 He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually became an A&R executive for RCA Records before turning to writing pop music reviews and related articles for "Rolling Stone" magazine, "Blender", "The Village Voice", "The Atlantic", and "Vanity Fair", among other publications.He first achieved prominence with his 1970s "Rolling Stone" work, where he tended to cover singer-songwriter and traditional pop artists.He joined the staff of "The New York Times" in 1981, and subsequently became one of the newspaper's leading theatre and film critics.