I'm going to start by dropping names : Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Bono. Michael Douglas, the actor. Annie Leibovitz, the photographer - a whole lot about her. Writers - Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolf.
Some of these people had far more influence over the magazine than I would ever suspect. Jagger is unafraid to have his influence and an idea person. Lennon and Ono become friends but also expect to be treated as celebrities. Mitchell get's pissed off but eventually forgives. Leibvitz is - perhaps - having a lesbian affair with Jann Wenner's wife, Jan, but is depicted as a serious drug addict whose talent manages to make it through despite the effects.
This is not to diminish at all the story of Jann Wenner's magazine's endurance, the stops and starts, the move from San Francisco to New York, and the fact (unknown to me) that he also started and succeeded with other magazines. So if you're interested in the history of the magazine don't let the name dropping turn you off. Rolling Stone magazine is not just a music magazine but part of pop culture and so are those people who star in pop culture including the artists - that actors, singers, songwriters, musicians, and the record companies that believed in them and earned millions on their talents, who made it onto the magazine's pages. Writers and editors were assigned. Careers were made but also, opinions could hurt.
And as a disclosure, I've never been a regular reader. In fact, I have barely read it at all.
I've been thinking about this since I realize some of you may think that's odd, considering how often I post YouTube videos of classic rock and soul music especially. The book may explain that, without my especially noticing it, pop culture was marketed to me, my people. Knowing that there are so very many talented people in the music business, knowing that getting a record contract for even one album is rare enough to be considered a miracle, one wonders how much luck has to do with success and popularity and becoming a public personality, and how much was and is having acquired the best management and marketing. Articles in magazines, profiles and interviews, photos - especially the cover of a magazine...
This book is simply excellent, so perhaps I should mention that it does include the personal life of Jann Wenner, his long marriage that produced children, to a woman who was very much a part of it all yet who mostly lived a life separate of her husband. Jan Wenner is depicted as someone who was "bisexual" (like Elton John) but, having had many a sexual adventure with men while married heterosexually, ends happily married to a younger man, with whom he has children by surrogate. After he was official with his new partner, he did not divorce for another seventeen years. So there's the coming out story - but, importantly, this is not one of those books that exists to prove someone is "really gay."
I listened to this book as an audio book and it was well read. I've been doing that sort of listening- reading more these days, in part because I'm also sewing and crocheting. The real treat was at the very end when the author himself talked about how he got the assignment and the cooperation, and the people he thanked, including a list of the women who had cooperated, women who were there.
