great star image gracing a magazine cover does more than simply sell a publication. It burnishes an icon.

Over the last 40 years, Rolling Stone has buffed up some of the best, using the expressions, styles and physiognomy of the hottest musicians to say something about the qualities, looks and ideas that keep us rapt.

During Rolling Stone's 40 years of life, its best covers have cemented in our minds images that seem by turns vulnerable, defiant, shocking, erotic or just plain camp. Many came from the lens and imagination of Annie Leibovitz, though scores of other photographers, from Herb Ritts to Mark Seliger, have done their part to conspire with the stars to create personae we all buy into.

To toast Rolling Stone's four decades, I've picked some of the covers that resonate most.

Issue #33 Joni Mitchell May 17, 1969
Snapped back when one of music's most literate, and restless, writers had just released her second album ("Clouds"), this shot offers an ideal portrait of the young observer, peering out at us, seeing more than anyone around her.

Issue #68 Jimi Hendrix Oct. 15, 1970
A commemorative portrait of Hendrix to mark his death. Countering the usual, fiery performance shots, this pic captures Hendrix's thoughtful side with a soulfulness that haunts.

Issue #108 David Cassidy May 11, 1972
In a dubious attempt to deep-six his teenybopper image, the Partridge Family cutie pie gave a shocking interview to Rolling Stone in which he tried to paint himself as more Keith Richards than Bobby Sherman. To prove the point, he allowed the inside pix to show his pubic hair. The genius headline? "Naked Lunchbox."

Issue #198 Patty Hearst Oct. 23, 1975
In the scoop of the decade, Rolling Stone got the inside story on the kidnapped heiress while she was still on the lam. The illustration they used swiped the image of Andrew Wyeth's famous painting "Christina's World," subbing Patty, for Christina Olson, as the woman in the grass. The result nailed the mystery of the whole affair.

Issue #219 Bob Marley Aug. 12, 1976
A Leibovitz classic. With arms outstretched, Marley appeared as a Rasta Jesus.

Issue #235 Fleetwood Mac March 24, 1977
They were the first band to fully exploit their complicated romantic lives as a selling point. Rolling Stone brought things to a new level by featuring all five members (which included two fracturing couples), in the same bed, for a kind of splintering orgy.

Issue #335 John Lennon and Yoko Ono Jan 22, 1981
Maybe the most famous, and emotional, Rolling Stone cover of all time. Features Lennon naked and coiled in the fetal position, next to a clothed Yoko. Shot just hours before Lennon's murder. The cover featured no words. Just the magazine's logo and the image.

Issue #352 Jim Morrison Sept. 17, 1981
Capturing the first wave of Morrison's revival (11 years after his demise), this smoldering shot appeared next to one of the best cover lines ever: "He's Hot, He's Sexy, and He's Dead."

Issue #432 Tina Turner Oct. 11, 1984
In case you wondered if Tina knew what to do with her legs, gaze at those gams.

Issue #508 Madonna Sept. 10, 1987
Of all the Madonna covers, this Herb Ritts shot nails her at her most engagingly entitled.

Issue #683 Kurt Cobain June 2, 1994
An earlier Cobain/Nirvana cover mined his subversive side (with the star sporting a T-shirt that read "Corporate rock magazines still suck"). This image, appearing after his suicide, peered into Cobain's troubled soul, a sight poignantly contradicted by the perfect chisel of his face.