Jann Wenner

He took LSD every week for the rest of his life.

And I was recently talking to Jan Wenner and he said he still takes LSD once a month.

Wow.

Just to keep

So I've had friendships with Paul Williams and Paul Nelson and grill Marcus, you know, and, and, and, and on from there.

But, um, The long and the short of it is that Jan Wenner, who loves references to his own magazine, kind of summoned me up to his office and said, you've got to write for the magazine again.

And I had never written for the magazine.

I really, truly hadn't.

And those are the two highlights.

I never did Al Green or Bruce Springsteen.

But there's a funny punchline, which is Jan Wenner, figured it out.

One of his sub-editors said, you know, as I was sending in my expenses, he said, this guy's never done this before.

Fast forward to 1983.

You have Ahmet Erdogan, the legendary head of Atlantic Records, along with a tight circle of these music industry power players like Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone.

They formed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.

And their initial vision was to create a shrine, but they wanted it close to the industry.

Um, but that, that essentially ignited his passion for rock and roll photography, and then that became later, you know, a famous photo.

And in 1987, uh, you know, 20 years later, uh, Jann Wenner, the, the founder of Rolling Stone, uh, called it the most famous rock and roll photo of all time.

Uh, but basically from 1967 to 1983, uh, he photographed, uh, art directed, designed, and produced, you know, nearly 1,000, uh, rock and roll, uh, album covers.

Right.

Yeah.

Jann Wenner, uh, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, has been removed from the board of the Hard Rock... uh, excuse me, of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which he also helped found, by the way.

This is one day after an interview with him was published in the New York Times in which he made comments that were widely criticized as sexist and racist because they were sexist and racist.

Now, the foundation, which inducts artists into the Hall of Fame and was the organization behind the creation of its affiliated museum in Cleveland, they made the announcement in a brief statement released Saturday, and this is what that was: "Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation." And that's from Joel P- uh, Perisman, uh, the president, by the way, and chief executive of the foundation.

He did decline to comment further when he was reached by phone, but the dismissal of Mr. Wenner comes after an interview with The New York Times, published Friday and timed to publication of his new book called The Masters, which collects his decades of interviews with rock legends like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Bono.

All of them, by the way, white and male.

Right, right, right

... started by this dude Jann Wenner, and I said, "Man, that's it.

I'm gonna do that for hip-hop and create the Rolling Stone for the hip-hop generation."

Wow.

You know, maybe move down, you know, from Boston to New York-

I remember that

... and start helping me with things because, you know, I always thought he was a sharp dude-

Mm

Here's what you do.

You have Jan Wenner go on stage to accept the award on behalf of Iron Maiden.

Eddie comes out and literally kills him.

That's it.

Ralph Gleason started doing some radio stuff and other writing.

He worked at Ramparts, another one of those magazines we were talking about, before joining forces with this kid, Jan Wenner.

And sometimes people don't know about Ralph.

Ralph's a really important part of the story.

So yes, you're right.

He did write for Ramparts Magazine.

In fact, he got the Rolling Stones' other co-founder, Jan Wenner, a job at Ramparts Magazine's newspaper spinoff, The Sunday Ramparts.

So his protege was this Cal undergraduate student I was talking about earlier, Jan Wenner.