American Experience; 1964; Interview with Jann Wenner, Founder of Rolling Stone, part 2 of 2

fall. In 1967, the year I was supposed to graduate, the year I was supposed to graduate. But at Berkeley, I mean, Berkeley, and in that year, I met a 64, I think, to the 65th I mean Ralph. I was swinging along with 65, yeah. I met Ralph Gleason, and we came to my cove at Berkeley. It was covering the free speech movement and writing about it. And I met him then, and he'd write about it, and he became my co-founder of Rolling Stone. And I met Jonathan Cot at Berkeley as one of the first people of Rolling Stone. And you know, Berkeley is just pivotal to what I became, and the merging of this very strains of political protest, of popular music, and of drug culture, and to what became Rolling Stone. Getting back to Berkeley for a second. How did, what did the administration think was

it's day? Why do you think it? Trivial stuff. Trivial stuff. I think they're authority. If you look back at it, because it was really, technically, whether you could place a table with advocacy literature literally 15 feet inside the boundary of the campus. I mean, they had a point that can't be supposed to be non-political. But remember, this is in, you know, there was Jerry Brown's dad. Brown was the governor. It wasn't Reagan era stuff yet. So who cared? And maybe some, you know, John Burseside people would be a gas at the campus being on a hotbed of possible hotbed of radical activity. But it was really musical. The curve was a very distinguished educator, a liberal man. And so I think maybe it was just our stubbornness and pride. You know, it certainly wasn't thought through. And

these things go. They just start to escalate. Each escalation generates another wave of intelligence. And you've rested all the students. And then it was just one tragedy and blunder after another. So finally, there's a meeting as I believe sponsored by the faculty senate. It takes place at the Greek theater or some big outdoor theater near the Berkeley campus. And which they're going to present a reconciliation of some guys. But even at this moment, where they think they've got the thing worked out, I believe Marty Solvey or somebody walks on stage to speak and he's not authorized to do so. And then the cops grab him and pull off the stage. Why? You know, again, on the floor. Why? And of course, the holding, you know, erupts again and the more shambles. And it was just just kept on going like that. Is it about, or you saw what the youth culture wasn't this movement towards individualism? This intense desire to finally say to the corporations and the government that these other

structures leave me alone. Well, yeah, so at one level, that sentiment was spoken and was clearly memorialized at Mario Savio's speech about not being a part of the machine. But I think, you know, it's awfully early on in anybody's life to say, I'm at 21, 20 years old, I've been made part of the machine and I refuse to, I mean, it's pretty high flutin, high-blown rhetoric for young people. But that's what being young is about. I think in a way it was more, you know, the challenge of the young versus old, you know, the new versus the old, you know, and a generational change and a fact of chemistry, what people like when they're in their late teens and 20s and a search for identity, you know. What have you got, you know, what are you rebelling against? Well, what have you got? Yeah, yeah. Because the technical issues were minor and silly.

Yeah. It's said, Jack Weinberg's don't trust anyone over 30. He said, you don't trust anyone over 30. So you then, it seemed like a smart, yeah, right, they're all corrupt over 30, you know. People believe that, young people believe that, once you're over 30, well, we now know, yeah, that's not, that's hardly true, hardly true at all. But it was, so the people who could believe that, I mean, if you could believe that, that's kind of what the issues were about. And it's absolutely that thing. Because we were young and we knew better than anybody else. And I do believe, you know, and it was about that. It was about being young. And there's a lot of other stuff that went along. I mean, not to say it's all only that. But in that situation, that, that, you know, and it was about our youthful ideals and our youthful beliefs. And what we want society to be has expressed in any kinds of things, you know.

It's interesting the way in which the civil rights movement, I mean, I guess SDS is going on, then. I talked to Todd, you know, I was interesting. They're out there, young, young Americans for freedom is the big move for Goldwater. And they are passionate, radicalized in their own. So I think you're right. I think the youth movement, the youth in the kind of I mean, as I said before, it was the coming of age of the biggest, best educated and wealthiest generation in history of America. And there's going to be trouble. And that was. And it came right up against the hypocrisy of the older order and the bad stuff that was going on in terms of South and civil rights in terms of what the America's military was doing. And by the way,

Vietnam just wasn't I say Vietnam. There's a whole history behind that of moves that our military had made, you know. And they came smack up against each other. And the first place you saw, the first time you saw that really wasn't 64 when the cobwebs started to come off of people's lives, you know. Did you have any of the impact on art, warholds and steen and in that in that year? Didn't they come later? Yeah. He was there and warhold was kind of an interesting one of his first Campbell suit kind of stuff is in a show in New York that year, but I can't imagine. I don't think it made it out. I don't think it made it out there. And the later came to be quite a divide between what was going on in the West Coast and what was going on in New York,

you know, which we all viewed as a little slick by half. Do you remember a moment that symbolized for you in that year you were in college? I was talking to Max Frankl. How's your plan? I'll go about 10 more minutes. Perfect. I started Max Frankl. I remember the, I was at Avril Haram's house in Washington and I remember the moment when all the ladies were supposed to get up from the table and go to the other room and K Graham said, no, I'm not going. I said, tell me that was in 1964 and you couldn't remember. I think it's in K's great book. I wanted to actually check because I'm interviewing him tomorrow. I want to check her by heart. I can't even talk about it. Yeah, I believe so. Her autobiography is great. Was there a moment for you in 1964 where your place with the consensus, your relationship to the old order, or just the oldness of the old

order came into focus or was particularly like, did you go home from college or Thanksgiving or stuff? I mean, I'm just curious because this is about a year when people actually lived through it. It's great that you were actually at Berkeley when this was happening. Well, I mean, I came from a very wealthy household, very liberal, a local household. So, the beliefs I had at college were pretty much reflected in my own family. But I think there was a process in which you became increasingly radicalized by every new assault on common sense, on human justice, on, you know, whether it was, you know, from Vietnam

or the civil rights stuff or every time you turn it. And it led to really a full alienation from society. I mean, the decision not to vote in elections, you know, not to participate. The belief that it wasn't nothing was going to change within the confines of the electoral process that we were offered. And it was pointless and useless. And so, it led to the convenience of, you know, let's drop out, let's go get stone, let's dance, let's have some fun because this other thing is not going where. So, all of a sudden the rise of hippies and spiritual stuff. And, you know, all kind of reasonable attitude to what was going to happen. It was really not until 1972 when the youth vote was in franchise. You had my government running that you felt, oh, there is now, again, a reason to vote. I mean, people turned on, you know, Hubert Humphrey,

who was really, you know, badly, you know, because of Vietnam. And in fact, you know, of course, he was one of the America's greatest, you know, liberal, humanitarians and, you know, a record. I'm a parallel record. Yeah, you know, he passes a civil, he helps pass a civil rights act in 1964. Big moment. So, but, you know, it all came, you know, we didn't believe in any of it. That's good. A couple of big, big picture things, it's the very end. Okay. I mean, we sort of, you're scaring me a lot of this. You ended up the year, I guess you go back to Berkeley, the following fall, fall of 1964. That would have been your sophomore year, right? You got there in the fall of 63.

You got there, your freshman when Kennedy was killed again? Yeah. And you went back and then you didn't go back after your sophomore year? No, I went, so when was free speech of 1964? It starts the year I come there. I mean, it starts the year, the opening of that first second year, I think, my second year. No, I stayed through that year. I almost got a year's worth of credits. But then it was the following that I think was, no, maybe it was the end of the sophomore year. I dropped out. I just couldn't go anymore. It was just too much. Between the free speech and most, then over and all of a sudden, all the drugs and the music goes around and I'm not gonna stick around. Yeah. I've been such a good student too. I wonder about the why it is that it seems like everything bubbled up at the same moment, and you hit on it. Well, you know, you got great rivers of history, you know, and sometimes they all flow together.

You know, sometimes they're parallel and sometimes they come together. And whether it's you have something in Paris in the 20s or all of a sudden, Matisse and Picasso and Laje are all together working at the same time. The Brock and Heming was there. So there's one of these great cultural moments. They'll never repeat again, you know, and he and similarly with music. In the 60s, I was on stage at the same time. You have Bob Dylan and the Beatles and the Stones and this remarkable Renaissance that goes on. It's never been really repeated since. And in 64, you have the beginning of the confluence of all the rivers of the of the physical facts of the population. The baby, the demographic changes about the thick place, which nobody had foreseen. I mean, I said, after the war, spent hundreds of millions of dollars building schools to educate these people, then became out towards empty and universities and huge systems and structures to educate

this, my generation. And as I said, bigger than I before, better educated, smarter, more empowered, more feeling itself, you know, up against the coming up against the strictures of American society, you know, that were in place to stop rebellion, to stop you for a billion, to stop this nonsense. Who wants a freaking drug culture? You know, we don't want these long hair, we don't want any of this. Do you think, if you look around today, last question. If you think about, you know, the Red State, Blue State, where we live in, the cultural world we live in. So, the way in which our society is and the racial issues that go on in America, can you trace those threats, a lot of those threats back to 64, do you think? To what? The polarization? Yeah, just look at Barry Goldwater. Well,

the political world we live in seems to me that it all started. Well, I take it along because it started way before him, really. I mean, I mean, right wing reactionary stuff is part of America. And whether it is the John British society, whether it's Senator McCarthy, whether it's Father Cogman, I mean, how far back do you want to go? You know, lynchings and we're, you know, the whole, all the stuff around and so forth. So, I don't think it starts in 64. It took a, it took a, it took a new modern form. 90s, you know, but it started before, you know, under the eyes of an hour, era, you know, Joseph McCarthy and all the anti-Communists there and lynch, you know, just all that nonsense. House on American activities committee. So, well, I wonder about the, I wonder about the threads. I wonder about whether this is the,

whether 64 is the year when the world will live in today's first coming visible? Well, and yes, and great part of this. I mean, against the emergence of the generations, the demographic of America. And it starts to become apparent what it's going to be, what's going to look like and has its beginnings right there. You can see it all, especially if you look back. You can see all the little thing, all the markers, you know, it started and they're just going to start to flow as that, as the baby who grows and grows and grows and starts to, you know, kind of really take over American culture, certainly, you know, and start to change enormous numbers of social values. Not a thing that fully guides its hands on the running of the government in a way it wants to, but, you know, you, you know, Clinton was kind of a baby who was present. I guess, you know, we lost out there. We got Bush inside a gore. You know, I've been, been gore would have real baby-owned guy. Bush just, just missed, you know, on that one. But, you know, all the, all the values, all the styles were set there, you know.

I mean, all the freedoms. I mean, the idea of all these things we have today, you know, become from there. Let's get room to 30 seconds of silence, Johnny. 30 seconds for you on where, starting now. And room time, we were on schedule down to the minute. Great.