Clearly aimed at girls, 16 was thumbed through by the guys anyway, because if you wanted to read about the Beatles or the Monkees, this was it. Rock journalism as we know it was yet to be born, or at the very least was in an outpost hidden from us (It wasn't till a little later that Hullaballo magazine, started as a TV tie-in, seemed to undergo a coup d'etat and became more serious once the show for which it was named went off the air).
The editor was an ex-model named Gloria Stavers. She knew she was running a magazine for "teenyboppers," but would occasionally slip in references to bands like the Doors. She was kind enough to print lyrics to Beatle songs. She published a handy key to all of the faces on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve (which may have been the first place I'd seen an image of Aleister Crowley). She was quick to defend our heroes when critics intimated that credit for the Beatles' worked belonged more properly to George Martin. We hung on every word the Fab Four said, and those words were often filtered through 16.
