I was searching Jann Wenner’s great room for cocaine. It was late summer 1982. I was with Kurt Loder. It was his idea. I must admit it felt a little weird shaking down Wenner’s living room for blow. A little creepy. Sort of an invasion of his privacy, albeit a good-natured one. But I figured Loder must know what he was doing. Besides, Kurt ranked higher than me in the
chain of command at “Rolling Stone,” so, the way I looked at it, I was just following a direct order from a superior. I had plausible deniability.
“Rolling Stone,” of course, was Wenner’s baby – his publishing empire. I was working at that time as a writer and editor in the books division, Straight Arrow Press. Kurt – who a few years later would go on to worldwide fame as the “Walter Cronkite of the MTV generation” for his outstanding work at that cable network – was a senior editor at the magazine.
The whole episode began innocently enough on a cloudless, scorching hot day in midtown Manhattan. With a relentless sun beating down on the concrete beneath our feet, Kurt and I navigated the crowded sidewalks, serenaded by the blaring horns of the cabbies whizzing by as we trudged over to Wenner’s posh Upper East Side crib from “Rolling Stone” headquarters which occupied several floors of a skyscraper near the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. To describe it as a high rent district would be a vast understatement. Storefronts on the block’s street level included Saks Fifth Avenue. “Rolling Stone”‘s offices overlooked the Plaza Hotel and the southeast corner of Central Park. The epicenter of the world.
Wenner lived just a few blocks away in a palatial apartment suite. We had hoofed
over in pursuit of an electric guitar for an office jam session later that afternoon. Kurt had recruited me to accompany him so I could lug the heavy amplifier back to “Rolling Stone.”
When we arrived, no one was home. The huge room we entered was stunning. Absolutely breath-taking. High ceilings. Lush appointments in the vast living area which had obviously been overseen and laid out by a top-notch interior decorator. Lavish in every detail. Exquisitely furnished. Lots of heavily lacquered hardwood glistening and gleaming in the perfectly illuminated great room. Everything precisely arranged and displayed, like a still photo out of an architectural digest. One of the most beautiful and impressive homes I have ever been in. The place absolutely radiated an aura of tasteful trophies and conspicuous consumption. A monument to the finer things in life. Wenner was, to put it mildly, living the good life. It was a palace fit for a king. And Wenner was the king, at least in our world.
At Kurt’s suggestion, we started poking around the vast interior, hoping to find Wenner’s stash. Maybe a mirror, razor blade and a straw in a drawer with a big heaping pile just waiting to be chopped up and snorted. Or a forgotten bindle in a cabinet. Or a rock in the carpet that housekeeping had overlooked. Alas, after several minutes of intensive searching we came up empty-handed.
Frankly, I was somewhat relieved. If we would have discovered any coke, Kurt and I would have done a big old gagger right then and there and then I would have had to go back to the office high, grinding my teeth and worrying about whether I had doughnuts on my nostrils. Big fun. When it came down to it, I rarely did cocaine at “Rolling Stone.” It tended to make me a little uptight in that stressed out, corporate environment. Doing blow at work made my socks tight, so I generally avoided it.
Which was easier said than done. Because back then cocaine was absolutely everywhere in the show biz world, nowhere moreso than the music industry, of which “Rolling Stone” was a huge part. Coke was pervasive, to say the least. Rampant is more accurate. At “Rolling Stone” headquarters you could buy cocaine – or any other drug you wanted – from the friendly hippies who ran the camera room. The rock and roll world was overrun by the ubiquitous white powder.
There were red flags everywhere. Shortly after I started working at the magazine in 1979, comedian Richard Pryor suffered severe, disfiguring burns while freebasing with a torch in his Los Angeles home. At about the same time, one of the Pretenders died in his bathtub in London from a heart attack after doing too much blow. And on and on it went. Wenner himself, in a recent interview in which he recalled being delivered “two big rocks” from Keith Richards via a mutual friend, called cocaine “the coin of the realm” back in the old days. He ain’t lying.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s I had seen glimpses of the situation myself.
I had at one point interviewed an obviously coked-out Hoyt Axton. Axton, a successful singer-songwriter, was best known for penning Three Dog Night’s number one single, “Joy to the World.” A few years after I interviewed him he authored the goofy drug detox anthem, “The No No Song,” which became a hit for Ringo Starr. While I was chatting with Axton, sitting right beside him the whole time was a notorious drug dealer to the stars named Cathy Smith. She was the woman who would later tie off John Belushi’s arm and inject him with a fatal “speedball” syringe full of cocaine and heroin the night of March 5, 1982 when the comedian died of an overdose at the Chateau Marmont on West Hollywood’s famous Sunset Strip. In a 2024 “New York Times” obituary for his widow, Judy Belushi Pisano, the paper summed up the last few messed-up days of John Belushi’s tragically short life as follows: “Ms. Pisano gave him an ultimatum – either he quit using drugs or she’d leave – and he departed for Los Angeles, where he holed up in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, a hotel frequented by Hollywood stars. On the morning of March 5, 1982, he was found dead in a bedroom in the bungalow. Mr. Belushi’s death set off a frenzy of tabloid coverage depicting him as a manic drug fiend, culminating in a June expose in The National Enquirer in which Cathy Smith, a part-time musician, admitted that she had injected him with a deadly dose of cocaine and heroin, stopping his heart. She was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter.” Such were the times.
Another interview I attempted to conduct with Kevin Cronin and Gary Richrath of REO Speedwagon is also enlightening. Our conversation went down pretty much like this:
Me: “Hi, guys, I’m a rookie journalist just
starting out. I grew up in Springfield,
Illinois, just a few miles from
Champaign, where you guys are from.
How about giving me a break and
let me ask you two a couple of
questions?”
Kevin/Gary: “Where’s the cocaine?”
Me: “No, seriously guys, how about just a
couple of quick questions?”
Kevin/Gary: “Where’s the cocaine?”
Me: “Wow, guys, I’m just a broke, struggling,
underpaid writer. I don’t have money
to buy coke.”
Kevin/Gary: “Where’s the cocaine?”
Me: “Okay, guys, thanks.”
I walked away empty-handed. By the third time they had said in unison, “Where’s the cocaine,” I knew they weren’t kidding. I was going to have to lay out some lines or they weren’t talking.
Another anecdote from the hallways of “Rolling Stone” is likewise illuminating. One day I watched an editor disappear into an office with Stevie Nicks. I knew he was doing a feature story on the fabulously glamorous Fleetwood Mac lead singer. When they reemerged an hour and a half later, Stevie flew on by as the editor brought up the rear. “How did the interview go?” I asked him. “Great,” he said with a laugh, “but it cost me a gram and a half.”
To her credit, Nick’s is very open these days in talking about her former addiction. When asked recently what advice she would give to aspiring rockstar wannabes, she only half-jokingly recommended that they “put aside twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars” to pay for the detox and drug rehab when they’re done. In an interview with an English online publication called “Far Out Magazine,” Nick’s revealed that, at the height of Fleetwood Mac’s glory years in the late ’70s early ’80s, “All of us were drug addicts, but there was a point where I was the worst drug addict…I was a girl, I was fragile and I was doing a lot of coke. I had that hole in my nose. So it was dangerous.”
She wasn’t joking about the hole. She was speaking literally, not figuratively. As “Far Out” went on to report:
“Nicks has been open in recent years about her prior issues with substance abuse and, more specifically, about how she completely lost control of her behavior during this hedonistic period. The disregard for her health also resulted in physical injury; the snorting had burnt a hole the size of a coin in the side of her nose. Her addiction was worsening much more rapidly than ever before.”
It was a dangerous spiral. By the late ’70s Nicks was the girlfriend of Eagles drummer Don Henley and she was living out in real life every last gruesome detail described in the brutally honest lyrics of that band’s masterpiece, “Life in the Fast Lane.” (“Everything, all the time…”) It had to end or Stevie Nicks was going to die.
Finally, after a lengthy stay at the Betty Ford Clinic followed by ten years as a Valium addict, Nicks got out of hell. She is now reportedly clean and sober. Good for her. You go, girl. Talk about a survivor. She’s still out there touring and giving it her all, shaking that tambourine like there’s no tomorrow. Wow. What a comeback.
While we’re on the topic of excessive lifestyles, I think Ozzy Osbourne did a splendid job of summarizing the horrors of an over-the-top existence. During a period of sobriety, Ozzy was asked why he had quit partying. His answer was, “I got tired of waking up in a puddle of my own vomit with pizza stuck on my face.” That about says it all. At least he didn’t have a hole in his nose like Stevie’s.
Certainly, Nicks’ problems were the last thing on my mind as Kurt Loder and I wrapped up our search of the premises at Wenner’s place that August day. Screw Stevie, just like everybody else all we cared about was the next buzz. Back then everybody was chasing it twenty-four-seven. Out of control times.
It was still the honeymoon period for cocaine in our society. People had actually convinced themselves that the stuff wasn’t addictive, just some sort of harmless nose candy. Do a little toot when you needed a boost. Like drinking five cups of coffee. Just a harmless little pick-me-up. Preposterous. In retrospect, the delusions of the era are staggering. Seriously? This succinct statement from the National Institute of Health says it all:
“Cocaine is an addictive drug that produces numerous psychiatric symptoms, syndromes and disorders. The symptoms include agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, violence, as well as suicidal and homicidal thinking.” End of story.
Anyway, I was relieved when Loder and I exited Wenner’s pad and stepped outside into the harsh glare of the mid-afternoon sun and the high decibel cacophony of bustling crosstown traffic. I didn’t want to be discovered by the boss while searching his castle. Besides, Kurt was good buddies with Wenner. Me, not so much.
In the three years that I had been at “Rolling Stone,” Jann Wenner had never publicly acknowledged that he knew my name. Not a lot of warm and fuzzies from Wenner to me during my tenure. None, in fact.
I had very little direct contact with him and I liked it that way. The office chatter was that he was erratic and could be extremely temperamental. Mercurial on a good day. Gossip had it that he was usually coked-out and often drank vodka to take the edge off. I just didn’t like his vibe in general. My instincts told me to steer clear.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to sound unappreciative of the huge impact Jann Wenner had on my life and the absolutely wonderful opportunity his organization provided. My three years at “Rolling Stone” were a super awesome experience. Probably the best thing that ever happened to me. A totally life-changing, once-in-a-lifetime personal crossroads of destiny. Without Jann Wenner there is no “Rolling Stone” and without “Rolling Stone” my life story reads entirely differently. ‘Nuff said.
That being said, I still found Wenner to be a difficult person to like. A major drag. A jerk. He was a living legend in the publishing world and was keenly aware of his stature. He was even a minor celebrity in mainstream pop culture. He was an outsized, larger-than-life bigshot who reveled in his glory and loved throwing his weight around. I learned to keep my distance from him.
I generally tried to avoid him in the expansive “Rolling Stone” corporate offices which occupied several floors of the skyscraper we were in. Once in awhile, I would have the misfortune to pass him in the hallway with his hair on fire. On more than one occasion, Wenner, presumably high on cocaine and vodka, would yell at me about this or that for a minute or two. I would stand there patiently taking it all in, going down the rabbit hole with him while he vented about whatever yadda-yadda burr was up his ass that day and when he was finished I would walk away and go about my business. Just another day at the gulag. Nose to the grindstone and all that. I knew one thing for sure, I was not Jann Wenner’s problem. Never was, never would be. So I didn’t take the soap opera drama all that seriously.
I accepted the abuse as part of the price I had to pay to be a player in the big-time media major leagues that “Rolling Stone” was indisputably a cornerstone of. The boss was an asshole. Welcome to the real world.
Wenner also sometimes dispatched messages to me via surrogates. When I was working for Sarah Lazin in the books division, she would occasionally deliver his critiques of my copy. Similarly, Wenner’s assistant, Mary MacDonald, once in awhile would give me direct orders from the mountaintop. One day she said Jann wanted me to read Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” cover to cover, extract every quote about Sen. Edmund Muskie, type them up and have them to him in an hour. No problem. Done. It was like receiving a missive from on high. I am not worthy, master.
. Speaking of Wenner’s assistant, she was one of the nicest human beings ever. Top notch. Mary MacDonald, aka “Mary Mac,” was a total sweetheart loved by all who knew her.
She was one of the good guys. But, then again, they all were. I pretty much liked everybody I worked with at “Rolling Stone.” It was a good crew. Off the top of my head I can think of fifty or sixty people on the staff
that I considered to be my friends. Too many to mention here. Of my famous or soon to be famous associates who treated me with respect and kindness, some of the names you might recognize include Chet Flippo, Jon Pareles, Paul Nelson, Annie Liebowitz, Jim Farber, Peter Herbst, Chris Connelly, Harriet Fier, Rev. Charles M. Young, Kate Wenner, Maryanne Vollers, Alexander Cockburn and Bob Wallace.
I would be amiss if I did not give a tip of my cap here to my favorite buddy at “Rolling Stone,” a dude who worked in the mailroom. His name was Jim Lauderdale and I knew him when. We had much in common. He was a fellow musician also in the Big Apple hoping to get his big break; trying to make connections for his budding music career. He was a soft-spoken Southern gentleman, born and raised in his beloved home state of North Carolina. His personality reminded me of a young Chet Atkins. He was handsome, well-mannered and had a winning style. He was charismatic onstage, a natural in the spotlight.
A talented singer-songwriter, by the time I met him he was already hanging out with Linda Ronstadt, who he had been in the cast with in a production of “Pirates of Penzance” that had her in the starring role. During the time I knew him, Jim did quite a bit of gigging at clubs around town. I saw him absolutely kill it one night at the Lone Star Cafe with his own band.
Jim played solo acoustic the night he opened for my band, the Utah Zoomers, at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village. He was fantastic, a tough act to follow. (Incidentally, two of the original songs the Zoomers played that night in the Village were eventually recorded by Dr. Bob. “Who You Are” and “Could be Love” are available at the website.) Jim Lauderdale was obviously destined for the big leagues but his talents and vocal style were more suited for a country audience rather than the rock crowd he was playing for in New York. He later moved to Nashville where he had a great run as a performer and tunesmith. Additionally, he found steady work as an actor. He starred in the title role of a TV biopic on George Jones and nailed it. Jim earned every bit of the success he garnered.
For sure, Jim Lauderdale was a good buddy. Like I’ve said, I pretty much got along with everyone at work, no problem. I felt well-liked and welcomed at “Rolling Stone.” I enjoyed playing on the office softball team in Central Park during the summer. I occasionally attended dinners and social events with my colleagues.
It was only Wenner who didn’t like me. Just my luck, the only person I rubbed wrong was the big boss, the commander in chief, the top dog. Why? I don’t know and I never lost any sleep over it, to tell you the truth. I certainly didn’t try to do anything to irritate him on purpose. It’s ironic that I had no chemistry with Wenner because when I was in junior high school he was a hero of mine. I idolized him from afar.
I became aware of Jann Wenner shortly after the first issue of “Rolling Stone,” with John Lennon on the cover, came out November 9, 1967. I was a pre-teen still growing up in Springfield, Illinois. I was fascinated with rock music and the burgeoning hippie culture sweeping the nation.
The year 1967 was a transformative one. Flower power ruled. “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” was the mantra. The sexual revolution raged. Feminism was taking its first baby steps. “Make love, not war,” read the placards of the Vietnam War protesters. The Summer of Love blossomed. Minds were blown at the Monterey Pop Festival which featured the stunning Stateside debuts of Jimi Hendrix and the Who. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” reshaped the landscape for pop music. Propagandistic songs such as Scott MacKenzie’s “If You’re Going to San Francisco (Flowers in Your Hair)” flooded the airwaves. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Anything was possible. There was magic in the air, enhanced by big doses of psychedelic drugs. But there was also darkness throughout the land. Cities were in flames as deadly riots enveloped urban areas with mob violence fueled by racial injustice. The eruptions of the ghetto infernos foreshadowed the stunning, heartwrenching, horrendous assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a few months later.
Out of those halcyon days emerged the magazine that would document it all. The Bible of rock and roll. “Rolling Stone.”
In 1967 the center of the rock and roll universe was San Francisco with its ground zero counterculture haven centered around the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood which, bursting with hippie energy, freedom, vision and a raging determination to destroy all things “establishment,” was spawning such unprecedented bands as the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane who were exploring and expanding rock’s boundaries. Venues including the Winterland arena, the Matrix and Bill Graham’s Fillmore West provided meccas for pilgrimages by the faithful and outlets for bands from all across the U.S. and the U.K. to display their musical goods. San Francisco was a rock and roll renaissance happening in real time. The parameters of the known universe were expanding and exploding right before our very eyes.
From this teeming California cauldron surfaced a brash Berkeley dropout named Jann Wenner with his own vision of a publication just as revolutionary as the music and pop culture he was determined to document, support, encourage and make money off of. His creation would be just as irreverent as the epoch from which it came. He called it “Rolling Stone.” There are several mythic anecdotes, some probably apocryphal, about the origin of the moniker. The most enduring legend is that the magazine was named after Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” at the urging of Wenner’s original partner in the start-up, Ralph J. Gleason, the jazz critic at the “San Francisco Chronicle.”
Those early days were undoubtedly heady, fun-filled times for Wenner. He was bursting with the vitality and vigor of youth. He was about to get married. To get the magazine off the ground, he borrowed $7,500 from his parents and the parents of his fiancé, Jane Schindelheim. The first issue cost twenty-five cents. In his inaugural editorial, Wenner described “Rolling Stone” as “sort of a magazine and sort of a newspaper…we have begun a new publication reflecting what we see are the changes in rock and roll and the changes related to rock and roll.”
So-called “underground” newspapers like the “Berkeley Barb” were having a heyday. But that was not an audience Wenner wished to be confined to. He wanted national and international recognition and credibility. “Rolling Stone”‘s success inspired imitators. But “Crawdaddy,” “Circus” and “Creem” were no match for the original. “Rolling Stone” ruled. It wasn’t the only rock mag but it was far and away the best. It was the king. “Rolling Stone” virtually invented the whole realm of serious rock criticism and journalism. Wenner had a big success on his hands. He was the proverbial right man in the right place with the right idea at the right time. Very impressive. Well done, laddie. Magnificent. Bravo!
There has never been anything like “Rolling Stone” before or since. In the beginning it was the community campfire around which the Woodstock Nation coalesced two years before anyone had ever heard of such a thing. It was a beacon of hope to freaks all across the land that they were not alone, there were countless others out there just like them. The magazine played a major role in networking the disparate tribes of hippiedom scattered across the planet. It not only documented hippie culture, it helped define and develop it. It not only documented trends and fads, it created them. It reported not only on music but also politics and pop culture.
“Rolling Stone” was a cheerleader of sorts for the sociological upheaval of the turbulent late ’60s. A renegade, liberal, leftist-leaning rag with big ambitions. At the beginning it was published every two weeks. Incrementally, the writing and editorial content sharpened and gained clarity and focus. It gained a reputation for great photography and landmark cover photos. Having your mug on the front of the magazine became such a big deal that Dr. Hook had a hit single called “The Cover of the Rolling Stone.” “Rolling Stone” was king of the hill.
Back in Springfield, I was a twelve-year-old taking it all in in awe. I was transfixed watching the magazine’s ascent. I loved “Rolling Stone.” Worshipped it. Read every single issue like it was gospel, inhaling and absorbing each article and photo. I loved the features and the reviews and the classifieds and the gossipy “Random Notes” column. I loved the texture of the off-white newsprint the tabloid-sized hybrid newspaper-magazine was printed on. I loved their cheeky take on the “New York Times” motto, “All the news that fits.”
“Rolling Stone” was the only magazine that mattered.
At first, it was hard to find a copy in Illinois. Some issues never showed up at all on the newsstands of Springfield. In the beginning, “Rolling Stone”‘s distribution system was spotty in the backwaters of the Midwest, as the rambunctious start-up struggled to mesh with the complexities of the publishing business and the corporate, capitalist system that the magazine’s progressive editorial staff was simultaneously denouncing. It was apparently challenging being a multinational corporation in the midst of a revolution. “Rolling Stone” at that point was long on incendiary rhetoric and short on bean-counters and newspaper delivery boys. Whenever I would stumble upon a copy in Springfield it was a eureka moment worthy of celebration.
I relentlessly searched the shelves of my town’s bookstores, smokeshops, emporiums, record stores and head shops, hoping to score. When I would successfully lay my hands on a fresh issue, I felt like I had struck gold. It was my salvation. “,Rolling Stone” was a huge comfort to me back in junior high and was a major reason I was able to survive the normal angst of being a teenager. “Rolling Stone” was my friend and comforter. It kept me sane as I struggled to cope with my humdrum, drab existence as a punk kid in the Midwestern teenage wasteland I was trapped in.
“Rolling Stone” was my dream magazine. I was enraptured by the far away, magical universe of rock and roll it gave me a peek into. It fueled my dreams and expanded my horizons. I learned new attitudes and new lexicons. Even though the novel world “Rolling Stone” revealed seemed a distant fantasy, it also seemed somehow attainable and accessible. I wanted to be part of the world of “Rolling Stone.” Against all odds, that happened.
Dreams do come true.
Sort of.
By the time I got to “Rolling Stone” in 1979, more than a decade after the magazine’s West Coast inception, the hippie element was almost all gone. The San Francisco dream had gone south a few years prior. San Francisco itself had changed drastically. The flower power renaissance era was in the rear view mirror. The city no longer was considered the place to be. Haight-Ashbury was a dangerous cesspool populated by junkies, speed freaks and free medical clinics for the hordes of homeless. The hippie utopian dream had turned decidedly dystopian. In 1977, ten years after he started the magazine, Wenner bailed. As he was leaving town, he rather ungraciously remarked that San Francisco had become a “cultural backwater.” Unlike Tony Bennett, Wenner apparently did not leave his heart in San Francisco.
Wenner’s stated goal when he transplanted his operations to the East Coast was to become the “‘Time’ magazine of the counterculture,” a vastly different vision than the one that inspired “Rolling Stone”‘s birth. In some respects, the magazine was barely recognizable. It was an extremely slick publication, with exceptionally high production values. Some of the best photography, graphics and layouts in the business. High quality, fact-checked journalism by tremendously talented writers and editors. Additionally, “Rolling Stone” did a lot of good in the world with its excellent investigative exposes.
“Rolling Stone” had become a very big deal and was proud of it. It was now all grown up and New York big-time. Look at me, world! You could sense the confident audacity the minute you stepped off the elevator on the twenty-fifth floor, the hub of the magazine’s editorial offices. As you waited to be buzzed inside by the receptionist behind the plexiglass barrier, one couldn’t help but notice the hallway walls plastered with hundreds of glass-encased covers of all the “Rolling Stone” issues since the beginning, displayed with an unadorned and entirely deserved aura of power and self-importance. The proof was in the pudding and there was pudding all over the walls in the hall.
There were very few, if any, remnants of the magazine’s anti-establishment beginnings by the time I got there. The wide-eyed hippie idealism of the ’60s had been replaced by the liberal agendas and policies of the Carter era. “Rolling Stone” had matured. It was all about making money; it was a business with a capital B. Impressively, Wenner had done a hell of a job of growing the company. But one question loomed over the whole operation. Was it possible to grow up without selling out? I doubt it. “Rolling Stone” had arrived. But at what price? Had “Rolling Stone” sold its soul?
These sorts of weighty matters are easy to contemplate in retrospect. But back then, in the moment, such questions were of no concern or value to me. While I was at “Rolling Stone” I was just trying to hang on and keep my job. That was a task that was made somewhat more difficult by the fact that at “Rolling Stone” I was always a bit of the odd man out, slightly different than many of my associates in some ways. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being at “Rolling Stone” and, as I’ve said, felt welcomed and well-liked there. But I was to some extent a fish out of water, a little bit out of my element.
Most of my colleagues were not where I was from, both literally and metaphorically. For starters, we had differing educational backgrounds. I was surrounded by Ivy Leaguers. East Coast people who had known each other since they were kids and then attended private prep schools with each other and the Kennedys before they all enrolled at Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia and…uh, the University of Utah? Not so much.
It is worth mentioning that I did attend a highly regarded, rather esteemed, ultra-liberal private school for two years called Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio before transferring to Utah, but still my credentials were no match for most of my coworkers.
Incidentally, I actually did apply to Harvard when I was in high school. I was then summoned to the home of an alum who lived in Springfield so he could conduct a screening interview. He asked me what was the last book I had read. I told him I couldn’t remember but I was sure it was a comic book. Needless to say, I was not accepted at Harvard.
As an aside, allow me to interject that it was an honor and a privilege to work on the “Rolling Stone” staff. Sincerely. I was amongst some of the best and brightest of my generation, individuals who would go on to become top-of-the-shelf leaders in a variety of fields. There were no dummies allowed. I have already noted here some of the famous names that I was fortunate enough to have rubbed shoulders with on a daily basis for three years. It was an intellectually stimulating and invigorating milieu. It was a time of much personal growth. I treasure the experience. But I still didn’t quite fit in. I had taken a different path to the top of the journalism pyramid. Completely out of left field, I won a stinking contest to get to “Rolling Stone.” Everybody else seemed destined to be there.
I wasn’t a country boy but I most assuredly was not a city boy either. I was from the hinterlands, that vast, unknown cultural wasteland geographically in between New York City and Los Angeles that East Coast elites despise, ignore and completely disdain. Even so, I truly loved New York and had innumerable awesome experiences and adventures there, many of which will be recounted in ensuing chapters. But as much as my stay in the Big Apple was kick-ass, I never totally felt comfortable there. I made my peace with the city but it was always an uneasy truce. The city is hard.
I hated the subways. I hated Port Authority. When I lived briefly on the Jersey Shore, I hated the commute. I had the uncomfortable feeling that if I didn’t get off that damn bus soon, I was going to turn into someone just as pathetic and downtrodden as Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”
When I left Jersey and moved into the city, it was scary. There were bars on the windows of every apartment I lived in. Crime was a constant concern. The subway rides were perpetually tense, there was never a cop in sight. Cabs were way too expensive to be used on a regular basis. The daily hassles of city life were trying. Housing was a never ending issue, either the lack of it or its astronomical cost. I owned a junker van while living in the city. Coping with the rigors of alternate side of the street parking was challenging and frustrating. I got a lot of parking tickets. Just finding a gas station in Manhattan was a project. Laundromats became a second home.
There were specific city blocks that you didn’t want to be caught dead in or you might wind up that way. You quickly learned which ones those were and avoided them. It was imperative to become city savvy.
I never got mugged but the bass player in my band and his wife had a terrifying debacle. Someone armed with a gun broke into their apartment on E. 60th St. while they were home. He stole their wedding rings and other valuables. He tied them up and put them in a closet. It took several hours before someone found them and rescued them.
I never let down my guard the entire time I lived in New York. On the other hand,
many of my colleagues had grown up in Manhattan or one of the other boroughs and were as happy as pigs in loose dirt in their good old hometown. To the contrary, to me, while the city was intoxicating and stimulating it was also culture shock to the max. I was a stranger in a strange land.
One day somebody at work, I can’t remember who, told me that the joke going around the office about me was, “Where’s Jeff’s tractor parked on Fifth Avenue?” My answer then, as it remains now, was, “At least I have a tractor parked on Fifth Avenue.” I took it all in stride, with good humor. I didn’t mind being the good-natured provincial.
Apparently, some at “Rolling Stone” were of the opinion that the only culture I was familiar with was agriculture. Ha. Admittedly, prior to my arrival in New York, my natural habitat would have been more akin to Manhattan, Kansas rather than Manhattan island.
Being able to laugh at oneself is a powerful tool in the toolbox of maintaining sanity. Not taking oneself too seriously is a human superpower it is wise to possess. Plus, I’ve found in life that the way to tell when people really like you is when they feel comfortable enough to make fun of you. That’s when you know you’re in there. “Rolling Stone” staffers were mildly amused by me and since my work was always excellent and beyond sufficient, they put up with me. All good. No worries.
Yeah, the tractor joke about me was a good one. Big yuks. Looking back on it, it reminds me of the story of Benjamin Franklin’s hat. Do you know about Ben Franklin’s hat? It’s the all-time best example of the power of the provincial to persevere, persuade and prevail.
Benjamin Franklin was the coolest of the Founding Fathers and my favorite. He was indisputably a revolutionary but, while he wholeheartedly endorsed the war of independence the colonists waged against the British, Franklin personally was a thinker, not a fighter. In his own frumpy, nerdball way he was a rockstar, primarily because he was authentic and genuine. With Ben Franklin what you saw is what you got. That was never more apparent than when he was dispatched by the Continental Congress in 1776 to go to Paris as America’s first diplomat. Paris would never be the same. When in Rome, do as the Romans do? Don’t think so. A quick primer for the underinformed:
According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, “Benjamin Franklin was the most distinguished scientific and literary American of the colonial era…He served from 1776 to 1778 on a commission to France charged with the critical task of gaining French support for American independence…There is no doubt that without French financial and military aid America could not have succeeded in its war for independence.”
How did he pull it off? First, he got respect. He was a cutting-edge scientist of that era. The French admired him for his numerous inventions and his experiments with electricity. Remember? Franklin was the crazy nut who stood out in the lightning storm flying his kite with the metal key attached hoping to attract a stray bolt or two. Franklin was willing to get electrocuted in the name of science. Bold, courageous acts like that in the cause of advancing mankind were huge during the Enlightenment. He’s lucky he survived to ever get to Paris. But the French thought old Ben absolutely rocked.
Even though he was not fluent in French, the French adored him. They were enamored by his charming and humble personality. That humbleness was underscored by his modest manner of
dress. His popularity mushroomed. Franklin found himself at the center of a cult of personality in Paris.
How did he do it? It was no easy task. Essentially, he kept it real. He charmed the pants off the French. The French ate him up. They loved his shtick. They couldn’t get enough of his folksy, backwoods manner which, combined with his humble personality, made him irresistible. It was a grand slam. Knocked it clean out of the park. Oui, the French loved Ben. But most of all, they loved his hat.
To gain perspective, one must be cognizant that Franklin was spending all of his time amongst French nobility and the upper class. The idle rich. He was hanging with the Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” crowd a few years before the French citizenry discovered the effectiveness of the guillotine as an instrument for instituting political and social change. Franklin found himself in the middle of all the fluff and finery and powdered wigs and glittering hoop skirts and pomp and circumstance of the world of the entitled, empowered bourgeois. And he didn’t give a damn. He wore his hat everywhere he went, as he pleased.
Franklin remained himself. To understand upper class French society at the time, it is important to realize that everything revolved around the endless party. The dinners and the salons and the soirees. The only thing the rich did was party. And Franklin loved it. Franklin was a party animal. Not that he imbibed, he was just an extremely social creature. He loved to hang and chat and eat and flirt and then do it all over again the next night. And the next. All the while, unabashedly wearing his hat. Ben Franklin’s hat was the talk of the town.
That hat wasn’t just any hat, you see. No, it was a dandy. It was a marmot fur hat that he had acquired on an excursion to the Canadian frontier a few years previously. It was an entirely functional, if not fashionable, chapeau perfectly suited to the rough environment of a frontier trapper or outdoorsman. But Franklin was not on the frontier, he was hobnobbing with the cultured elites of the tip-top of Parisien society. It was sort of like wearing an outfit from Cabela’s to the Oscars ceremony. Or wearing sweatpants to an audience with the Pope. Entirely, entirely inappropriate.
Franklin didn’t care. He wore his hat, his silly fur hat. It was so inappropriate it was cool. Picture it. It looked like the coonskin cap that made Davey Crockett famous but it didn’t have a tail hanging down the back. It was hilarious looking yet, as previously noted, entirely functional. Function before fashion. There’s a famous portrait of Franklin wearing the hat. Google it if you want a chuckle.
Endlessly hobnobbing with the elites, all the while doing his invaluable diplomatic work, Franklin and his hat steadily raised a ton of money. He meshed seamlessly with the bon vivants according to Wikipedia:
“French society combined politics with pleasure…Franklin mingled in the atmosphere of high society, telling jokes and harmlessly flirting with women.
“Franklin was extremely popular with everyone…Franklin did hardly any work but amused himself in the company of the wealthy…As Franklin recognized his popularity in the French culture, he won supporters for America and raised vast sums of money on credit from the French.”
Franklin knew how to work it. He changed the course of world history through chit-chat and small talk. He fully embraced his diplomatic gig and unequivocally succeeded. There was a method to his madness.
Franklin was playing a role; living up to a stereotype for the amusement and entertainment of his audience. According to biographer Walter Isaacson, “Franklin wore a coonskin cap because the French expected him to dress like their image of colonials. So he dressed that way…He wore a coonskin cap, a beaver coat and shoes made in America.”
Franklin willingly played the part of a simplistic caricature of a backwoods provincial, completely apprehending the obvious fact that his outfit was totally incongruous with the finery of his well-to-do admirers. Although he was just being himself, to some extent it was an act, a put on, an eminence front. Harming no one, he was playing games with the French, keeping them amused and entertained, while simultaneously extorting them. He was not unaware of what he was doing. Franklin wrote to a friend at the time, bemusedly rhapsodizing about his “fine fur cap, which comes down to my forehead almost to my spectacles. Think how this must appear among the powdered heads of Paris.” He was hamming it up while raising big bucks for the most noble of causes.
And maybe the biggest key to his incredible productivity was that awesomely goofy hat. Against all odds, marmot fur hats became a fad in Paris. Soon everyone was wearing one. You couldn’t go to a party without bumping into several French noblemen and their wives, all dolled up in their usual finery topped off with marmot fur hats on their noggins.
Everybody who was anybody was wearing a hat just like Franklin’s
I like to think that Franklin’s secret weapon in all of this was that he had become immune to an entirely too prevalent psychological disorder that I call Fear of Embarrassment or F.O.E. The ailment can most simply be summarized as caring too much about what other people think of you. F.O.E. is a psychological trap we create for ourselves and then force ourselves to live in. Like any mental illness, F.O.E. can be quite debilitating over time. Ben Franklin had no F.O.E.
Franklin had unleashed the power of not caring. It sounds like a simple concept and it is. But simple isn’t necessarily easy. Not caring cannot be faked. To be an effective antidote in overcoming the negativity of others’ judgments and opinions about us, one must truly not care, not just act like it. Not caring is the only way to overcome the nasty neurosis of F.O.E.
Franklin emerged victorious by not caring. It’s a lesson for us all. He became the idol of the ubers by wearing a silly hat. Awesome. Small things make a big difference. Without that silly hat we might all still be subjects of the King of England to this day. Who knows? Americans owe a big thank you to Ben for having the guts to wear that hat. Who among us would have been so brave? Without that hat maybe there is no successful Revolutionary War. Maybe the colonists wind up losers instead of winners if the French, at Franklin’s urging, don’t pony up money and send troops to help with the fight. Benjamin Franklin was the unsung hero of the whole damn deal.
Even though Franklin was not in uniform and out risking his life on the battlefield with George Washington’s army, the vital role he played in securing American independence cannot be overstated and should not be underestimated. Others might have played a role in the revolt that was equal to Franklin’s, but no one played a bigger one. Essentially, Franklin saved the young nation with the crucial diplomatic work he did in Paris. Franklin saved the day with his hat. Priceless.
Franklin got it. He fully understood the power of the provincial. He weaponized his provincialism. He transformed what seemed to be his weakness into his strong suit. Brilliant.
I’m with Franklin. Be real. Be who you are. Like Jimi Hendrix once put it, “Let your freak flag fly.” Be true to thyself and it all tends to work out in the end.
I’m in. Reflecting upon my situation at “Rolling Stone,” I realize now that my colleagues were all inquiring about my Fifth Avenue tractor because they all wanted to go for a ride. My tractor was my marmot fur hat. It was all a compliment. They admired me for my individuality, my authenticity and my genuineness. Thank you, “Rolling Stone.”
Despite the compliment, I was getting somewhat burnt out at the magazine by the end of my third year. Around the time Kurt Loder and I were searching Wenner’s abode, late summer 1982, I had come to the realization that I was going to bolt, leave New York City, split this popsicle stand. It was time to move my tractor off of Fifth Avenue. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was only a matter of when. I would have loved to have obliged my associates by giving them all a free tractor ride but time was running short. For me, the honeymoon at the magazine was over. It was time to move on. My restlessness had been steadily increasing, fueled by a growing sense of disillusionment and discontent.
Finally, I had an epiphany worthy of James Joyce. I didn’t want to write about music, I wanted to play music. Bingo. It was one of those all important and all too rare moments of transcendent mental clarity that had struck me like one of Franklin’s lightning bolts. I didn’t want to be a writer, I wanted to be a guitar player. Whatever it took. I wanted people to write about me playing music, not the other way around. A light bulb had gone off over my head. Shazam.
Part of my epiphany was the realization that I abhorred the lifestyle of a writer. I am not a sedentary creature. The idea of sitting in a chair eight hours a day chained to a keyboard is the sort of thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
Beyond that, I hate corporate. Whatever else it was, “Rolling Stone” was entirely and unabashedly corporate by the time I got there. It might have been the coolest corporation in the world but it was still a stifling corporation.
A cubicle is still a cubicle and an office is still an office no matter what celebrity or superstar is walking by in the hallway. “Rolling Stone” was glamorous, without a doubt. But at my level on the totem pole you were still just a cog in the machine, cranking out copy for the man. I didn’t want to be a glamorous cog. I hated the whole corporate atmosphere. I started to feel trapped. I was suffocating while David Bowie and Mick Jagger and Jackie Kennedy Onassis and David Byrne and Deborah Harry and Rick Nielson and Peter Wolf and Joe Jackson and whoever were strolling by. So what?
I liked being outdoors. Offices are stuffy and confining.By the fall of 1982, the walls were closing in on me at “Rolling Stone.” I had to get out of there.
It had all become too much. Corporate will rot your brain and reduce your soul to ashes if you allow it to happen. Corporate controls you, suffocates you. It dictates how you look, what you wear, when you sleep, where you live, when and where you travel, what people you associate with. It is a form of well compensated slavery. Corporate becomes you if you let it. All for filthy lucre. The love of money, not money itself, is the root of all evil.
I have a cousin named Roger Howrey who for decades toiled away as an executive at Electronic Data Systems. A very accomplished guitarist, Roger spent his weekends performing in bar bands over the years, totally savoring every minute of making music away from the corporate grind. That weekend warrior musician persona was who he said he really was. The torture he put up with every day at work at EDS was solely for the money, he claimed, and was not his true identity. He liked to call himself the Imposter. He put the suit and tie on every day for the big bucks but insisted who he really was was a rock musician. I’m not so sure you can dance with the devil, so to speak, and come away unscathed. There is a cost. If you take the money, you pay a price. As for being an Imposter? I have my doubts. As David Brooks wrote in the “New York Times” recently, ” If you wear the mask long enough, you become the mask.”
My mask at “Rolling Stone” was beginning to feel uncomfortable by 1982. A turning point came the last summer I was in New York. I was hired to do a side project by a vice president of A&R at Atlantic Records named George Salavich. He took me and another writer on a week-long retreat in the beautiful Pocono Mountains to write a screenplay for an HBO special about dead rockstars. It was basically the first time I had been outside the city for three years. The scenery was breathtaking. It immediately struck me how much I was missing nature in the urban landscape I was slaving in.
Smog was suddenly replaced by the clean, clear mountain air filling my lungs. Every day was bluebird, with the sun continually poking through a few wispy clouds. There was a mountain stream gurgling behind the condo where we stayed. I sat beside it, playing the guitar and meditating. One day I immersed myself in the fast flowing water and then sat on the shore while my swimming trunks dried in the summer heat. I was in heaven. I had found my Nirvana next to a clear, cold mountain creek whooshing past, cascading over rounded river boulders. What royal bliss.
It all brought out my inner Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. It was spiritually pastoral. God is nature and nature is God. Be still, my soul. It was like attaining a magic mushroom or peyote high naturally without having to go through the agony of throwing up after choking down one of those nasty funguses or pieces of cactus or whatever the hell those things are.
When the week in the Poconos was over, it was difficult to return to the rat race. A few days after I got back into Manhattan, I sauntered across 59th Street to the Central Park zoo on my lunch break. I sat down in front of the polar bear in his cage with the swimming pool. I telepathically asked the polar bear, “Who’s more out of place here, me or you?” The polar bear instantly responded telepathically, clear as a bell, “You are, because at least they give me frozen treats here which I love.”
I knew it was time to check out before I cracked.
All kidding aside, I think the straw that broke the camel’s back for me at “Rolling Stone” was the unenjoyable reality that it was a total drag working for a boss who, after three years, still didn’t seem to know my name. That was getting old. I never saw it with my own eyes but I had the suspicion that somewhere at “Rolling Stone” there was a sign hanging on the wall that read, “The floggings shall continue until morale improves.”
I knew the end was near. The writing was on the wall. The magazine was by no means the one that I fell in love with from the early days in San Francisco. And Jann Wenner was, of course, no longer my hero. So a growing sense of disillusionment set in and intensified as my days at “Rolling Stone” drew to a close. Throughout my stay, it had been a turbulent, stormy relationship with the magazine’s upper echelons. In three years I had been fired twice and quit three times with a #MeToo moment thrown in for good measure. I finally walked out for the last time October 1, 1982.
I’m glad I left when I did. Because the very next year, in 1983, that numbskull Wenner and some of his bigwig buddies did the worst thing ever by starting that nasty, worthless monstrosity piece of crap they named the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m thankful I wasn’t there to see the deal go down. As previously noted, Don McLean sang about “the day the music died” in “American Pie.” He wasn’t talking about the day they started that worthless, much-reviled Hall but he should have been.
The final death knell for rock and roll was that damned Hall. It should never have happened. The whole idea was misguided and had bad motives and betrayed the very essence of genuine rock and roll. A music as rebellious, rowdy and free-spirited as rock and roll was never meant to be locked up in a museum. The Hall is a prison intended to incarcerate a free bird in a cage. Can’t be done. You cannot institutionalize rock and roll. The sheer exuberance of rock music, the joie de vivre it encapsulates, is ill-suited to be confined within the walls of a brick-and-mortar. Like Joshua and his trumpet players at the walls of Jericho, rock and roll is intended to destroy institutions, not be imprisoned by them. Remember the album cover for the “Who’s Next” LP? The one that shows all four members taking turns urinating on a concrete edifice. That photo captures the intended relationship of rock and roll with the pompous monuments of our society. They don’t come any more pretentious than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s complete bullcrap.
The whole place reeks to hell. It’s a bastion of b.s. Some of the acts they have overlooked are a crying shame. The joint is run by a bunch of old white farts who never could dance and who take themselves far too seriously with their self-appointed power to decide who in their biased, judgmental eyes is cool enough to get into their stupid little Hall of Fame. My precious. Pathetic. The place should be destroyed.
The Hall has always been just an extension of “Rolling Stone” and, therefore, of Wenner himself. It was his Frankenstein-ish creation. He micromanaged it, coddled it and obsessed over it. He saw it as an extensive part of his legacy. More than any other individual, through his outsized influence, Wenner controlled who got in. It was much harder to gain entrance if Wenner didn’t like you, either personally or artistically. He didn’t exactly have veto power but it took a lot to get a nominee past his resistance. Good luck getting by the king.
The problem starts with the secretive nominating process. Everything is done behind closed doors. It’s rigged. The fix is in. The public has very little actual input. There is no transparency. The peoples’ choices are ignored, the wishes of the rabble mocked by the snobs of the corporate machine; the riff-raff are derided and scorned. If an act is widely popular then that often hurts their chances to get in. If the masses like a band that puts them immediately under suspicion by the illuminati who think that the average rock fan is a stupid moron.
The nominations are controlled by rock’s critical elites, Wenner’s buddies. Industry insiders. The taste police. Because of that, just like with the Oscars and the Grammys, the artists who are enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are often not the ones the general public would like to see voted in. Their preferences are consistently overlooked in favor of the critics’ favorites and media darlings.
To Wenner and his cohorts who control admission, it has always been more important to look cool than to be fair. They have done us all a disservice. Some of the whacky artists they’ve let in had only a modest or negligible impact on the history of rock but the critics liked them so now they’re in. To some extent, it’s revisionist history because some bands on the fringes of the art form now seem much more important than they actually were because they’ve been given the added credibility of being in the Hall. The super secret nominating process has resulted in some absurd inductees in recent years and numerous inexplicable overlooks of major acts. Politics clearly rules at the Hall.
The entire nonsense was commented on recently in “The Guardian,” “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is often seen as a closed shop excluding musicians that don’t meet a white rock criterion. The Hall is a less-than-hip celebration for industry-friendly musicians and industry suits.”
Jann Wenner recently proclaimed that “rock is dead.” That may well be correct where he’s hanging out. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is where real rock and roll goes to die. It’s a musical mausoleum. Actual organic rock and roll continues to thrive out in the streets, in the bars and the garages and the back alleys and the front porches and the dorm rooms and the open mics. It’s the peoples’ music and always will be. As the late great critic Lester Bangs put it, “The best music is made on stages six inches high or less.” Amen. That’s what should be inscribed in letters ten feet tall on the exterior of the stinking Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Damn straight. Until it is, count me out. Really, when you get right down to it, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is just some sort of gussied-up tourist trap in Cleveland. The place should be burnt down, demolished, reduced to rubble.
In my opinion, only one good thing ever happened at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The year was 2006. To comprehend the monumental importance of what went down, we need a quick refresher course on the most iconic punk rock band ever, the mighty Sex Pistols. Let’s let Wikipedia set the stage:
“The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band formed in London in 1975. Although their initial career lasted just two and a half years, they became one of the most culturally influential acts in popular music. The band initiated the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspired many later punk, post-punk and alternative rock musicians, while their clothing and hairstyles were a significant influence on early punk image.
“The band gained widespread attention from the British press after swearing live on-air during a December 1976 television interview. Their May 1977 single, “God Save the Queen,” which described the monarchy as a ‘fascist regime,’ was released to coincide with national celebrations for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. The song was rapidly banned from being played by the BBC and by nearly every independent radio station in Britain, making it the most censored record in British history.
“Their debut, and sole, album, ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,’ (1977) was a UK number one and is regarded as seminal in the development of punk rock. In January 1978, at the final gig of a difficult and media-hyped tour of the U.S., singer Johnny Rotten announced the band’s breakup live onstage…Bass player Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose in February 1979 following his arrest for the alleged murder of his girlfriend…”
The Sex Pistols weren’t around long enough to be meteoric, they exploded before they even got started. They blew up on the launching pad. All they had to show for it was one barely listenable album and an aborted U.S. tour. That was it. But they left their mark. Man, did they leave their mark.
The Sex Pistols totally sucked musically. They were like Spinal Tap but couldn’t play their instruments as well or write songs as good. Sid Vicious was in the band more for how he looked rather than any actual musical ability. The band was rudimentary on a good day. It was all hyper-energy and bluster and no technique. But that was perfect. Punk was always more about the idea than the actual music. It was cool for punk bands to be terrible. It was perfectly fitting that the Pistols were atrocious. The whole concept of having talent went against the grain of what it was to be a punk. People who poked safety pins through their cheeks couldn’t be, and shouldn’t be, expected to sit around and actually practice their instruments. The Sex Pistols were the real deal. No poseurs here. When your life philosophy revolves around nihilism and anarchy, who gives a twit about learning how to tune a guitar? The music was an afterthought at best.
The Sex Pistols were more of a cultural force than a musical entity. I don’t personally remember ever hearing any Sex Pistols song on any radio station ever although I’m sure it happened many times. It was more about their attitude and what they stood for rather than the obnoxious noise they produced. The Pistols spearheaded the mid-’70s revolt against the excesses of the pop establishment and the bloated lifestyles of superstar acts such as Elton John, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac.
They couldn’t actually play rock music but they had the right idea about the whole thing. They refused to compromise with anybody over anything. Absolutely beautiful. But, of course, it couldn’t last. They were bound to implode.
The one album that they managed to put out is mostly garbage. Two songs, “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the U.K.,”
are okay. They tried to do a quick tour of America. But Sid Vicious’ drug history made it difficult to get into the country. The band’s record label, Warner Brothers, had to put up a million dollar bond to get them visas, and those were only good for two weeks. Thus began the ill-fated, although legendary, Sex Pistols tour of America. The bizarre incident lasted a grand total of twelve days before a black hole meltdown abruptly ended the band’s career. Inexplicably, they performed at a bunch of dumps and dives, run-down honky tonks and converted bowling alleys throughout the South. “Billboard” fills in the rest of the whacko tale:
“The Sex Pistols arrived in the U.S. on January 3, 1978 for a tour – not of major cities like New York and Los Angeles but run-down ballrooms throughout the South. The tour was doomed…
“Thus began a spectacle…of out-of-tune instruments, grumpy Johnny Rotten tirades and band-versus-audience spitting and jeering that transformed into physical violence…Two dates were canceled and seven went on.”
The circus started on the first night, January 6, at the Taliesyn Ballroom in Memphis when the Pistols were so freaking loud and screechy that half the crowd had left the show before it was halfway over.
Things got even crazier two nights later on January 8 at Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio. “Billboard” says, “It was instant mayhem. Cups, beer cans, food, trash, spit flew toward the stage. The sound was loud, extremely lo-fi, but the band was tight – for about ten seconds.The show was mostly famous for Vicious screaming a homophobic slur at the crowd, ‘You cowboys are all a bunch of f_____g f____ts!” and hitting an attendee with his bass.”
Twenty-four hours later the fun continued on January 9 at the Kingfish Club in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “Billboard” recounts, “The show became infamous due to Vicious allegedly receiving sexual favors onstage from a member of the audience, although accounts differ on whether that occurred.”
The January 10 concert at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas “made headlines when a woman head-butted Sid Vicious after he taunted the crowd.”
The Sex Pistols limped through two more shows before their nihilistic supernova career came to an inglorious end January 14 at Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco when “Rotten ended the show, tour and the Pistols’ career with this line: ‘Ah-ha-ha, ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night.”
To say that the Sex Pistols’ abbreviated tour of the U.S. was ill-fated would be like saying the Titanic had a slight leak. The Sex Pistols were not ready for prime time. If there was ever a more disastrous tour than the Pistols’ brief foray into the the heart of redneck bizarro world, I have yet to hear about it. The Sex Pistols were over before they even got started. But their legend and their legacy still lingers.
Proof positive came in 2006 when the Sex Pistols were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They said no. They said what? THEY SAID NO. What? Somebody told the mighty Hall to stick it? Yep. Coolest thing ever. They refused induction. Johnny Rotten called the Hall a “piss stain.” Bless their hearts, the Sex Pistols gave the Hall a one-finger salute. Half of a peace sign. The bird. Classic. Unprecedented. Unheard of. Somebody actually had the balls to tell the Hall to put it where the sun don’t shine? You got it, bubba.
Instead of showing up, the Sex Pistols sent a note to the induction ceremony. Jann Wenner read it from the dais. It read, “We are not your monkey. We will not be attending.” WE ARE NOT YOUR MONKEY…Those words should be chiseled into the exterior of the Hall right next to the Lester Bangs quote. For their simple yet awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping act of defiance against the rock establishment power brokers, the Sex Pistols have to be given serious consideration as the greatest band of all time even though their music sucks. Talk about truth to power. Dope.
Up until recently, the Sex Pistols fiasco was probably the worst thing that ever happened to Jann Wenner at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But that all changed in late 2023. The Pistols’ debacle suddenly paled in comparison with what Wenner unbelievably did to himself when he was mortally injured by a self-inflicted wound. I stated previously that only one good thing had ever happened at the Hall of Fame. I would like to correct that. Now, two good things have happened. In a stunning development, they kicked Wenner’s lame ass out of the Hall. Impossible, you say? Au contraire, they threw his sorry butt outa there. Boom.
He had no one to blame but himself. He lost his job as king and, most shockingly, it was his own words that did him in. The dude screwed up in a big way. Mucho grande boo boo. He put his foot in his mouth in epic fashion. His whole kingdom got destroyed because of his own idiocy. No one saw his verbal faux pas or his banishment coming. It was so insanely bizarre no one could have predicted it. Now he’s got a Humpty Dumpty situation and all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men ain’t never gonna put that shitshow back together again.
As I write this, Jann Wenner is a disgraced man. He’s a punchline. But the joke is more sad than funny. It’s hard to laugh.
The poor guy has been tarred and feathered and pilloried in the town square by the same industry insiders and elites who used to bow trembling at his feet. But like Caesar at the mercy of the Roman senators, it turns out that Wenner’s supposed buddies throughout the corporate suites of rockdom were all just waiting to turn on him given the right opening. When it came, they pounced. Wenner served up the opportunity on a silver platter. Knives had been sharpened. He was the main course. Et tu, Brute?
As it turns out, Wenner was feared but not all that well-liked throughout the industry. Wenner’s Waterloo came at the hands of a furious Hall of Fame board of directors who ousted him on a unanimous vote about twenty-four hours after he made some of the stupidest, most ignorant comments imaginable in an interview with the “New York Times.” Just a few dozen words did the imbecile in. Just some ill-advised, off the cuff racist and misogynistic musings by a man so full of himself he apparently didn’t even listen to what he was saying.
If Shakespeare had written a tragedy about rock and roll, he couldn’t have come up with anything better than this doozy. Hunter Thompson once made this observation about a different situation but it is entirely relevant, appropriate and fitting here: “Like Othello…laid the groundwork for a classic tragedy. The hero was doomed; he had already sown the seeds of his own downfall.”
Wenner’s first mistake was that he put out a book called “The Masters” containing interviews he had done with seven white male rock superstars about their songwriting, specifically focusing on the words of their songs. Springsteen, Townshend, Bono, Dylan, Jagger, Lennon and somebody else, I forget who now. Anyway, he dubbed them “the philosophers of rock.” Whatever.
He delved into their lyrical insights, revelations, contemplations, dissertations, exclamations, incantations, hallucinations, exhortations, examinations and recommendations for society’s ills. He approached these guys’ lyrics like some sort of contemporary sacred texts. Psalms to be revered, dissected, studiously analyzed. It was all deep, deep stuff from brilliant minds, according to Wenner. “The Masters” is the sort of fawning, idol worshipping project a college sophomore English major might undertake for a term paper. Fair enough. But there’s a thin line between softball journalism and hero worship.
The trouble all started when Wenner initiated a media blitz to promote the book. The disaster had begun. An article in “The Guardian” dated September 19, 2023 by Edward Helmore picks up the story from there. Under a headline blaring, “‘Rolling Stone’ founder Jann Wenner apologizes for disparaging Black and female artists,” Helmore wrote:
“Jann Wenner, co-founder of ‘Rolling Stone’ and a co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has apologized for remarks he made disparaging Black and female artists as less intellectually articulate than their white counterparts.
“The seventy-seven-year-old’s statements were made in an interview published Friday, September 15 by the ‘New York Times’ in which he explained why he had included only white rock performers, whom he dubbed the ‘philosophers of rock,’ in a book compiling his interviews. His comments led to a unanimous vote removing Wenner from the Hall of Fame board.”
What he basically told the “Times” was that women and Blacks were too stupid
to be in his book. Say what? Talk about tone deaf. Among the juicy gems Wenner dished out to the “Times” were such boneheaded observations as, “The women, just none of them were articulate enough on this intellectual level…Black artists…just didn’t articulate at that level.”
Oops. Wrong answer. What a nitwit.
Hello? What planet are you living on, dude? Ever heard of “woke?” Do you also favor Confederate statues on Main Street and condone how the Taliban treat their women?
When the shit hit the fan, Wenner apologized profusely but it was too late. The damage had been done. Wenner is now banished from the world he once ran. Prima donna non grata. My, how the tables have turned. Life is funny. Thanks to his big mouth, he’s lost it all. Loose lips sink ships.
Wenner sold the magazine, which is today primarily an online operation, a few years ago but before this happened he still had the Hall to hold onto as his pet project. Now he doesn’t even have that. Even before all this went down, he was rumored to not be welcome at the magazine’s offices. Now he’s not welcome anywhere. How the mighty have fallen. The “Times” described the whole cataclysm this way in early 2024:
“‘Rolling Stone’ was plunged into crisis last year when Jann Wenner, one of the magazine’s founders, made comments in an interview with The Times that were widely considered racist and sexist. Wenner…left the publication in 2019, but he was still influential in the world of music as a board member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation which he also helped found.
“After his comments were published, he was ousted from the foundation and condemned by the Black Rock Coalition.”
One final observation on this whole brouhaha. It turns out that Wenner himself is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame even though I cannot personally recall one note he ever played or one song he ever sang. Yet he was installed as a non-performer in 2004. Give me a break. Bogus. The guy who started the Hall put himself in it? Spare me. Only a total punk would do something like that. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. Oh well, I wonder if they have to put some sort of disclaimer on his plaque saying he has cooties or something.
It’s a shame, I guess. I’m not here to dance on Jann Wenner’s grave. He has undoubtedly suffered untold anguish over this disaster. No one can help him now. As stunning as it may be, I am somehow not surprised by Wenner’s downfall. What goes around comes around. The man I observed was definitely enveloped in a dark aura. His vibe resonated with bad karma. There was ugly voodoo in the air when that cat was in the room.
He was ultimately the reason I left “Rolling Stone” for good October 1, 1982. But when it came down to it, the underlying problem was that they weren’t paying me. I mean, they were paying me, they just weren’t paying me enough. By the end at “Rolling Stone” I was making one thousand dollars per month. At the same time, I was paying five hundred dollars per month for a one-bedroom, six flight walk-up with cockroaches in every cabinet in a rundown, turn-of-the-century tenement in the East Village. You do the math.
On one of my last days at the office I was belly-aching to my friend, Jim Farber, a great writer and critic. I complained to him that it sure would be nice to make a little money at this racket. I indicated to him that I didn’t perceive that I was being fairly compensated.
Jim immediately shot back, “Oh, there’s no money in it,” referring to a career in rock journalism.
I kept my mouth shut but my mind immediately flashed back to the opulent surroundings Kurt Loder and I had found ourselves in just a few days before during our search of Wenner’s ritzy pad. I thought to myself, “There’s apparently money in it for somebody.”
A few days later I was out the door for good. As I got on the elevator on the twenty-fifth floor for that final long ride down, I took one last look at all the “Rolling Stone” covers on the walls and knew I would never see them again.
Some people have been astounded by my decision. To them, it is baffling. I have been asked, “How could you leave ‘Rolling Stone?’ That was a dream job.” It might have been somebody’s dream but it sure wasn’t mine.
When I got to the lobby and exited the elevator, as I was walking out of 745 Fifth Avenue for the final curtain, I looked back over my shoulder for one last glimpse at a visual display that had been bugging me since the first day I set foot in the place. It was a large, elaborate, colorful mosaic tile inlay above the bay of elevator doors. It was about ten feet by ten feet and it towered over the lobby, reaching all the way up to the high ceiling.
It depicted the Dutch ripping off the Indians by purchasing the island of Manhattan from them in 1626 for twenty-four dollars worth of junky beads and trinkets. It commemorated and celebrated the unfortunate event.
There they were, those wily Dutch traders in all their unrighteous bad karma glory. Peter Minuit and his crew from Holland, down on one knee waving their shiny objects in front of the unsuspecting tribesmen, seducing them with a few baubles into signing away what would become the most valuable piece of real estate in the world, all for a handful of junk.
It was one of the greatest boondoggles ever. A rip-off of historic proportions. I guess the Europeans were just giving the natives a taste of the free market. They were missionaries of materialism come ashore to give the locals a quick lesson on the Golden Rule, i.e., he who has the gold, rules.
The poor indigenous. It was the first shot across the bow in the centuries of decimation of Native Americans by the colonials. Hello capitalism. Welcome to the American Dream, where a sucker is born every minute.
It was a shady deal even by New York standards. The biggest real estate scam ever in that neck of the woods, at least until Donald Trump got to town. While we’re on the subject, the dollar bill now has a portrait of George Washington on it with the motto, “In God We Trust.” I firmly believe that someday the dollar will have a picture of Trump and read, “Every Man for Himself.” On the reverse side will be a depiction of the Dutch ripping off the Indians to acquire Manhattan.
As I stood in that lobby staring up at those Dutch crooks, I knew exactly how those Indians felt. Ripped off. Somehow it seemed that I had been getting the same sort of deal the natives got. A raw deal. Actually, the Indians probably made out better than I did. I didn’t even have any trinkets or shiny objects to show for my time at “Rolling Stone.” By the way, the terrible treatment of native Americans at the hands of white settlers is the subject of two Dr. Bob songs. “Columbus Killed the Indians” is available on the website. A video of “Ghost Dance” can be found at the Dr. Bob Band YouTube channel.
I took one last gander at those unfortunate Indians and knew it was time to cut my losses and boogie. I wasn’t bitter or remorseful. I didn’t care. It was a new day. Farewell Dutch tile mosaic. Lesson learned.
Then it was out the door and gone. I’ve never looked back. Why should I? I was free. Ah, sweet liberation. A wave of total exhilaration swept over me. The chains that bound me were severed. I could pursue my dreams. There was magic in the air. Hope springs eternal.
I felt my destiny lay elsewhere. The timeless advice of Horace Greeley was ringing in my ear, “Go west, young man.”
I was broke but I didn’t care. I had to sell my guitar just to get gas money to get my tractor off of Fifth Avenue. That was okay. I knew there would be more guitars in the future. Sweet. Ode to joy. I was leaving behind a job as a hack writer in a dead-end situation in favor of a fulfilling life as an artist. All I wanted to do was go start a full-tilt rock band and live for the music. The real deal. All or nothing.
It was a no-brainer. I was going to be broke either way. I would rather be a starving artist than a starving writer.
Was it fair that I had been ripped off at “Rolling Stone?” People say life isn’t fair. Life is fair. If I get struck by lightning, I die. If you get struck by lightning, you die. That’s fair. What’s not fair is people. How they treat each other. In the end, we all have to get up in the morning and look at ourselves in the mirror. It is what it is and it was what it was.
That was somebody else’s problem, not mine. I was leaving all that behind. Down the road and gone. It was time to chase dreams and wish upon a star. I was returning to my roots.
Tractor rock!
Chapter 5
The Day that Ruined My Life
Bleeding Fingers
(drbobjdh.com/Free Music/Compilation)
When I was just a boy
Y’know I never played with toys
Just a guitar that my grandma bought
at Sears
I’ve had plenty more since then
And every one has been my friend
A guitar’s served me well throughout
the years
I’d sit there in my room
And play guitar in the gloom
Just a lonely boy with dreams
inside my head
I’d be jamming all alone
With the Beatles, Who and Stones
I surely did believe those words they said
By the time that I could drive
I played honky tonks and dives
Played and played until my fingers bled
Fell in love with that guitar
Just like some boys love their cars
Played and played until my fingers bled
They made me strip down to my underwear and go outside and run around the band house twenty times. It was Thanksgiving weekend 1969 in central Illinois. It was cold with light snow flurries. Midday temperatures were well below freezing. I dutifully did as I was told.
When I got back inside they made me eat a whole stick of butter coated in cigarette ashes. I gagged it down. I swallowed my pride along with that nasty snack. Why? I wanted to be in the band. What band? Billy Sastard. But more on that later.
That was a bad day, for sure. But that wasn’t the day that ruined my life. No, that day had happened a little over two years earlier.
I was in the fourth row. The girl two seats away was holding a big chunk of a cherry red Gibson SG electric guitar that Pete Townshend had just smashed to bits and pieces onstage in front of us. The fragment she was holding had flown off the stage and landed right in her hands. I was eyeing it enviously.
My first impulse was to knock her down and steal it from her. But I knew the girl. She was one of the hottest babes in my junior high school. I didn’t want to be known as the jerk who beat up the hottie at the rock concert over a mangled piece of a broken guitar, no matter how much I prized it. We were scheduled to return to classes in a few days. That sort of reputation would haunt me for a whole semester, maybe longer.
No, knocking her to the ground and forcing her to surrender that treasure was not a good idea. That would not do at all. That would have just made a bad day badder. And it was already plenty bad.
Bad to the bone.
The date was August 18, 1967. The day that ruined my life.
To be continued…
