Stephen was born in New York City in 1947 and educated in Philadelphia and Boston. He began writing for The Cambridge Phoenix in 1970, with a special interest in music. He began contributing articles and reviews to Rolling Stone, and joined the magazine’s staff as associate editor in 1972.
In 1973 he traveled to Morocco for the first time, and in 1974 led an expedition to record tribal music in the Djebela mountains, sponsored by The National Geographic Society. After that, Stephen worked as a free-lance writer and journalist, his work appearing in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and many national magazines. In 1979, he was honored for his music journalism (specifically his collaboration with composer Charles Mingus) by ASCAP.
Stephen’s first book, with photographs by his friend Peter Simon, was Reggae Bloodlines: In Search of the Music and Culture of Jamaica, first published in 1977. This was followed by Reggae International (1981), and the acclaimed biography Bob Marley, first published in 1983.
Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga was an international bestseller for Stephen in 1985, and has since been translated into twenty languages.
His next book was Say Kids! What Time Is It? (Notes from the Peanut Gallery), a history of the Howdy Doody television show, published in 1987. Stephen also served as ghost-writer on Michael Jackson’s mega-selling memoir, Moonwalk, published in 1988.
A series of collaborations followed: Fleetwood: My Life and Times with Fleetwood Mac, written with Mick Fleetwood and published in 1990; This Wheel’s On Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band (1993); and Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith (1997).
Stephen also published Jajouka Rolling Stone: A Fable of Gods and Heroes, a book about Morocco, in 1993. Another text, To Marrakech By Aeroplane, was published in 2010.
Other titles include Old Gods Almost Dead: The Forty Year Saga of the Rolling Stones, published in 2001; Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend (2004); and Watch You Bleed: The Guns N’ Roses Saga (2008).
Stephen’s most recent music book is LZ-’75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 American Tour, published by Gotham Books in October 2010. He is currently working on a biography of Carly Simon, to be published by Gotham as well.