On November 9, 1967, Rolling Stone magazine arrived in the world not with a bang, but with a slightly confused-looking John Lennon in a netted helmet. Dressed as Private Gripweed from the absurdist war film How I Won the War, Lennon graced the cover of what would become the most influential music publication in history—though at the time, it looked more like the arts section of a small-town newspaper.

This was not an artistic choice. It was a deadline scramble.

Jann Wenner, 21 and armed with a typewriter, a dream, and $7,500 mostly scrounged from his soon-to-be in-laws, wanted to elevate rock journalism beyond teenage bedroom posters and Tiger Beat fluff. Partnering with jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, he launched Rolling Stone out of a print shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. It was part newspaper, part countercultural barometer, and entirely unprepared for how iconic it would eventually become.

The name was a cultural blender: Muddy Waters’ blues classic, Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” a nod to the band your parents hated, and that old proverb about gathering no moss—because why pick one symbol when you can claim them all?

Now, about that cover.

It wasn’t planned, curated, or even photographed by the magazine. The image of Lennon came from a promotional packet for How I Won the War, a black comedy nobody really remembers, except for its accidental role in rock history. Wenner had little else to work with and even less time. Amid a pile of lackluster shots, Lennon—grinning like someone who’s both in costume and over it—stood out. It was, Wenner later admitted, “the most compelling image available.” Translation: the best of a bad situation.

And yet, it worked. Lennon wasn’t posing as a rock god or making a grand artistic statement. He was just there, in uniform, looking mildly irritated and vaguely important. Which, frankly, is how the whole counterculture felt in 1967.

Inside, the magazine took itself seriously. Monterey Pop Festival coverage was handled like Watergate. Reviews dissected Donovan and the Grateful Dead with academic intensity. Industry gossip was printed like economic news. And the whole thing was packaged in 24 pages of broadsheet minimalism for a quarter.

The goal? Legitimacy. Wenner wanted readers to believe Rolling Stone belonged next to The New York Times, not on a teenager’s floor. So instead of psychedelic layouts and screaming fonts, he gave them a masthead, a table of contents, and a black-and-white Beatle looking like he’d just wandered out of a Monty Python sketch.

That image did more than fill a space. It established a relationship. Lennon, already deep into his experimental, post-Beatles phase, would later give Rolling Stone one of its defining interviews—an unfiltered confessional that helped rescue the magazine from early financial ruin and confirmed its status as a cultural heavyweight.

And the photo? It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t glossy. It was borrowed.

But it launched a legacy.

That’s the thing about revolutions. Sometimes they start not with a manifesto, but with a misplaced press photo and a prayer to the printer gods.