Veteran Rock Journalist Al Aronowitz Dies

Al Aronowitz, a pioneer of rock journalism who introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles, died Monday in Elizabeth, N.J. He was 77. Aronowitz died of cancer, said his son, Joel Roi Aronowitz.

Al Aronowitz graduated from Rutgers University in June 1950 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. In 1959, at the New York Post, he wrote a 12-part series on the "beat" movement.

In reporting the series, he became a friend of such early counterculture luminaries as poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac. "He really fell into the whole lifestyle," said Gerry Nicosia, author of the Jack Kerouac biography "Memory Babe."

The pieces have been described as early examples of participatory journalism, a technique perfected by better-known writers such as Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson.

The 1964 summit of the Beatles and Dylan came about as Aronowitz was covering the British band for the Saturday Evening Post. He also claimed that Dylan wrote "Mr. Tambourine Man" in his kitchen. "The Beatles' magic was in their sound. Bob's magic was in his words. After they met, the Beatles' words got grittier, and Bob invented folk-rock," Aronowitz once wrote.

Aside from some celebrity in the rock world, Aronowitz did not benefit financially from making the connection, according to his son.

"My father was instrumental in a lot of people's success, introducing the right people in the right combinations," Joel Aronowitz said. "He was never able to benefit from it financially himself. He always thought money would end up in his pocket, too, but it never did."

Aronowitz's life unraveled in 1972, the year his wife Ann died of cancer and he was fired from his job writing the "Pop Scene" column at the Post. By then Aronowitz was struggling with drugs, Nicosia said. He disappeared from the public view until the mid-1990s, when he launched a Web site, "The Blacklisted Journalist," which gave him a place to post writings of his own and of writers he admired.

In his last years, Aronowitz self-published two books, "Bob Dylan and the Beatles" and "Bobby Darin Was a Friend of Mine." He was working on another, "Mick and Miles," about Mick Jagger and Miles Davis, when he died.


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