SEATTLE — To many, it was the northwest version of Rolling Stone magazine. The alternative publication, The Rocket chronicled Seattle’s music and arts scene for over two decades. Not bad for what started as an insert in a now-defunct newspaper in 1979.
"The main goal was to cover music, the type of music that literally was not being covered by any other publication in Seattle,” said John Keister, a former editor for The Rocket.
Much of the magazine's early years was spent covering up-and-coming bands heading to Seattle for the first time.
"The Police on their first tour, we have photos of them reading the rocket, we interviewed them," said Charles R Cross, former editor and owner of The Rocket.
"Def Leppard came by, and they were so young, but the reporter said, 'these guys are going to be huge,'" said Keister. "We frequently saw these acts before anyone in the country.”
By the late 80s, Seattle's local music scene was exploding and The Rocket was on the front lines reporting on what would become a music revolution.
"When you look back on the history of the paper and you go, okay, we're the first people to cover Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam. What those bands did to change the world and how relevant they still are today, makes me amazed," Cross said.
At its peak, The Rocket had a circulation of 150,000. But by the end of the century, the end was near.
"The internet had just developed, and a lot of what made The Rocket work were musicians classifieds where people met other members of bands, every band you can think of, from Nirvana and Kurt Cobain to many other bands that became famous, had advertised in The Rocket looking for band members at times," Cross said.
The internet may have contributed to the rocket's demise, but today it's helping bring it back, with the posting of all 333 issues online.
"The process of digitizing it was quite complicated. I didn't have every rocket John didn't have hardly any," said Cross. "The University of Washington was essential to this. And also the State of Washington's Department of Secretary of State has a digital newspapers initiative. They put the effort to scan and digitize this and I think they thought of it as a cultural good for people who grew up in the state, and I was very pleased to work with them on it, they did a lot of work."
With every issue of The Rocket preserved online, anyone can enter a digital time capsule and visit the era that changed Seattle forever.
"This cultural artifact is really all of our history. It's not just my history or John's or all the other people that work for it. It's really a history of Seattle," Cross said.
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