O. K., so we’ve done our annual Hollywood Issue for the past seven years, and now we’re trying to do the same thing for music. The retentive among you will recognize the patented Vanity Fair “Special Issue” template: three-panel foldout cover; lots of marvelous historical pieces; “Vanities” and “Fanfair” sections devoted to the issue’s topic; a big-league portfolio by the magazine’s unparalleled stable of photographers, anchored with wonderfully written captions; and an editor’s letter which addresses the subject at hand, and which nobody reads.

I will tell you this: putting together an issue devoted solely to music is exponentially more difficult than doing one on the movie business. For one thing, there’s just so much music out there. A year or so ago, when we began talking about this issue, Annie Leibovitz faxed over to me a list someone in the industry had drawn up of all the different types of music, organized by category and subcategory. The list ran to 11 pages and broke the various forms of music into 55 sets (classic rock, alternative country, fusion, and so forth) and 299 subsets (Goth rock, No Wave, ambient dub, etc.). As I say, there is a lot of music out there.

So sheer volume is a problem. And then there is the passion people feel for music. With movies, you can watch The Wages of Fear and Clueless in the same evening and love them both. With music, the Carly Simon fan is probably immune to the charms of Radiohead. And vice versa. Everyone has an opinion on music, and it’s usually a strong opinion. What they like is not the problem so much as what they don’t like. Chances are, what they don’t like is something you do like. Not only do people, especially teenagers, define themselves by the type of music they listen to, the true believers actually define their friends by their taste in music.

HEADLINER Bob Dylan was photographed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on March 23, 2000, by Danny Clinch.

Me, I go into a record store and hit the cash register with CDs from all over the place. On a recent trip I picked up albums by A Tribe Called Quest, Dave Brubeck, Bobby Darin, Louis Armstrong, the Clash, Eric Clapton, Charlie Parker, Parliament, Louis Prima, Bob Dylan, Maria Callas, and the Drifters, as well as the cast recordings of Showboat and The Music Man. And I love them all.

Senior articles editor Aimee Bell oversaw most of the details of this issue with the help of V.F. contributing editor Lisa Robinson, a veteran of the rock scene for more than a quarter of a century. Let me tell you a little bit about Aimee. She was still in graduate school when she was hired as an editorial assistant at Spy magazine, where she became my assistant. I had co-founded Spy, and after my partners and I sold it in 1991, I became editor of The New York Observer, where Aimee became my deputy editor. She traveled with me to Vanity Fair eight years ago, and from the first day has been an invaluable colleague. I rarely make a major decision without consulting her, and I cannot imagine working anywhere without her there as well. Our passions are similar, but not always in sync. One thing we do have in common: we both know the lyrics to “ Ya Got Trouble,” from The Music Man. As I say, that Aimee has great taste in music.