Episode 1372 - Jann Wenner
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast
Marc:Jan Wenner is on the show today.
Marc:He is the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine.
Marc:He was known for conducting the Rolling Stone interview in the magazine, and he gave dozens of talented writers their big breaks.
Marc:He also co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Marc:He's got a memoir out called Like a Rolling Stone.
Marc:I got a copy of that, and I was given the opportunity to talk to him, not knowing how I felt about him exactly, but knowing that he was... He's like the...
Marc:the prototype baby boomer guy who went through the full arc of boomerness, you know, starting with the, the publication of what was essentially a music magazine, but was sort of riding the crest of the subculture all the way into cocaine fueled insanity and into corporate selling of, of Rolling Stone.
Marc:It just the full arc of,
Marc:Coming out late in life, having two lives, essentially.
Marc:He's a consummate boomer, however you want to take that.
Marc:And he knows it.
Marc:But, you know, it's also Rolling Stone magazine.
Marc:How many of your heroes wrote for Rolling Stone magazine?
Marc:How many of your heroes were profiled in Rolling Stone magazine?
Marc:How important was Rolling Stone magazine to you as a kid?
Marc:I mean, I'm 59.
Marc:How important?
Marc:Pretty fucking important, right?
Marc:I'll say.
Marc:So a couple things.
Marc:Tonight I'll be in Livermore, California at the Bankhead Theater and tomorrow Friday I'm in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California at the Sunset Center.
Marc:You hear me?
Marc:It's going to be a few of us.
Marc:Whatever, man.
Marc:Just knocking it out.
Marc:Just doing the work.
Marc:I'm just a road dog.
Marc:Road dog.
Marc:But I would like to talk about the movie I'm in that's coming out on Friday to Leslie.
Marc:A lot of you remember me talking about this.
Marc:I shot this during COVID.
Marc:I was kind of uptight about, you know, having to do an accent and, you know, taking a risk.
Marc:But I did it.
Marc:It took a lot of cajoling by the director.
Marc:But I did it and I locked in.
Marc:It's a heavy time, man.
Marc:We shot this thing on film.
Marc:He shot it in like three weeks on film.
Marc:And, you know, it was a very funny experience.
Marc:I think I told you about it, about, you know, trying to figure out if I'm going to do an accent, meeting with the dialect coach because it was a Texan accent.
Marc:And there are several, if any.
Marc:Some Texans don't have accents at all.
Marc:The dialect coach went with Lubbock, gave me a bunch of videos to watch, and they were all of Mac Davis talking.
Marc:Mac Davis, the singer, songwriter and actor,
Marc:who I think has since passed, was the best example of Lubbock, I guess.
Marc:And I studied Mac Davis.
Marc:I studied Mac Davis deeply.
Marc:I made a key for myself that she sent me on the paper of annunciation, pronunciation.
Marc:But the movie To Leslie, which is a raw, gut-wrenching movie,
Marc:With Andrea Riceboro, I play opposite Andrea Riceboro, who is just a fucking acting wizard, a genius actress.
Marc:So the movie is opening in theaters tomorrow.
Marc:It's also available to rent on digital on-demand platforms.
Marc:And it's getting some good feedback.
Marc:I was told that Howard Stern said some nice things about me.
Marc:He and his wife enjoyed to Leslie raved about the movie and about me and about Andrea.
Marc:Stephen Root's in the movie.
Marc:Allison Janney's in the movie.
Marc:Andre Royo's in the movie.
Marc:And I don't know, man, it's exciting.
Marc:It's exciting because people are digging it.
Marc:And that's what you want them to do.
Marc:And listen, if you have any questions for me about the movie or anything else, actually, you can contribute to our next Ask Mark Anything episode for full Marin subscribers.
Marc:There's a link to submit a question in the episode description.
Marc:Just go to the episode notes on whatever app you're using and click on the link for Ask Mark Anything.
Marc:Send me a question and I'll answer it.
Marc:I guess I just talked to you guys on Monday and I'm just trying to deal.
Marc:Had a rotor guy.
Marc:Roto-rooter guy.
Marc:Do you still call him that?
Marc:A guy snaked my drain.
Marc:And hasn't been done in a few years.
Marc:It needed to be done.
Marc:And there's just that moment where I come up and I'm like, how's it going?
Marc:He's like, well, I think everything I got out is here.
Marc:Do you want to look at it?
Marc:Do I want to look at what I've lost?
Marc:Do I want to look...
Marc:At, you know, something the length of an arm composed of my hair.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Do I?
Marc:I know I'm losing my hair a bit, but I didn't know that much.
Marc:That's like an entire being.
Marc:But yeah, exciting.
Marc:It is exciting.
Marc:It's exciting to get your drain snaked, isn't it?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, it is.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Shout out to my father and his wife, Rosie.
Marc:How are you, Barry?
Marc:How are you, dad?
Marc:How are you, old man?
Marc:What's happening with you?
Marc:You know, after he heard me talk to him on the last show, I talked to him the other day on the phone and he was just so impressed with my word usage.
Marc:I mean, he's beside himself.
Marc:He's like, I don't know how you talk like that.
Marc:I'm like, I've been doing this a long time and I think about things.
Marc:He's like, I just don't get it.
Marc:I can never do that.
Marc:It's one of those beautiful moments where in this sort of mild haze of, of mental issues and, uh,
Marc:You know, and him sort of being a little more open somehow in a way that, you know, it's nice when he can determine that I'm a separate person from him that does different things, not just some kind of strange psychic appendage or actual limb.
Marc:It's it's nice when when he realizes in his self-absorbed way that like, oh, my God, you're a you're an entirely different being than me.
Marc:Yes, dad, I am my own man.
Marc:I am my own man, Dad, with my own lexicon, with my own vocabulary, with my own thoughts.
Marc:I am that guy, different than you.
Marc:I hope you're having a good day.
Marc:So Jan Wenner is here, was here.
Marc:We hashed it out.
Marc:We talked a bit.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:His memoir, Like a Rolling Stone, is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:And this is me talking to Jan Wenner, who I didn't know was Jewish.
Marc:How are you, man?
Marc:Good, Mark.
Marc:Good to see you.
Marc:You know, I got the book.
Marc:I got two signed copies of the book.
Marc:They usually send galleys.
Marc:I didn't get those.
Marc:But I got two signed copies like two days ago.
Marc:And I'm going through it.
Marc:But obviously, I grew up with the magazine.
Marc:I grew up knowing who you are.
Marc:And I kind of went through the book.
Marc:And there's a lot of stories in there.
Marc:But like my...
Marc:What I was curious about right out of the gate, since the Rolling Stone interview was such a thing, what determines whether a Rolling Stone interview is a good interview?
Marc:What were your standards for that?
Guest:Well, I think this interview was based in the first place on...
Guest:The Playboy interview, which at the time was this long, definitive, in-depth, personal profile.
Guest:A serious, very serious kind of interview as opposed to every other kind of profile.
Guest:And then also there was something called the Paris Review Interviews with writers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In which they talked to them about their craft and how they wrote.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They write in the morning, the afternoons.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All this kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Professional trade talk, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just thought a combination of the two.
Guest:Right.
Guest:With these people who are really legitimate musicians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like, I mean, take Jerry Garcia.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Or anybody.
Guest:Legitimate musicians, so what they've listened to, who influenced them, who shaped their music.
Guest:And then who are you as a person and as a thinker that makes you write...
Guest:this stuff and take this attitude and approach.
Guest:So it was meant to be a deep dive into- Into the craft.
Guest:Into the craft in somebody's head.
Guest:And you'd want to, we would restrict it really to people who I thought were thoughtful enough to deserve that lengthy examination.
Guest:And not everybody did, obviously.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, surprisingly, you know, depending on, you know, most people are people and they have stories to tell, but in terms of if it's craft specific, you kind of want to have somebody that's got some depth to them.
Marc:But that guy, I knew one of the guys, I interviewed one of the guys who used to do the Playboy interviews.
Marc:I mean, he used to go out, he'd spend weeks with these people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Weeks.
Marc:Did you guys do that at the beginning?
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I thought that was kind of unnecessary indulgence.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Because I knew people who did that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't think the results were any better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, necessarily.
Guest:And I don't know what they were doing other than... Hanging out, man.
Guest:They were hanging out.
Guest:Listen, I did a Garcia interview.
Guest:It was huge and lengthy.
Guest:And we spent the afternoon smoking pot on his front lawn.
Guest:What, back in the 70s, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, yeah, I don't smoke pot anymore.
Guest:Who does?
Marc:Everybody.
Marc:What are you kidding?
Marc:Who does?
Marc:It's legal, dude.
Marc:Where have you been?
Marc:Oh, it's California.
Marc:I forgot.
Marc:It's legal in most places.
Marc:I mean, I know... Yeah, people just smoking weed like it's, you know, goddamn breakfast.
Guest:i can't anymore but in any case why can't you smoke pot anymore it seems like to be the one thing that you it's it's um it's too rough on my lungs oh and and you were a smoker right i was for years and then just i cough and it's just unpleasant oh what happened to your leg uh i fell down on his court and i broke my femur oh my god yeah so that's a bitch
Marc:Yeah, it's getting old sex, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But anyway, the interview, I mean, I think the trick of it was not that you had to spend days, but you had to assign an interviewer that could connect really well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And not only understood the subject, but loved the subject.
Right.
Guest:And I think people were eager to do the Rolling Stone interview.
Guest:Because it's such a wonderful forum for a musician who's rarely given that length or taken that seriously.
Marc:And I think at that time, at the beginning, the subculture was becoming the culture.
Marc:So a type of music was evolving that was exciting and new.
Marc:I mean, it seems that...
Marc:Well, the guy that you started the magazine with?
Guest:Ralph Gleason.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, he was a jazz guy, right?
Guest:He was a jazz critic, very prominent, well-known.
Guest:Now, how old were you when you met that guy?
Guest:Well, I was in college when I met him, and when we started rolling, so I was 20, and Ralph was 48.
Guest:Now, but was jazz your thing?
Guest:No, jazz wasn't my thing.
Guest:And Malf kept trying to educate me and used to take me to all these jazz concerts and see people play.
Guest:When you were a kid?
Guest:When I was a kid in college.
Guest:I kept thinking, Jerry Garcia was the end of the earth.
Guest:You know, that's where Gartar started.
Guest:And he's, oh, no, no.
Guest:And he would take me around.
Guest:But he, at the time, jazz critics were very snobby towards rock and roll.
Guest:Didn't like it.
Guest:It was discredited.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But Ralph saw the art in it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And the Beatles and the singers.
Guest:Oh, he dug it.
Marc:Paul and Simon.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the words.
Guest:And what it was saying, its purpose is an art form.
Guest:It was a kind of political social art form.
Guest:But the jazz establishment mocked him.
Guest:And so he was 48 years old.
Guest:So they would say, well, Ralph Glees is a 40-year-old man who can't decide whether he's, you know, three 16-year-olds or four 12-year-olds.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He loved that.
Guest:But he had that spirit of youth.
Guest:And what did you learn from him?
Guest:Just a lot.
Guest:Just, you know, mainly about ethics and integrity and journalism and the fact that you really should know your stuff going into it.
Guest:I mean, there was no excuse for inaccuracy, sloppy stuff.
Marc:Is that the only experience you had in dealing with a journalist?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I had been, well, with a professional journalist, I, the year before, worked for Ramparts.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And, which Ralph got me that job.
Guest:And they weren't exactly professional journalists, but... But did that define your politics?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, not all my politics.
Guest:We're opposite the Rampart's politics.
Guest:The Rampart's politics are like stridently new left, Black Panther.
Guest:That was too left for you?
Guest:Not that it was too left.
Guest:It's not that I disagreed with any of the policies or the ideas of it, but the approach...
Guest:was one, and I'm not saying this specifically on any particular group like Pants, but generically, the approach of this kind of New Left thing was harsh and punitive and sometimes violent.
Guest:It evolved into violence.
Sure.
Guest:They had this little brittle understanding of how they get young people involved in politics.
Guest:And my point of view and Ralph's point of view is that rock and roll had its kind of innate politics of consciousness and a sense of human justice.
Guest:And what we should be talking about here is a revolution that comes from culture.
Guest:Which happened in the end.
Guest:But that would be the approach of young people.
Guest:You can't go in the end and say, well, you know,
Guest:I don't know, all kinds of different things.
Guest:But the message of the Beatles and Stones was there's a different kind of thing.
Guest:And it kind of coincided with the use of LSD and that kind of consciousness.
Guest:And so we were very evangelistic about bringing this message.
Guest:A message of kind of nonviolence.
Guest:It was a message of Joan Baez, for example.
Marc:Right, but you weren't involved with the protests at all?
Marc:At Berkeley?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I was very involved in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's different.
Guest:That's not kind of what... The New Left came after that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And it was just strident.
Guest:It was the Jerry Rubin, Abby Hoffman thing, a bunch of people after that.
Guest:And our thing was really...
Guest:Also very middle class, in a way.
Guest:Is that how you grew up?
Guest:Middle class, yeah.
Guest:But steeped in liberal democratic politics.
Guest:Where did you grow up?
Guest:Marin County.
Marc:So both your folks, were you relocated there?
Guest:Yeah, New York City was where they are from, and that's where I was born.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What kind of business were your parents in?
Guest:My dad and mother started after the war.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were each in the Army and the Navy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Got married, had me.
Guest:Then they moved to the West Coast.
Guest:They drove out to San Francisco.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like a typical post-war...
Guest:A couple taking advantage of all the post-war boom, and it had me, and so I was the leading edge of the baby boom.
Guest:But they started a company in San Francisco that made baby formulas and supplied custom-made baby formulas to hospitals all around the Bay Area.
Guest:And up until that time, hospitals all had their own formula rooms.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Dad convinced the hospitals that we would make their formula, he would make their formulas for them, and they can convert that room to a bed.
Guest:And then they had this big plant in San Francisco that did nothing but churn out baby formulas and customary around the clock, which were delivered by trucks with storks on the side of them to hospitals.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:I mean, when I hear about that generation, when they find these niches.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Where the hell does the inspiration come for something like that?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it wasn't for me.
Guest:I think I was, or maybe I was the last, I don't know.
Guest:But it was just a classic kind of story of post-war folks coming out to California, having three kids, finding their dream.
Guest:Everyone still around?
Guest:Yeah, they're all around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought that was a, it was in a way kind of a model story for my Jewish generation, yes.
Guest:And Marin County, you know, the classic kind of suburban area.
Marc:Sure, but not a lot of Jews, not a lot of San Francisco Jews.
Guest:No, we were, you know, the minority for sure in our neighborhood.
Guest:And you were aware of that, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You knew you were a little different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought there was any active anti-Semitism, but...
Guest:Were they New York Jews?
Guest:Yes, but not practicing Jews.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:But it's interesting because there is like a history of like sort of Bay Area Jews that go way back to the 1800s.
Marc:And they were mostly, I think, German Jews, which are different than sort of the sort of Ashkenazi kind of New York trip.
Marc:You know, there was a and I think an aristocracy Jew.
Guest:That was what they were in San Francisco.
Guest:I mean, there was very important families at Zellerbach and so forth.
Marc:Louis V. Strauss, wasn't it?
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there was never, I don't think there was any sense of ostracism there.
Guest:And I think also that the temples there were pretty elegant and the community was pretty standard, pretty integrated into the city.
Guest:So I don't think they had it in a way that other places, but San Francisco has always been this very liberal place.
Marc:Oh yeah, it's crazy.
Marc:I lived there for a couple of years.
Marc:I never had any idea what the fuck was going on there.
Marc:Where do you live?
Marc:I lived on like South Van Ness in 22nd, like in the early 90s in the Mission.
Marc:Then I moved to the Panhandle for a year at Clayton and fell for a little while.
Marc:But I always felt like it was kind of floating then.
Marc:I always felt like whatever made that city exciting is exactly made it kind of trippy.
Marc:I mean, it was really, I never understood the power structure or the grid or anything, but there was a vibe in San Francisco, which I imagine you sort of capitalized on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Very much so.
Marc:Freedom, it was like you come here to be a freak.
Guest:You're a freak, you can do that.
Guest:But there's freedom there.
Guest:And there's a history of freedom in San Francisco going back to the gold rush.
Guest:It was called the Barbary Coast.
Guest:And in modern times, in the 50s, it was the home of the beatniks.
Guest:And it was a very, and all kinds of, it's a very liberal city.
Guest:And it's a city that could give birth to the rock and roll scene there.
Guest:It's a city that was tolerant to all kinds of people.
Guest:And so you could go there and be kind of who you wanted to be.
Guest:And it had huge scenes there.
Guest:And then when you put that together with Berkeley on one side and Stanford campus on the other side, it was just a breeding ground for rock and rolling students and drugs and all that stuff.
Guest:And it was wonderful.
Guest:It was a moment in history.
Guest:And it was a lay safe, fair attitude towards life.
Guest:And it was a wonderful place to be.
Marc:So you started the magazine in 67?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's crazy early.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's like, you know, right at the peak of it.
Marc:The beginning of it.
Marc:The beginning of it.
Guest:In 1967, they called that the Summer of Love.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I guess it just took off in that time.
Guest:So who was around?
Guest:Like Moby Grape, Quicksilver, The Dead?
Guest:The basic original groups were Quicksilver, Messenger of the Service.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Dead, Steve Miller.
Guest:No, that came a little bit later.
Guest:A little bit later.
Guest:And Moby Grape came later than that, but Janus.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who else was around there?
Guest:Those are the basic groups.
Guest:Then Steve Miller moved to town.
Guest:He wasn't really... The Creedence Clearwater and John Ford were separate, kind of across the bay.
Marc:Well, they were Stockton guys, right?
Guest:Or somewhere?
Guest:Oakland.
Guest:Berkeley, Oakland.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Moby Grape came along during that, like, 68 period.
Marc:That's a hell of a record, that first Moby.
Marc:I think it's the only Moby Grape record.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That was a good one.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah, I like that.
Marc:So when you put that, you and Ralph put the magazine together, was the first issue, was that the John Lennon cover?
Marc:It had John Lennon on the cover.
Guest:And was that the first interview with him?
Guest:No, we didn't have an interview.
Guest:We were just starting from scratch.
Guest:We know nobody.
Guest:I wouldn't know how to find John Lennon.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But we were printing through the scraps and pieces and things.
Guest:And there was some of the local movie studios and local record company distributors had...
Guest:stills of their art.
Guest:There was a still from How I Won the War because that movie was coming out from at that time United Artists.
Guest:So it's promotional stuff.
Marc:It was promotional.
Guest:But we chose that one.
Guest:What a wonderful, fortuitous choice.
Guest:John Lennon, arguably the premier star of the rock era, something like that, in a movie, and about politics.
Guest:And it became our three specialties.
Marc:Oh, he had the helmet on, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:When does it start to pick up momentum immediately?
Marc:I mean, when do you start?
Marc:You know, I went and interviewed Ben Fong Torres, you know, really years ago when I started the podcast.
Marc:It was about midway through.
Marc:I went to his house, but he just was very defensive and unwilling to talk about anything in a way.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was sort of like, I'm not going to tell you that story.
Marc:I'm not going to tell you that story.
Marc:You know, all he wanted to talk about was little feet.
Marc:I'm like, all right, dude, I can.
Guest:Well, that man is now the senior statesman of San Francisco Rock Riders.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:I guess, but he certainly wasn't willing.
Marc:He was really, I don't think he knew what the podcast was, but he thought I was there to blindside him somehow.
Marc:I'm like, look, man.
Marc:What year was that?
Marc:It's got to be five or six, maybe, it was probably 2012, 2013, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:Long after we left there and all the controversy.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, man, I've only been doing this since 2009.
Guest:Ben's kind of very taciturn individual.
Marc:I think he had just written the big book on Little Feet.
Marc:So, like, it was probably on that junket.
Marc:But he was just sort of like, you know, I don't want to talk about that stuff.
Marc:I got some great Janis stories.
Marc:I'm not going to talk to you about that, though.
Marc:I'm like, all right, well, fuck it.
Marc:You're not going to talk about anything.
Marc:So, now, this book that you wrote, I mean, how much of it was a reaction to that Hagen biography?
Marc:None of it.
Guest:It wasn't a fuck you?
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:I mean, skipping what I felt about that book, I had always felt that and the reason I commissioned or let this other one start to try.
Guest:I always felt that the story of Rolling Stone and myself as a person, as a post-war baby, and then...
Guest:Set in the context of times, if you saw through the eyes of Rolling Stone, what Rolling Stone's purview was, how wide it was, you could really tell an authentic, true story of this era, of this generation.
Guest:And I'd read so many that weren't any good.
Guest:But this, I think, captured.
Guest:But I wanted to write a book that showed who we were and what we stood for and the importance of it and the importance of rock and roll and the contributions it has made to American society.
Guest:and to the world, which I think have been substantial.
Guest:They have been ridiculed a lot by the adult press.
Guest:They continue to be today, you know, OK Boomer and stuff like that.
Guest:And it's not true.
Guest:What's not true?
Guest:The rock and roll generation.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:came for it and stood for, and advocated for it, and Rolling Stone and its broad system.
Guest:All kinds of equal rights.
Guest:All the kids who went to the South in the 60s, and the freedom rights were from Berkeley and from white campuses.
Guest:But that women's rights, gay rights,
Guest:black rights, the whole movement towards human justice, the getting rid of the drug war.
Guest:I mean, this entire move towards a humanistic... You thought happened through rock and roll.
Guest:Through rock and roll.
Guest:It was one of the great advocates of it in our times.
Guest:It was a great middle class popular advocate of these ideas about life.
Marc:Now, do you have any sense like when...
Marc:Because there was a period there where there was idealism in the late 60s.
Marc:And then somewhere in the early to mid 70s, things got a little dark, didn't they?
Guest:Yeah, well, you had behind this all the backdrop was war in Vietnam, which said violence abroad, violence at home, assassinations, riots, demonstrations.
Marc:It was dark, you know.
Marc:And the drugs got out of control, right?
Marc:They shifted in the hate, like in San Francisco, once speed hit.
Marc:Didn't it get kind of crazy?
Marc:That's a separate issue.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I mean, yeah, I did get there.
Guest:You weren't.
Guest:But it was kind of a sideshow.
Guest:It wasn't like a wise social phenomenon, the use of speed, you know.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:Skip ahead 20 years, cocaine became pretty out of control.
Marc:Well, that's different.
Marc:That was a different class.
Marc:But I mean, were you around?
Marc:That's still speed.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:But I mean, but the nature of it, I think that, you know, like, were you around for, you were there for Altamont.
Marc:Did you have a part of that?
Marc:No.
Guest:I mean, I wasn't there for it.
Guest:I didn't go to it.
Guest:No, but you...
Guest:Didn't it happen when you were doing the magazine?
Guest:It happened when we were there.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And part of our rise to fame was our coverage of Altamont, which got us National Magazine more than a lot of attention of taking a very hard-ass view of it.
Guest:But I don't think it was... Hard-ass view how?
Guest:It wasn't as had been promoted.
Guest:It wasn't Woodstock West.
Guest:No, it wasn't.
Guest:When I woke up on Monday, the San Francisco Examiner had coverage of it and they were calling it Woodstock West.
Guest:Before it happened or the day after?
Guest:Before and after.
Guest:You know, that was the theory.
Guest:We had 20 people there and I got in the office on Monday because I didn't go and people were calling.
Marc:It was horrible.
Marc:No bathrooms.
Marc:People were out of control.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And somebody got murdered.
Guest:Murder.
Guest:Some got murdered.
Guest:And it was just a total bad vibe situation.
Guest:I just read Joel Silver's book on that.
Guest:Apparently that was a really good book.
Guest:I thought it was a great book.
Guest:Did he ever write for you, that guy?
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:Maybe occasionally, but... So was that a turning point for the magazine, that coverage?
Guest:In a great sense, yes.
Guest:Because, I mean, we had to stand up and, despite my friendships with Mick and the Rolling Stones, really kind of tell the truth about what we thought had happened and lay the blame at the feet of various parties who were involved...
Guest:irrespective of what anybody's personal feelings might be heard, or Mick might get upset.
Guest:Were you and Mick friends then?
Guest:We were friends then, and we had been in business together putting out Rolling Stone in England.
Guest:Oh, he was your partner in that, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so it was tough.
Guest:call in a way, but not for me really.
Guest:I just knew what we had to do.
Guest:And I knew that if we did it right, you know, my friendship with Mick would go on pause, but would resume.
Guest:And that our integrity was our, and honesty as perceived by the readers, by ourselves and by the artists we covered to be absolutely critical to the success and importance of Rolling Stone to everybody, to the meaning of it.
Guest:So we had to stick with that.
Guest:That was a big moment then.
Guest:Yeah, it was a big moment.
Marc:Because, you know, you couldn't, to be that honest, I mean, especially since half the fucking world was there from the town and, you know, your readership was there, that, you know, everybody who had the experience that was horrendous, if you were going to gloss over it in deference to Mick, it'd be done.
Marc:Yeah, it couldn't be done.
Marc:So the journalist integrity of the thing, do you think that was the first time you guys really kind of got into sort of real journalism?
Guest:I think we had been in it before.
Guest:This is after our second half year.
Guest:We had been doing it before, but never as powerfully and as thoroughly as that.
Guest:We had done some really good journalistic things.
Guest:But this...
Guest:multiple people involved, a big take, you know, long piece.
Guest:It was in our backyard.
Guest:We had everybody there.
Guest:It was every opportunity to do something special.
Guest:And it won for us, our little publication, the National Magazine Award that year.
Guest:We were in competition with Vogue and the Atlantic.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:All these big magazines.
Marc:What was your numbers then?
Marc:How many, what was your publication?
Marc:What do you call it?
Marc:I think Circulation.
Marc:Circulation, yeah.
Guest:Under 100,000 maybe by that time.
Marc:Yeah, right, right, right.
Marc:You know, we were small.
Marc:When do you start to realize that you have power?
Guest:Well, I think as we started to cover the 1972 presidential election, we put Hunter Thompson.
Guest:Was that the first time you used him?
Guest:No, Hunter started writing for the magazine in 1970 when he ran for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado.
Marc:He's going to make the road dirt again?
Marc:Wasn't that his campaign slogan?
Guest:He was going to sod the streets of Aspen, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And put up stocks for bad drug dealers, remember?
Guest:Renamed the place Fat City so that the real estate dealers couldn't say like Fat City Highlands.
Guest:You can't sell Fat City Highlands.
Guest:Anyway, but Hunter started then.
Guest:When did he first come to your attention?
Guest:That year.
Guest:Hell's Angels?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before starting Rolling Stone, I read Hell's Angels and admired him a lot.
Guest:And then either at, he wrote me a fan letter in 97 about how much he liked Rolling Stone.
Guest:And really, really nice.
Guest:And so I wrote him exit, asked him if he would write a obit of Terry the Tramp, one of the angels that just died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, well, he could do that, but he was very busy running for sheriff.
Guest:I said, well, why don't you write about that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we met after that, and we, you know, I mean, it was this wizard coming in there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was crazy.
Marc:So that was sort of when he was shifting into that Gonzo approach.
Marc:He probably facilitated that on some level.
Guest:Yeah, I think we gave him more freedom for it, but he had started by accident.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He only came to label Gonzo when he started at Rolling Stone, but it was kind of,
Guest:It started as a product of his inability or unwillingness to put things together so he'd throw them together.
Guest:He'd call that gonzo.
Guest:Right, because Hell's Angels is pretty straightforward.
Guest:Yeah, and he was a straightforward reporter.
Guest:He was a newspaper journalist.
Guest:And it was during working for us, and then Vegas, which really gave it that...
Guest:shove off.
Guest:Fear and Loathing?
Guest:He did Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and then we went from that to Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail.
Marc:Right, to the 72 campaign, yeah.
Marc:And he was brilliant.
Marc:That's a masterpiece.
Guest:And that, when you could see that he was having that big a voice in politics, I mean, people really pay attention, other members of the press, the McGovern campaign, you know, I mean, really inside it.
Guest:There you start to get the sense that, oh man, this is meaningful on a,
Guest:much different level than just meaningful to the publicity department of a burger company.
Guest:Or just music press.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow, this is a field to play out.
Guest:This is our new field.
Marc:So you were able to balance it out.
Marc:You had straight up music press and then you had big pieces, investigative pieces, challenging pieces.
Marc:So that was where you felt the juice.
Marc:Yeah, in there and leading up to there, yeah.
Marc:So, now what about a lot of these other writers that you sort of nurtured?
Marc:I mean, all these people were kids.
Marc:You know, like Ann Leibowitz was a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:All of them were kids.
Marc:Who else you got?
Marc:Tom Wolfe.
Marc:I mean, he was kind of established, right?
Marc:He was already established by the time.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:He had done a few things.
Marc:Griel Marcus must have been a kid.
Marc:Griel Marcus was a kid.
Marc:He's somebody I knew from college.
Marc:We were in a school together in Berkeley.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, you see all these people come up.
Marc:And the same with a lot of the artists.
Guest:Well, we, yeah, I mean, it was really a generational thing.
Guest:It was kind of a sense of shared purpose and identity then, you know, because, I mean, this is the largest, best educated, wealthiest generation of Americans in history.
Guest:It was coming into a system just ready kind of to take it over by sheer numbers and by the fact that, as I said, they're smarter.
Guest:And we had a lot of money then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And not individually, but the country as a whole.
Guest:Career wasn't as important then.
Guest:People were ambitious to get on Wall Street or had to get this.
Marc:Way different.
Marc:But he evolved into that, though.
Marc:I mean, that generation.
Marc:I mean, like, I know you speak of it.
Marc:Like, I'm a late boomer.
Marc:And, you know, I have a mild resentment towards you early boomers.
Marc:Only because it's sort of... We had a better time.
Marc:I mean, we're going to tell you.
Marc:You did.
Marc:Better drugs, better music.
Marc:Get out of here.
Marc:Get out of here.
Marc:I get it, I get it.
Marc:But you also, it's sort of like, get out of the way already.
Guest:Well, but there was a shared sense of purpose.
Guest:I think that was shared with the audience and with the musicians, and that's what galvanized the people, the young people who came to Rolling Stone.
Guest:either came with a sense of mission.
Guest:A lot of them were newspaper reporters like Esther House or Hunter, something like that, who were looking for a place to work that would set a new bar, give them space, purpose, freedom to do things.
Guest:And we offered that to people, and we were open to young people.
Guest:And so, therefore, people would come to us all the time, and we could sort out the more talented among them.
Marc:Was there ever a sense of conflict of interest?
Marc:I mean, in relationship with record companies or the artists?
Marc:Did you just pick who you liked and that was that?
Marc:We picked who we liked and that was that.
Guest:And we were in San Francisco.
Guest:We were isolated pretty much from most of the record business and the pressures that we could be brought to bear.
Guest:Nobody really...
Guest:Very few people ever really tried to push us.
Guest:There's a usual handling for a cover, an artist, or coverage.
Marc:Well, you would do reviews.
Marc:You had record reviews.
Marc:You had the stars.
Guest:But we didn't give away stuff.
Guest:We were not movable in that way.
Guest:And everybody knew that.
Guest:And so very few people would ever approach us about it.
Guest:Because as I said...
Guest:Our integrity and our selectivity of saying we have been covering the best artists only was critical to the success of all these artists.
Marc:Right, but these are the best artists only, but, you know, it was a handful of artists for, you know, for decades, some of them.
Guest:Yeah, there were a lot of, you know, there were a lot of good artists around.
Guest:And we used to cover the Stones and the Beatles and Dylan endlessly.
Marc:Endlessly for decades.
Marc:Yeah, well, you know.
Marc:But true.
Marc:I mean, that was good to bet on those guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Certainly Dylan sort of evolved into something interesting.
Marc:And then, you know, Springsteen as well.
Marc:You guys, you know, seem to be good friends and kind of been on that train for a long time.
Marc:These are evolving artists.
Marc:And as I recall, the Rolling Stone record reviews, that was the star system, right?
Marc:There was one star, two star, three.
Marc:And it seemed like you covered most music coming in, that that department was active.
Guest:Yeah, but then...
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Slowly, the number of records being released outpaced everything.
Guest:There's so much.
Guest:Everything was kind of people.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Groups, Electric Spinach and.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:You know, the Cauliflower Club and all this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was too much stuff coming out.
Marc:So are there bands?
Marc:And I know you've been accused of this before.
Marc:Are there bands you just will not, you know, indulge at all?
Marc:I mean, obviously, yes.
Marc:But I mean, but like, you know, there's been talk of you maybe stifling some people's membership into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that, you know, that feel like they deserve it.
Marc:Is that something that you... Well, there is talk of that, but I don't control that.
Guest:I'm not on the nominating committee.
Guest:You have nothing against foreigner per se.
Guest:Nothing against foreigner per se.
Guest:In fact, I was very good friends with Mick Jones.
Guest:Sure, he's a big dude.
Guest:But the...
Guest:And I'd like to work.
Guest:But, you know, Foreigner's name has never come up in a nominating committee to be nominated.
Guest:Are you a speed wagon?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know, there's that era.
Guest:Not them.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not Boston.
Guest:Sticks.
Guest:Sticks.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, that whole era.
Guest:No, it doesn't come up.
Guest:Weird era, huh?
Guest:I grew up in that.
Guest:I went to high school in that era.
Guest:Well, you're not going to get in the Hall of Fame either.
Guest:What can I tell you?
Marc:Give me time.
Guest:Give me time.
Guest:And it's going to be me.
Guest:You got in pretty quick.
Guest:But there's like Bon Jovi.
Guest:It took years for him to get in.
Marc:Eventually, you'll run out of guys.
Marc:They'll all get in.
Marc:They might not be around.
Marc:There might be one guy left, but they'll get in.
Marc:When he moved to New York,
Marc:So by the time you moved to New York in 77, a decade in, you're well established, making a fortune.
Marc:Everyone reads the magazine.
Marc:It's got power.
Marc:So what facilitated that move?
Marc:Why did we do it?
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I mean, San Francisco, was it like, had San Francisco lost its relevance?
Guest:Well, let's start there.
Guest:Well, this wasn't the governing reason.
Guest:It was in the background.
Guest:And that was something I hadn't really even thought through.
Guest:at the time, but it turned out, once again, to be one of those fortuitous things.
Guest:By that time, San Francisco had really not, was no longer the center of American avant-garde cultural activity.
Guest:And in fact, it kind of shifted back to New York.
Guest:New York, which had lain fallow for the decade, and then people moving out.
Marc:Late 60s and 70s, because it was economically compromised, but punk rock was sort of starting.
Guest:But that wasn't until late, that wasn't until mid 70s.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:when we got there.
Guest:But the oomph of the San Francisco scene, the dead had moved to Marin and the Jefferson Airplane had become the Jefferson Starship.
Guest:But the real reason we moved is I had half the office in New York, half in San Francisco.
Guest:And to run the place, I had to consolidate
Guest:both operations in one place, the business and the editorial sides, and the magazine business in New York.
Guest:So for us to grow and have access to the talent pool of writers and advertising salesmen, people who knew about the magazine business, we had to go there.
Guest:They wouldn't move to San Francisco.
Marc:But it's still all you, your own operation.
Guest:It was still all our own operation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that basically was it.
Guest:I had to consolidate and had to move to New York for the future, for my ambitions, for the magazine to grow bigger.
Guest:And he brought you, at that time you had three kids already?
Marc:I know, had no kids already.
Marc:Oh, no kids.
Marc:No kids.
Marc:The woman you married was with you from the beginning, right?
Marc:From the very beginning, yes.
Guest:She was a writer?
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:She was sort of...
Guest:Started as a subscriptions director, but it was somebody who I met at Ramparts when I was working there.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Jane.
Guest:Jane, exactly.
Guest:And she wanted to move to New York because that's where she was from and homesick.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She also didn't want to be around when the earthquake struck.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hasn't yet, really.
Guest:No, it hasn't yet.
Guest:But also there's this SLA and a Zodiac Killer in the air.
Guest:It's just time to get out.
Guest:It's getting dark.
Guest:And I've been going back and forth to New York for the last three years before that.
Guest:I felt at home in New York.
Guest:Rolling Stone felt more at home in New York.
Guest:It was appreciated there more.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, it's a magazine town.
Marc:Well, that's the thing about San Francisco, though.
Marc:San Francisco, once they turn on you, they'll turn on you.
Marc:They didn't turn on us, but...
Guest:We weren't that important there during that time.
Guest:I mean, it was the era of Bill Graham.
Guest:Francis Coppola was there.
Guest:KMPX was there.
Marc:What was your experience in seeing concerts in San Francisco?
Marc:Were you there at the beginning of the acid thing?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:I mean, so you were there at the first experiment?
Marc:I went to the very second...
Guest:acid test, which was with the Grateful Dead.
Marc:At the Shipman's Hall.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:Longshoreman's Hall.
Marc:Longshoreman's Hall.
Guest:That was well into it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I was in college going to the first one.
Guest:And it was in San Jose.
Guest:And it was right following a Rolling Stones concert in 66.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:That was the last tour before Altamont.
Marc:They came back in 69, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, probably.
Marc:So how was that acid then?
Marc:Pretty good.
Marc:Pretty good.
Marc:I mean, it was wild.
Marc:That was the Alzi shit, right?
Marc:The real shit.
Guest:I don't I didn't identify that.
Guest:Presumably so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what was it?
Marc:And so did you find not unlike like a couple of people, the guy who stands out the most to me in my mind in terms of really identifying what acid did to his brain was our crumb.
Marc:Like, you know, if you look at Arkham before his cartoons before acid and the ones when, you know, he saw a way of elongating those feet.
Marc:Like, I could see how it shifted his perception.
Marc:Did it shift your perception?
Marc:I didn't elongate my feet any longer?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:But, you know, I'm just saying your way of seeing the world.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:I think when you take LSD for the first time, you really...
Guest:understand how interconnected every bit of life is okay yeah right the frequency well just that you know all living things are connected by some energy field and i think at least brings us some a perception or like that these are the sign of that you should respect all these things that you respect the natural respect things all around just by that insight
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it's that kind of thing.
Guest:And then plus, you know, there's the vividness with it, which it brings to music and all the sensory aspects of things.
Guest:And, you know, when you feel things that intensity and intensely, I think you always understand them to be of that intensity at some point long.
Guest:I mean, you can't always recover that intensity, but you know it's there.
Guest:Point of reference.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and I feel greatly I benefited from it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I think people would, and I think it's a question of managing it correctly.
Guest:People are doing it again, microdosing, psilocybin, ayahuasca.
Guest:I would hope it comes under government regulation so that things like purity and dosages are sorted out so it's not all an underground thing.
Guest:So we don't have Altamont again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I keep seeing Mick up there behind you.
Guest:So, I mean, I think there's tons of positive things to say about drugs.
Marc:So, in New York, you're 77, punk rock's happening, disco is kind of over?
Guest:No, it's on the horizon.
Guest:When we got to New York, the first thing I saw was there's a headline in the Daily News, Forge City, Drop Dead.
Guest:So, we were welcomed into the city as the first kind of new enterprise that
Guest:especially a young one that come to the city for years because of the bad situation.
Guest:And then, you know, punk rock arrived from England.
Guest:And we had to decide how to deal with that.
Guest:And a couple of years later, disco.
Guest:And in the meantime, the kind of the old... There was just a drop in the vitality of rock and roll at that time.
Guest:The San Francisco groups were not particularly making or special.
Guest:There was nothing...
Marc:Right, and also all those, you know, the late 60s, early 70s, you know, big rock bands were kind of, they kind of plateaued a bit.
Marc:Well, the Stones were out of action and Beatles were gone.
Marc:Zeppelin was not around.
Marc:You know, was towards the end of Zeppelin.
Guest:Then, at the same time, movies came alive.
Guest:I mean, remember, that's when Star Wars came out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and it's this whole new generation of...
Guest:of filmmakers, especially Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, and coming with movies who were really interesting and relevant to cover.
Guest:And so I kind of sent an artistic young people shifted a little from rock to movies at that time.
Guest:And then back again, it was moving around.
Guest:So it was a shift in a lot of things when we moved to New York.
Marc:But for you, I guess, do you consider yourself a writer?
Guest:I was a writer when I started out.
Guest:I wanted to be.
Guest:And then I couldn't get anybody to publish my writing about rock and roll then.
Guest:So I started my own magazine.
Marc:So you see yourself as more of a publisher and editor.
Guest:I became an editor.
Guest:And then after that, a publisher.
Guest:And now I'm back to being a writer after all this time.
Guest:And I must say I enjoy it.
Marc:There were other magazines around.
Marc:Did you ever feel a sense of competition?
Marc:You know, Cream just started up again.
Marc:I saw.
Marc:No, the only competition we ever really had was Spin.
Marc:That happened later, right?
Guest:Much later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But no, because we had everybody beat by that time.
Guest:I mean, you couldn't compete with our level of talent.
Guest:The loyalty and the acts wanting to be with us.
Guest:And we came out every two weeks, so we would beat anybody who was putting on a monthly magazine.
Guest:Cream or Spin.
Guest:And then the artists, where would you rather go?
Marc:Cream or Rolling Stone?
Marc:Well, Cream was kind of dirty.
Marc:Did you like Wester Bangs at all?
Marc:I mean, he was a talented man, but I fired him.
Guest:That's what did it.
Guest:Well, I just thought, you know, Lester was a clever writer, but he was just writing his riffs, savaging groups in the record section, just having nothing to do with the record, but it was a good riff for him.
Guest:And I didn't think the mission of Rolling Stone, our mission was to support artists and analyze them fairly and critically and objectively and treat them with respect.
Guest:Lester Baines didn't give anything about it.
Marc:So in terms of when you're entering New York, this is pre-disco, so this is where cocaine happens.
Guest:Kind of, yeah, I guess in that time period, yeah.
Marc:No, it started before that.
Marc:I remember it around a lot in San Francisco.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:But it seems like in terms of disco culture and the sort of, you know, the new New York, the mingling of that sort of aristocratic and wealthy class with, you know, nightclub life, that all starts to happen.
Guest:Studio 54.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:And that, you know, obviously tone based not only on cocaine, but quaaludes and poppers and all sorts of stuff.
Guest:But just to the point...
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Cocaine was getting very prevalent in San Francisco by 72, 73.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was all around and there was a lot of it in the office.
Guest:You liked it?
Guest:It's irresistible in a way at the beginning because it's just fun, lights you up and all that stuff.
Guest:Only after a while do you start to realize this is...
Marc:You're not sleeping, dude.
Marc:That's where the quaaludes come in.
Guest:In my book, I explicitly say, raise the question, how do I feel about now and what do I say?
Guest:And I say, don't do it.
Guest:It was a waste of time and energy and money.
Marc:I wouldn't recommend to anybody.
Marc:Now, when you're dealing with people like Hunter, who's just a bag of drugs all the time, I mean, that exploration was sort of interesting.
Marc:I mean, he seemed to do something with it that no one else really did.
Marc:Well, remember, he was a doctor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was a doctor of pharmacology.
Guest:Hunter had an unusual ability to use that stuff and resist it and absorb it and balance it.
Guest:He was a professional drug taker, really.
Guest:But it destroyed him in the end.
Guest:Coke and drink.
Guest:I mean, it furthered away his talent and his ability to do things, as it does with everybody.
Guest:Nobody has survived this big bout of cocaine.
Marc:Jerry, too.
Marc:Jerry.
Marc:Jerry, lots of drugs.
Guest:Yeah, heroin.
Guest:And, you know, look at people like Sly Stone and like Turner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Marc:What was your, like, when you look back on that, which deaths hit you the hardest?
Marc:Well, John Lennon's death, obviously.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:That was so hard.
Marc:Brutal.
Marc:And...
Marc:Because that one you didn't see coming.
Marc:He was young.
Marc:Everything was turning around.
Guest:That was just terrible.
Guest:That's the end of an era.
Guest:That's when we're talking about end of eras.
Marc:What year was that?
Marc:1980?
Marc:1980, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:That was it, huh?
Marc:Like Manson killed the 60s and John Lennon's death killed the 70s.
Guest:you could kind of say that, you know?
Guest:I mean, in a broad sense, you know, you could say, as John said, the dream is over.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that Manson represented kind of hippie drug use gone too far, even though he was just an ex-con.
Marc:Yeah, no, yeah.
Guest:You know, it wasn't really.
Marc:And... I think it was represented as such by mainstream press.
Guest:It was represented as such, but there was a vibe about it that felt that way.
Marc:Yeah, it dirtied up everything.
Guest:Yeah, I mean...
Marc:So when when you come into New York, you're there three years and then Lenin dies.
Marc:How does that change you?
Marc:How does that change?
Marc:Because that seems to be the beginning of, you know, I don't know when Wolf wrote Bonfire, but like, you know, that exploration of the beginning of 80s excess, which sort of, you know, the wave of that crashing now and crashing with Trump in a way.
Marc:Right.
Right.
Marc:When does that start in earnest?
Guest:Well, in 1980, when John was killed, we were seriously established in New York and we got on our feet on the ground.
Guest:We were in the mix of the whole New York groove and had settled into kind of who we were.
Guest:When you have an event like John dying, it really...
Guest:makes you think about all kinds of things and it really sets you back and makes you think, who am I and what am I and what am I gonna do?
Guest:How do I define myself in a relationship?
Guest:What am I gonna learn from this?
Guest:This is serious stuff.
Marc:This is you as a person or you as a magazine?
Guest:Both.
Guest:You have to really say, what do I really wanna get done?
Guest:If this is what it's gonna be, if this can happen, yeah.
Guest:So that really shaped us.
Guest:Tom and Bonfire came after that.
Guest:That was my idea for Tom.
Guest:And he did a job so brilliant beyond what I had anticipated or expected.
Guest:But that crystallized.
Marc:Didn't you suggest to him that he make him a writer and not an investment bank?
Guest:We were on deadline finally after a year.
Guest:And he said, you know, I've thought about this, Jan.
Guest:I want to change it from a...
Guest:to change the hero from a writer to an investment banker.
Guest:Well, I don't care what he was thinking.
Guest:I was going to say it was a bad idea.
Guest:I knew if he changed that character, it would be another year.
Guest:Because you have to go research a whole new set of circumstances.
Guest:This whole world of investment banker.
Guest:It takes me a year to do research.
Guest:Well, when we published it, the main character, Sherman McCoy, was a freelance writer.
Guest:And he changed into an investment banker.
Guest:Didn't make any difference in the plot, anything that happened, but...
Guest:But it's fortuitous in terms of... Totally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and I'm saying, oh, nobody gives a hell about investment because, of course, it was the beginning of the me decade and the go-go and what do they call them?
Guest:The people who made so much damn money?
Guest:Masters of the Universe.
Guest:Oh, Masters of the Universe.
Marc:Were you one of them?
Marc:No, no, no, no, no.
Marc:No.
Marc:So in the 80s, also, in terms of your friendships, it seems like many of your friends are artists.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who are your best friends?
Marc:These days?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it sounds like name-dropping.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:So I don't want to do that.
Marc:No, it's not name-dropping.
Marc:It's interesting that in light of your life,
Marc:That, you know, a lot of times we don't see these guys as regular guys.
Marc:So it's not really name dropping.
Marc:They're just, these are the guys that you came up with.
Marc:You have to buy the book to get that.
Guest:That's the juice.
Guest:That's the juice.
Guest:I'll say that I'm still extremely close friends with some old friends of mine from San Francisco.
Guest:His names mean nothing to anybody.
Guest:Somebody close to all those friends.
Guest:You know, I'm really super close friends with John Landau and John Cott, who are two people at Rolling Stone on issue one.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:They were both college students.
Marc:Landau's Springsteen's guy.
Marc:Springsteen's manager.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I've got a long-time friendship with Michael Douglas, who I met.
Marc:Mike Douglas.
Guest:When he was doing Streets of San Francisco.
Guest:You guys still friends?
Guest:Total.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:I've interviewed him.
Guest:Love that guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's just...
Guest:Closer friends I've got.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, Bruce.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I must say I'm really close with Bette Midler and her husband.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:We travel together all the time and just have a great time.
Guest:He's still friends with Mick?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't see Mick as much anymore.
Guest:Mick moved back to Europe.
Guest:He was in New York for the longest time in the States.
Guest:And we're in touch all the time, but our social life of hanging together, which I've put a lot of in this book, you know, and when he moved back.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So how does your involvement with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame happen?
Marc:What is that?
Marc:How did that get started?
Guest:Well, Ahmed Erdogan had the idea of starting a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in some inchoate way.
Guest:You know, he doesn't know what it was, and invited me and a couple other people to work with him to do it.
Guest:And we evolved the idea of putting together an annual induction dinner and an actual physical Hall of Fame museum.
Guest:And it took about 10 years to get this, maybe longer, 15 years to get it actually built.
Guest:In the meantime, we were doing induction dinners every year, which were the most wonderful things in the world.
Guest:Pulling together for one night only, the great artists of our times, and paying tribute, and combinations of artists playing together that you'd never, ever seen before.
Guest:It was a start where we started collaborations of artists and guest artists.
Guest:Now it's the usual trendy thing.
Guest:Then you'd have Mick and Bruce and Bob Dylan all singing like a Rolling Stone on stage together.
Marc:Before it was televised, just as a performance.
Guest:And then I made the decision to televise it because I thought this stuff is too good to keep to a thousand people in the Waldorf Astoria.
Guest:Let's just tape it and put it on TV.
Guest:People should see it.
Guest:Now it's become bigger and bigger.
Guest:But you and Ahmed were the- We were the instrumental people.
Guest:And I-
Guest:I ran the thing and put it together, and I'm just kind of the guiding spirit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, yeah, he was quite a presence for so long.
Marc:Like, you know, I portrayed Jerry Wexler in the Aretha Franklin movie.
Marc:Oh, you did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I got a little.
Guest:Did you see it?
Guest:I saw the beginning of it.
Guest:It's that famous incident with Rick Hall.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:It starts with her dad in the hotel.
Marc:Yeah, the fighting.
Marc:Yeah, it's all in there.
Marc:But I did a little research on the Aertigen brothers and Wexler himself and how he fit in and how they fit in.
Marc:And it's interesting because that whole prehistory of rock and roll, pre to when you started, it seems like you have a fairly healthy respect for all that.
Guest:I was very close to Jerry.
Guest:He was very helpful to us.
Marc:Was he?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Good friends with Landau.
Guest:He signed up Boz when I brought him Boz Gags.
Guest:You produced Boz's first record?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The solo record?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:at Muscle Shoals.
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah.
Guest:And Ahmed I became very, very close to.
Guest:Ahmed was a real mentor to me.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:In New York.
Guest:How so?
Guest:He was a friend of Ralph's.
Guest:Ralph Gleason.
Guest:Yeah, and he was a mutual friend.
Marc:Because his brother was a jazz guy.
Guest:His brother was a jazz guy, yes.
Guest:And then over the years, we became very social friends.
Guest:And then when we did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we started working together on a daily, weekly basis.
Guest:And so we'd see so much of each other, and we'd travel so much together.
Guest:And he was so fun, serenade, and sophisticated, and funny.
Guest:What a wonderful man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it seems to me that like, you know, somehow at some point in New York, just by, you know, some of the stories in the book and also the picture is that you were sort of elevated to this this world of creative people who are extraordinarily wealthy that you were in that circle at some point.
Guest:Well, I don't know if they were all extraordinarily wealthy.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:Everybody was quite successful.
Guest:And people made money for their success.
Guest:But I wouldn't call Amand or any of the artists.
Guest:They're all well off.
Guest:They've all got, you know.
Guest:Well, it just seems the lifestyle shifted in New York.
Guest:From San Francisco, sure.
Marc:And just in general.
Guest:In New York, I mean, that's where people go to make their careers and all that stuff.
Guest:But, you know, these are not like billionaire type people, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's a sophisticated... Did you know Donald Trump in New York?
Guest:I've met him a couple of times.
Guest:I found him despicable even then.
Guest:I wouldn't really have anything to do with him.
Marc:Yeah, you don't have to talk about him.
Marc:Now, in terms of later, obviously, do you feel a couple of things?
Marc:Do you feel like you stayed there too long?
Marc:In New York?
Marc:No, just in the magazine.
Marc:Oh, my staying with the magazine?
Yeah.
Guest:No, I had always thought, you know, get it to 50 years and I'm going to retire.
Guest:I'm going to just absolutely retire at 50, bow out, take a bow and leave.
Guest:And I got almost there.
Guest:But then the internet intervened and it really started to erode the foundations of the magazine business very substantially and the news business.
Guest:Quickly?
Guest:It was gradual, but it went very fast.
Guest:They really sucked the life out of magazines and newspapers and journalism.
Guest:They stole all the, Apple and Microsoft and these companies, Google, stole all the contents free, didn't pay anybody a dime for them, and then took the material, repurposed it, sold those readers to the advertisers without giving us a cut whatsoever, and they took the life out of it.
Guest:In any case, I think I went, you know, it was time to go for sure.
Guest:And maybe I could have retired a few years earlier.
Guest:What year did you retire?
Guest:About three years ago, four years ago.
Guest:Oh, just now?
Guest:Just after 50th anniversary.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:In 2017.
Marc:And do you feel like the magazine maintained its quality and integrity throughout the entire run?
Marc:That I was there?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, we didn't have as much money to work with towards the end because the advertising is shrinking and going to the internet.
Guest:But we're still putting out high quality work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, good photography, all this stuff, just much less of it.
Guest:And also at the same time, it was harder in a way to do magazine editorial because more people were gravitating towards the internet, less money was available.
Marc:And when did you change the size?
Whew.
Marc:Before that, I forget when.
Marc:I used to like those big sizes.
Marc:I remember buying it when I was a kid with the newspaper, and then it became the magazine.
Guest:We changed format a half dozen times.
Guest:I honestly think, although the big format was great, and it's still kind of classic, feels classic.
Guest:The magazine style format was just, it made it easier, better to read.
Guest:We could manage the pages better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I liked it better as a magazine, honestly.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the newspaper lasted a long time.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was, we had been toying with shrinking the size down, and I think for years before that, and every time I'd bring it up, everybody would scream at me and yell at me, no, you can't, it's the heritage.
Guest:I mean, I was gonna destroy, and really, when we did change, it was for the better, and the only thing, you know, it was a nostalgia item by that point.
Guest:I mean,
Guest:It's just easier.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How many interviews did you guys do with Dylan?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I think about eight or nine or 10 over the years.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Remember, Bob was famous for, oh, he doesn't give interviews.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:He's mysterious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doesn't talk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Over the years, he gave us 10 pretty long, serious interviews.
Marc:Yeah, I remember the later ones, I think in the 80s.
Marc:He was pretty candid.
Marc:He's very straightforward with us.
Guest:I mean, we put out a book called The Essential Bob Dylan.
Guest:And with these interviews, you stream together, you've got a record of Bob.
Guest:I mean, he didn't talk to anybody else.
Guest:We were the ones.
Guest:He respected us.
Guest:We respected him.
Guest:We really wanted to support him.
Guest:him and his work, I mean, that was, the core of Rolling Stone was that kind of set of values and that attitude.
Guest:And I did two of them, and both were really quite good, even though he's in that, you know, talking to the last one was hilarious.
Guest:And he did serious interviews with Michael Gilmore, and Jonathan Cot, and Kurt Loder, and Ben Functoris, and Doug Brinkley, and novelist Jonathan, not Franzen,
Guest:Lethem.
Guest:And every time I would send somebody different to do Bob to get a different point of view and a different take.
Marc:And was there a lot of it relative to how he felt about the guy there?
Guest:No, I mean, each one he respected.
Guest:These were all serious people, but they all had a different point of view, a different thing they wanted to find out about Bob.
Guest:And so it was always exploring from a different direction.
Guest:That's why I didn't keep doing all the same.
Guest:I didn't want the same interview with him.
Marc:How's your relationship with him?
Marc:Excellent.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's all right?
Guest:He's great.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:We get along great.
Guest:When we see each other, it's just laughs.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:He's kind of funny.
Marc:He's a funny old guy.
Marc:Very funny guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, also, you know, I was in Almost Famous for a minute.
Marc:No, wait.
Marc:All of my movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was the promoter at the concert.
Marc:When the guitar player gets electrocuted and they leave before their set is over, I'm the guy chasing them on the car.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a very small part, but I'm in there.
Guest:I'm there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're a fellow Caspian.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:I'm the Caspian.
Guest:You got the bigger parts than I do.
Guest:That's a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:I didn't even get any speaking lines.
Guest:You had speaking lines.
Marc:I'm trying to remember where you were.
Guest:Walk the gate.
Guest:That was me.
Guest:I was in the, towards the end of the movie, the Rolling Stone reporter is chasing somebody outside the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York and going from taxi cab to taxi cab.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm in one taxi cab.
Guest:I'm reading the Times.
Guest:I look at him, give him a dirty look, and he runs on.
Guest:So the credits now say, yeah, I'm going to ask, legend in a taxi cab.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was definitely, it was for people who knew.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So how close was that to the reality?
Marc:It was very, very close.
Marc:It was.
Guest:First of all, I always think of it as a love letter of Rolling Stone.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:And to those days and to who we all were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was accurate about Rolling Stone.
Guest:I mean, that's what Rolling Stone reporters did, more or less.
Guest:They got and hang out on the road for a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, hang with the band, get into it, because they loved the band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's not always, Ben was not like loose and laid back and taking asses with people or whatever.
Guest:But it was very much the spirit of the times.
Guest:It was a true story, a true story about Cameron.
Guest:And Cameron wrote for us, I think, when he was 14 and a half.
Guest:And I had to get a letter from his mother for permission for him to go on the road.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, he was in high school.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how many pieces did he write for you guys?
Marc:Gosh, I don't know.
Marc:A lot?
Guest:A lot, yeah.
Marc:He had lots of covers.
Marc:He's a real staple.
Marc:Are you a friend of his still?
Marc:Yeah, very much so.
Marc:Now, in terms of your personal life, you made a tremendous shift midway through.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, when I was looking at the book and I was thinking about it, it just seems like you just almost made a decision to do this part of your life differently.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I wasn't desperate to come out of the closet or in agony or these things you read about.
Guest:And I just, you know, I knew I was gay or bisexual, whatever you call it.
Guest:For years, you're born that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't find it really an impediment to my life or how I was living my life.
Guest:And I was married and I had three kids and we had wonderful homes and just exactly a wonderful life.
Guest:But then I fell in love with somebody else.
Guest:And it made complete sense and it kind of, you know, different in that way in which you had this other kind of, you know, the sexual component became different and more fulfilling in its way.
Guest:And went on and had three more kids.
Guest:How did you do that?
Marc:Through surrogacy.
Marc:So they're your kids?
Marc:They are kids, yeah.
Marc:He had two and you had one?
Marc:No, we had three together.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:No, but I mean whose sperm got used?
Marc:How does that work?
Marc:It's none of your business.
Guest:I can just look at the kids and guess.
Guest:Yeah, that's what you're going to have to do.
Guest:And so we live close by the two families.
Guest:The kids are all intermingled and being raised together.
Marc:They're much older, right?
Guest:The kids are in their 30s and these kids are teenagers.
Marc:That's exciting, though, for everybody.
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:Everybody loves it.
Guest:It's total fun.
Guest:And your ex-wife's all right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Everybody gets along?
Guest:Everybody gets along.
Guest:Great.
Guest:It's nice.
Guest:A cursed knock on wood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, yeah, it's turned out just great.
Guest:I turned out very lucky.
Guest:It was a tough thing to do.
Guest:It was very tough on my wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was hard on the older kids for a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They adapt quickly, but...
Guest:You know, it's the right thing for everybody.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Where do you spend most of your time?
Guest:I live in New York and in Long Island, the end of Long Island, Montauk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And try and spend as much time there as possible.
Guest:It's pretty out there, huh?
Guest:Yeah, it's gorgeous, and it's the beach, and it's the nature.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And New York City is wonderful, but it's pretty dirty.
Guest:Boy, the world's the difference between waking up in Manhattan and waking up on the ocean.
Marc:Yeah, it's pretty.
Marc:So, like...
Marc:Now, as you get older and you're hobbled now, how, you know.
Marc:The hoblet.
Marc:Yeah, the hoblet.
Marc:Do you do you look back with any particular, you know, specific nostalgia about the past that you do?
Marc:Do you have any regrets?
Guest:Well, I don't really have any basic fulgrets.
Guest:There are things I'd change.
Guest:I'd be happy to have saved all that money and not used the cocaine and wasted all that time.
Guest:There are a couple of people that I hired I wish I hadn't hired for disasters.
Guest:But in the course of building a business, you go through people to find out who's right and who's wrong.
Guest:There's a couple of articles that could have been better, a couple that shouldn't have been published.
Guest:stuff like that, but, you know, overall, no, I don't.
Guest:I mean, I had a great life.
Guest:I've had wonderful times still alive and got great kids and, you know, the money and the reward to be able to, you know, live comfortably and still enjoy the same things.
Guest:I've met amazing people throughout my life, saw amazing people.
Guest:Music participated in amazing times, both socially and in major political parts of American life.
Guest:I mean, having a small, tiny voice, but still a voice in national affairs and the direction of the country.
Guest:Are you concerned about that now?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's the overwhelming issue of the time.
Guest:It's really climate change, and that ties straight to politics.
Guest:And fascism.
Guest:Well, you know, it ties straight to that.
Guest:I mean, I don't think you would have this climate issue if you didn't have fascism, if you didn't have the state under the control of these wealthy, wealthy, wealthy multi-billionaires and internationally.
Guest:So I mean, I think that if you had a truly democratic society representing the will of people now, we would have solutions for climate change.
Guest:Because the demand for this, the average person doesn't want dirty water, dirty air, and see everything eroded.
Guest:But rich people don't seem to...
Guest:Certain many very wealthy people, oil companies, don't give a shit.
Guest:It's weird, right?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, what are they going to do with their money?
Guest:Where are they going to spend it?
Guest:By the way, in the Arctic Circle, what stores are going to be left?
Marc:How do you sort of account for that as a guy who's been around as long as you have?
Marc:Are they that disconnected from life?
Marc:Or have they rationalized it?
Marc:Are they rationalizing?
Guest:Well, surely they rationalize it.
Guest:And they really want to believe that the science is uncertain.
Guest:Are they rationalizing it in terms of...
Guest:well, it'll just be a little erosion of this.
Guest:You come to some type of justification with yourself, but the basic fact is that they're greedy.
Guest:And the money and the power means more to them.
Guest:It's like, what are you gonna do with a billion dollars?
Guest:But what are you gonna do with that?
Guest:$100 billion.
Guest:And what are you gonna, I mean, it's greed.
Guest:And it's the same thing that supports Trump.
Guest:It's not just the crazy people, the religious fanatics, or something like that.
Guest:It's the wealthy people, like the Koch brothers, who financed this stuff.
Guest:Because they don't want their taxes.
Guest:They don't want their taxes to go.
Guest:And it's greed.
Guest:It's a disease, I think, by my estimation.
Guest:And I know a lot of people who are wealthy at that level.
Guest:Some of them are very nice, but it's hard to say.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Where does it end?
Guest:For myself, I feel very satisfied.
Guest:I still feel active in politics and bitching about it all the time.
Guest:I would love to have
Guest:rolling something back to be a voice of it, but that doesn't work that way anymore.
Guest:So I'm all on the internet and it's fast breaking news.
Guest:We used to do deep analysis and behind the scenes.
Guest:But I think it's coming around.
Marc:You know, it's funny, it's like...
Marc:I was thinking about Rolling Stone in my life, and there was one.
Marc:It's weird what moves people, but I remember a few years ago, I had to go find that piece that somebody wrote in Rolling Stone about John Holmes.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Do you remember that?
Marc:That was the porn star here in LA, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think McCartney was on the cover.
Marc:But I just remember the article being so disturbing, and it's sort of like what that whole movie was about.
Marc:And it really was indicative of an era and Los Angeles at a time.
Marc:It was quite a piece, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:We did a lot of great journalism.
Guest:Cultural stuff, which is forgotten like that.
Guest:Weird stories for me, but it was the era of Jesus freaks and cults.
Guest:There's so much good stuff there.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Good life.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Jan Wenner, the memoir, Like a Rolling Stone, is now available.
Marc:I thought that went pretty well.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, if you will, and I'll tell you how you can ask me anything.
Marc:Okay, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to send me a question for the Ask Mark Anything episode we're posting next week on the Full Marin, go to the link in the episode description.
Marc:That's the part of this episode on your podcast player where it says all the stuff about today's show.
Marc:I'll answer your questions and we'll post it as bonus content for Full Marin subscribers next week.
Marc:Get the link to subscribe in the episode description as well.
Marc:Next week, Zahn McLernan from Reservation Dogs is on Monday.
Marc:And Bela Fleck, the banjo guy, is on Thursday.
Marc:And we play.
Marc:It's been a while since I've recorded anyone in here, but we played a little bit.
Marc:Tonight, I'm in Livermore, California at the Bankhead Theater.
Marc:And tomorrow, Friday, I'm in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California at the Sunset Center.
Marc:In two weeks, I'll be in London doing a live WTF at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Wednesday, October 19th with comedian and writer David Baddiel.
Marc:Tickets for that are on sale now.
Marc:Then I've got stand-up shows at the Bloomsbury on Saturday and Sunday, October 22nd and 23rd.
Marc:Dublin, Ireland.
Marc:I'm at Vicar Street on Wednesday, October 26th.
Marc:Then in November, I'm in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Long Beach, California, Eugene, Oregon, and Bend, Oregon.
Marc:San Antonio, small room, added a show.
Marc:You might want to get on that if you want to get on that.
Marc:In December, I'm in Asheville, North Carolina.
Marc:Also added a show.
Marc:If you want to get on that, you should get on that.
Marc:And Nashville, Tennessee.
Marc:And my HBO special taping is a town hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:Okay, let's play it out.
Bye.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and the fond of cat angels everywhere.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.