Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir

by Jann S. Wenner

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Get ready for a once-in-a-generation memoir from the beating heart of rock and roll. From the triumphs of the Beatles and the Stones to the brilliance of the Boss, he was there. Jann Wenner captured an entire generation of superstars, from Mick and Keith to John and Paul, from Bono and Elton to Bruce. Here, Wenner reflects on his life and some of the most intimate, moving, and unforgettable stories from the history of rock.

In this New York Times bestseller, Rolling Stone founder, co-editor, and publisher Jann Wenner offers a "touchingly honest" and "wonderfully deep" memoir from the beating heart of classic rock and roll (Bruce Springsteen).

Jann Wenner has been called by his peers “the greatest editor of his generation.”

His deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics, and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. The age of rock and roll in an era of consequence, what will be considered one of the great watersheds in modern history. Wenner writes with the clarity of a journalist and an essayist. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. He was instrumental in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Annie Leibovitz. His journey took him to the Oval Office with his legendary interviews with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, leaders to whom Rolling Stone gave its historic, full-throated backing. From Jerry Garcia to the Dalai Lama, Aretha Franklin to Greta Thunberg, the people Wenner chose to be seen and heard in the pages of Rolling Stone tried to change American culture, values, and morality.

Like a Rolling Stone is a beautifully written portrait of one man’s life, and the life of his generation.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316415194
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	242,525
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Jann S. Wenner was born in New York City and raised in San Francisco and Marin County. He founded Rolling Stone in 1967. Over the ensuing decades, Rolling Stone won many awards for its design, photography, public service, and journalism, and was instrumental in launching the careers of many groundbreaking journalists and photographers. He also founded and published Outside, US Weekly, Family Life, and Men’s Journal. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the youngest inductee in the American Society of Magazine Editor’s Hall of Fame, Wenner lives in New York and Idaho. He is married and has six children.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Last Days xi

Part 1 Beginnings

1 Rainbow Road 3

2 The School on the Hill 12

3 Berkeley 22

4 Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out 31

5 London Calling 41

6 Jane 47

Part 2 Rolling Stone

7 The First Issue 57

8 A Family Affair 65

9 Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, and the Naked Beatle 72

10 A Brief Visit to Planet New York 81

11 Trans-Oceanic Comics Company 85

12 Me and Boz, Sittin' on Otis' Porch 92

13 Talking Bob Dylan 95

14 Altamont and the End of the Innocence 100

15 Helter Skelter 106

16 John Lennon and Hunter Thompson Drop By 115

17 Lennon Remembers 125

18 Putting Together the Home Team 130

19 The House on California Street 138

20 A Day in the Lire 144

21 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 150

22 The Beast Stirs in Big Sur 155

23 Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 158

24 Truman and Andy, Paul Bowles and Uncle Earl 168

25 A Wonder of American Journalism 178

26 From Elko to Egypt 182

27 Farewell to Ralph J. Gleason 190

28 Becoming Bicoastal 194

29 The Scoop of the Seventies 204

Part 3 The Empire

30 The Big Apple 211

31 John Belushi, Incoming 220

32 Our Tenth Anniversary 225

33 Christmases with Jackie 235

34 The Dry Heaves 244

35 Asleep at the Wheel 250

36 The Dream Is Over 255

37 Fuck the NRA 259

38 God Has His Hands Full 265

39 Diamond Rash, Limousine Elbow 271

40 The Hall of Fame 278

41 The Bonfire of the Vanities 286

42 The Gift of God 293

43 Yoko and the Gorbachevs 301

44 My Father's Death 306

45 Altitude Adjustments 311

46 The King and Queen of Pop 316

47 Blue Highways 323

48 Bill Clinton and the Three Stooges 329

49 A Visit to the White House 338

50 The Death of Jackie Onassis 345

51 Matt 350

Part 4 Settling Down

52 Passages 361

53 A Visit from Jane 369

54 The Best Magazine in America 375

55 Only the Good Die Young 379

56 All Out for Al 383

57 My City of Ruins 392

58 My Private Idaho 398

59 Watching the River Flow 405

60 Kerry Loses 411

61 Hunter Thompson, R.I.P. 420

62 Hunter Redux with Johnny Depp 427

63 Magazine Wars 430

64 They Say It's Yer Birthday 438

65 The Wheel of Life 445

66 Is It Rolling, Bob? 451

67 Burning Man 463

68 'Higher and Higher' 472

69 The Runaway General 476

70 The Wrecking Ball 484

71 The Road to Rio 490

72 The Million-Pound Shit Hammer 498

73 Bad Moon Rising 505

74 The Gathering Storm 512

Part 5 Goodbye to All That

75 Selling Rolling Stone 525

76 The Road to Recovery 538

77 My Last Letter from the Editor 546

Acknowledgments 555

Permissions and Credits 557

Index 561

Editorial Reviews

A touchingly honest memoir from a man who recorded and shaped our times and of a grand life well lived. It is wonderfully deep and rewarding reading.”—Bruce Springsteen

"Rollicking read."—Paul McCartney

“[Wenner's] readers—for nearly half the century—get the best of him in these pages. I had a lot of fun getting lost in him and no interest in being found.”—Bono

“A rip-roaring and speedy ride through the excesses, excitements, and tragedies of our generation. Alternately thrilling, bedeviling, and deeply moving...unparalleled reading.”
 —Bette Midler

"Over the top."—Jackson Browne

"Entertaining in spades."—Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times

“Jann S. Wenner takes us on a long, strange trip with his accessible and entertaining rock ‘n’ roll memoir.”—Associated Press

“Rock may be dead, but Jann Wenner is still rolling…he still has something of the whirlwind about him.” —Maureen Dowd, New York Times

"Like a Rolling Stone is something of an immoveable feast....When he finally ascends to Magazine Heaven, Mr. Wenner will be eligible to join Harold Ross, Henry Luce, Clay Felker, Helen Gurley Brown and a few others at the high table reserved for editors who created or revitalized great and enduring American magazines like the New Yorker, Time, Life, New York and Cosmopolitan."—Edward Kosner, Wall Street Journal

“What we haven’t really heard until now is a full-throated inside account of how music came to define American life in the first place, starting in the late ’60s and onward—written by the man who channeled that revolution into a magazine, Rolling Stone, that became a cultural force of its own...Jann came, he kicked ass, had his own ass kicked, and walked away with his head held high."—Corey Seymour, Vogue

"A wildly entertaining romp that will stir feelings of envy."—USA Today

"Readers will surely feast on all the behind-the-scenes candy featuring the likes of Bono, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Bette Midler, and countless other stars, plus media icons like Annie Leibovitz and Hunter S. Thompson."—Vanity Fair

"A panoramic cultural history viewed through the prism of an icon."—Oprah Daily

"Wenner demonstrated great vision when he created… a publication that treated rock and politics as subjects equally deserving of serious examination…thrilling…fascinating.”—Washington Post

"Incredibly candid, open and honest."—Walter Isaacson

"A mind-blowing and insightful trip through the life of one of the principal sculptors of Rock 'n' Roll culture....Thoughtful, opinionated and open-hearted."—Tom Morello

“A high-octane story...a sweeping portrait of a generation....Wenner is in a league of his own. This memoir is utterly intoxicating."
 —Douglas Brinkley, Author of Silent Spring Revolution

"The founder, coeditor and publisher of Rolling Stone takes readers through his heady years at the most influential music and pop culture publication of its era.”—AARP, "45 Best Books of Fall"

"A frank, sharp memoir by a zeitgeist-savvy entrepreneur who ranks among the earliest of modern influencers.”—Kirkus Reviews

"It’s not possible to overstate the impact Jann Wenner has had on the world’s pop culture...Wenner seems to have retained every letter he ever received, and even somehow has copies of letters he sent. It’s a treat to hear John Lennon in his own words, as he regrets having eviscerated Paul McCartney, or Mick Jagger. These are priceless historical documents, and add reportorial credibility to Wenner’s recollection of long ago events.”—Book & Film Globe

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2022

Wenner turned on to drugs and politics as a student at Berkeley in 1964 but by 1967, it seemed to him "the only thing people were making better than drugs was music." That year, Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason founded Rolling Stone. It quickly became one of the most influential magazines in America, read not only for music reviews but also for the quality of its writing and its take on public issues. In 1995, Wenner dissolved a 28-year marriage and moved in with Matt, now his husband. (His wife had known he was gay from the start.) He has hung out with virtually every big name in the rock world, including Dylan, Lennon, Ono, Jagger, Springsteen, and Bono. He also boasts of his friendships with Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon, and presidents Clinton and Obama. There are so many in rapid succession that often they blur as individuals. Three relationships stand out. With Jagger and Thompson—difficult to unpack characters—they were complicated, with Springsteen, more direct. Wenner's description of Tom Cruise? All front and deflection. VERDICT Wenner writes engagingly and doesn't pull his punches. It'll be hard to keep this book on the library shelves.—David Keymer

Library Journal

2022-05-19
The Rolling Stone founder and publisher recounts a golden age of sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, and cash flow.

As Wenner (b. 1947) admits, he grew up in privilege: His first car was a Jaguar, and he got his first editing gig with the yearbook of his private school. He was swayed from preppiedom with the advent of rock, which he correctly deems a form of “soft power.” Though he missed the Beatles’ legendary performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, he became a devotee after seeing A Hard Day’s Night. This long narrative is bracketed by his 2017 sale of the magazine he founded in 1967, its title borrowed from the Dylan song and not the British band. Soon enough, though, Wenner became friendly with both the Beatles and the Stones. The magazine was revolutionary, especially early on. As the author notes, it “introduced black music to an expanding white audience—not as music for white people created by black people, but as black music in and of itself.” Staffed by the likes of Ben Fong-Torres, Joe Eszterhas, Hunter S. Thompson, and Annie Leibovitz, it also soon became an outlet of choice for musical acts around the world. In fact, John Lennon’s first extensive interview ran in is pages. (Wenner does allow that there were bands that hated the magazine, notably Led Zeppelin.) In time, Wenner decided to abandon the “fading hippie orthodoxy” of San Francisco for the bright lights of New York, where—with the madcap Thompson in tow—Rolling Stone became a journal of politics as much as music, cheering on Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The author writes frankly about money, sex (including his own long years in the closet), and his regret at selling his creation: “The new mantra was clear: What counted was not the printed word but the number of ‘hits’ on the website.”

A frank, sharp memoir by a zeitgeist-savvy entrepreneur who ranks among the earliest of modern influencers.

Kirkus Reviews

Veteran voice pro Dennis Boutsikaris delivers this fast-moving memoir with documentary clarity and exceptional resonance with the author’s deeply personal story and observations. With his totally authentic phrasing and tonal palette, Boutsikaris sounds like the author, bobbing and weaving through the cultural upheaval that began in the 1960s and upended everything we took for granted about music, being young, and the prevailing moral order. In the midst of that turmoil, Jann Wenner started and edited ROLLING STONE, the magazine that captured better than anyone else the amazing energy to be found in the music of the times and the lives of the musicians and cultural icons he wrote about and befriended. Delivering the introduction and afterword, Wenner is a believable speaker whose story will be compelling to students of the times and hippies of a certain age. T.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

Veteran voice pro Dennis Boutsikaris delivers this fast-moving memoir with documentary clarity and exceptional resonance with the author’s deeply personal story and observations. With his totally authentic phrasing and tonal palette, Boutsikaris sounds like the author, bobbing and weaving through the cultural upheaval that began in the 1960s and upended everything we took for granted about music, being young, and the prevailing moral order. In the midst of that turmoil, Jann Wenner started and edited ROLLING STONE, the magazine that captured better than anyone else the amazing energy to be found in the music of the times and the lives of the musicians and cultural icons he wrote about and befriended. Delivering the introduction and afterword, Wenner is a believable speaker whose story will be compelling to students of the times and hippies of a certain age. T.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile