81as an editor at various publications in the area,
such as his day job at Pacific Telephone’s employee
magazine and his volunteer work at night for a bi-
lingual paper called East-West. He began working
full time for Rolling Stone magazine in May 1969.
In time, Fong-Torres became something of a star
writer during his time at Rolling Stone, winning a
Deems Taylor Award for Magazine Writing in 1974
for an interview he conducted with Ray Charles.
Fong-Torres eventually stayed with the magazine
until 1981, interviewing artists as diverse as Bob
Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Diane Keaton, Bonnie Raitt,
and the Grateful Dead during his tenure there. He
is also the last known person to have interviewed
Jim Morrison before he left for Paris and later died
in early July 1971.
The Deems Taylor Award is not his only award,
nor is journalism his only field. He won a Billboard
Award for Broadcast Excellence for a syndicated
radio special that he wrote and narrated, called
San Francisco: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.
Though he is best known today as a rock journal-
ist, Fong-Torres has actually worked extensively
in radio and TV. He completed profiles of celeb-
rity interviews on Evening Magazine in 1977, fre-
quently taping the introductions to the segments
from his Rolling Stone offices. During his time at
Rolling Stone, Fong-Torres worked as a disc jockey
on the weekends for a San Francisco radio station
(1970–79); in addition, he later hosted Fog City
Weekly (a weekly arts show that began in Decem-
ber 1994 and lasted less than a year), as well as
coanchoring coverage of the Chinese New Year
parades each year since 1997. Quirkily, in 1993,
he “won big” on Wheel of Fortune, netting some
$99,000 in cash and prizes. But he may be most fa-
miliar to readers as a real-life character in Almost
Famous, the 2000 film by director-writer Cam-
eron Crowe, in which his character was played by
Terry Chen.
After leaving Rolling Stone in 1981, Fong-Tor-
res worked as a screenwriter on such projects as
Cycling through China (1982). The following year,
he joined the San Francisco Chronicle as a feature
writer and radio columnist until 1992, when he
left to write his memoirs, The Rice Room: From
Number Two Son to Rock and Roll (1994). This
book details not only his life but also that of his
brother Barry, who was shot to death in his San
Francisco apartment in June 1972. After complet-
ing his memoirs, Fong-Torres joined the staff of
a San Francisco-based trade weekly for the radio
and recording industries, Gavin, as managing
editor. He held the post until 1997 before leav-
ing to complete his book, The Hits Just Keep On
Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio (1998). That
same year, Fong-Torres began writing the script
for the nationally broadcast induction ceremonies
at the Radio Hall of Fame. Widely anthologized
among his pieces are Garcia; The Rolling Stone
Film Reader; The American’s Search for Identity;
and Chink!: Studies in Ethnic Prejudice. In 1991
he published Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of
Gram Parsons, which was nominated for the Ralph
J. Gleason Book Award.
Besides contributing pieces to The Encyclope-
dia of Country Music, the CD-ROM version of the
Encyclopedia Britannica, and The Motown Album:
The Sound of Young America, Fong-Torres wrote
the main biographies for People magazine’s trib-
utes to Jerry Garcia and Frank Sinatra, and his ar-
ticles have appeared in a wide range of magazines
including Esquire, GQ (where he was pop music
columnist for three years), Parade, Sports Illus-
trated, Travel & Leisure, American Film, TV Guide,
Harper’s Bazaar and California Business, among
others. In 1999 Miller Freeman published Not Fade
Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll, a
compilation of 34 articles from Fong-Torres’s time
at Rolling Stone. Fong-Torres has since worked as
editorial director of myplay.com as well as vice
president of Content at Collabrys, a company that
does brand marketing.
As a second-generation Chinese American,
Fong-Torres has long been open to speaking and
giving advice about being Asian American and
working in media. When he began at Rolling Stone
more than three decades ago, there were few Asian
Americans working in these fields. He has been a
pioneer in this regard and continues to serve as a
role model within the community, emceeing com-
munity events, writing pieces for Asianconnec-
tions.com, and becoming a curator at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He was alsoFong-Torres, Ben 81