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Slated for release on November 9th is 20 Years Of Rolling Stone: What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, edited by Jann S. Wan* nar. The release date is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the magazine founded by Ralph Qlaasan and Jann S. Wenner and will—according to publicists—“cover memorable impressions ranging from Woodstock to Watergate, Vietnam to Kent State, Manson to Silkwood, Lennon to Springsteen.” And the folks at R.S., which is edited by Jann S. Wenner, will keep churning out commemorative issues of their mag: four in all, the last one to be turned into a two-hour radio special. Had enough? Well, an ABC television special is also in the works. It will be co-produced by Lama Mlchaals and Jann S. Wenner. It’ll be great.

By the way, Boy Howdy is now available in longnecks.

They’re Just Trying Dept.: Now that the Monkees Live 1967 and Missing Links albums are out, you can anticipate a new studio album in August, then two more LPs of unreleased stuff later this year.

The Billy Desk is back! A dedicated bunch, it seems they’ve been following their favorite Billy—Idol, that is— on his rootin’, tootin’ tour of these States. Their report: at Worcester’s Centrum Auditorium, Billy dropped his pants during an encore of “L.A. Woman”.. .couldn’t get ’em back up, we’re further told... in Troy, N.Y., Jack Nicholson dropped in on the show, unable to locate a minor league basketball game that night.. .in Philly, security broke down, and about 30 fans stormed the barriers... wait a minute, Billy Desk, what kind of “storm" can 30 fans generate?.. .OK, well, anyway, ol’ Billy was “forced to stop singing” (about time, sez the Heee Desk) a halfdozen times... hang on, the Heee Desk and the Billy Desk are brutally beating each other... on to Minneapolis, where “security lost complete control" and the barricade in front of the stage was broken ... girls were fainting... strong men were weeping... whoops, the Billy Desk has inexplicably stormed off in a newsish huff. Not a very Broad-minded bunch.

Tom Petty’s tour goes on, despite a recent fire that completely destroyed his L.A. home. Authorities say the fire was set by an arsonist; fortunately, Petty, his wife and their five-year-old daughter escaped unharmed, although a housekeeper did suffer minor injuries. Also spared was Petty’s basement recording studio, where he stores his original masters and various guitars.. .And, in other T.P. doings, that tour we mentioned will reunite the Heartbreaker gang with Bob Dylan in September for some overseas dates—no word on whether they’ll tour with Mr. Z. here... Finally, Tom was cruelly rebuffed by television stars Billy Qraham, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Bakkar when asked for film footage of the entertainers to use in his video for “Jammin’ Me.” “They didn’t want to be part of a rock video,” said Kathy Dougherty, the vid’s producer/co-director. Perhaps if the Cult asked...

The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart—famed in rock circles for his memorable CBS debate with former CREEM editor Dave DIMartlno and recent video feud with Tom Patty—has had his weekly newspaper column dropped by the Baton Rouge Advocate. The paper, it seems, learned that major portions of Swaggart’s Easter Sunday column had been copied from an article distributed by the Copley News Service. That sounds like cheating to us, and possibly even a bad example for young people, although we can’t be sure.

VOODOO GURU

We trust that our many readers who are also fans of the music video art form have enjoyed Wall Off Voodoo’s conceptual romp through "Do It Again”—a wry choice of cover material, since the song was a hit for the Beach Boys way back when.

Of particular interest to this Bureau was the participation of Brian Wilson: his manager/psychiatrist encouraged him to do it, we’re told, because Brian’s acting things out that he’s famous for "is good for him... (it) traces the problem and works it out.” In fact, one member of the Voodoos described the storyline as “Brian Wilson’s beach nightmare,” which everyone knows are the worst kind of nightmares to have, probably.

Whoops—we just noticed there’s no news in this item! We’d best consult the He’p Desk to figure out how to handle this.

OK, we’re back. Well, get this-, at the debut of the video—right there at Ray Manzarak’s Sound Stage, where it was filmed—Wilson was announced as being the star of the thing. None were so upset at this information as Voodoo bassist Bruce Moreland, who went so far as to grumble to his girlfriend about it.

This really is some kind of dirty business.

‘No Mas!”

When we heard that Andy Taylor, who’d been opening, got into a terrible fight with the Psychedelic Furs, who’d been headlining, we couldn’t quite believe it. It all sounded so unrockish.

Fortunately, the scurrilous rumors surrounding the events of May 20 at the Los Angeles Forum have been dismissed. “Fist fight? No way!” said a rep for MCA Records, Andy’s very own label. “Musicians are silly, but they’re not silly enough to risk injuring their hands.” When this Bureau begged to cite the not-too-distant example of Tom Petty, said source replied: “Uh, well, it didn’t happen that way.”

In any case, we’re glad to report that Mr. Taylor either was or wasn’t cut off in the middle of an encore song (“Get It On”) and consequently either did or didn’t storm off the stage, after which nothing happened except it was his last night on the tour.

Notes From The Netherworld O’ Petroleum By-Products, The Sequel: Tom Verlaine has signed with I.R.S Records, we note... Simply Red’s Men And Women has been banned in Singapore due to the "crude lyrics” of “The Right Thing”; also banned there were Prince’s Sign O’ The Times and John Fogerty’s Satanic Eye Of The Zombie. . .A recent Midwestern study claims that teens from wealthier homes prefer "new wave music” while teens from low income homes like “heavy metal" better... hmmm, we would’ve figured those latter teens would prefer “money”.. .And fans will be glad to hear they're back in demand now that the dog days be looming.

There’s still time to get to Telluride, Colorado, to see if the citizens of that town have allowed the Grateful Dead to perform there August 15th and 16th. The acceptability of the concerts has been put to a vote, and early reports indicate townsfolk are pretty evenly divided on this political sticky wicket. "Talk on the street has it pretty even,” said assistant town manager Virginia Eggar. "We have had a few extra people registering to vote lately and a bunch of requests for absentee ballots.” Next thing you know, that state will elect a U.S. senator who shows poor judgement or something.

’ Down To 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Being the political activists we are, Rock ’n’ Roll News was pleased-as-punch when Paul Simon decided to enter the race for the presidency. Delving into the announcement further, we discovered—to our surprise—that Simon currently holds high office, being a liberal Democratic U.S. senator from the great state of Illinois. Without further ado, we contacted his offices in Washington, not only to congratulate him, but to see if we could get tickets to any future shows.

Unfortunately, as so often happens in politics, it turns out that Senator Simon has never even done anything important like work with Art Garfunkal or get censured by the U.N., but has merely represented his state and nation in our highest legislative body! What a gyp!

“We do have an autographed album on our wall,” one of the senator’s aides told us. “Do you want me to read it to you?” We did, and the senator’s copy of Graceland is enscribed thusly: “Dear Paul: Happy birthday and many more—Paul Simon.”

Gone indeed are the glory days of Elvis and Richard Nixon.