"What do you believe happens after death?"/"I haven't a clue. I'm always struck by the people who think they do have a clue."

"It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean -- if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers."

Said Hugh Hefner, who, after 91 years, has finally gotten a clue.

Good-bye to the long-lived satyr, the man who packaged and delivered sexual liberation to the masses. He had a mission in life, and he pursued it with great energy, imagination, and influence. He's beyond love and hate for me. I grew up in a secure, middle-class home with a father who had every issue (except, perhaps, the first issue), where the magazine was not hidden away, but on the coffee table next to Life and Look, and we did live and look. Nobody stopped us. I paged through Playboy before I could read. I was so young that topless women didn't even seem to me to be naked and only reacted to the nakedness when, after many pictures of breasts, I saw a photograph I can still see in my head: a woman, lying prone and wearing an amber-colored satin blouse, with what we would have called her heinie just out there, for all to see.

In high school, I enjoyed easy access to things about the parts of the culture I liked: an interview with The Beatles in 1965...

PLAYBOY: "Speaking of nutters, do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, 'My god, I'm a Beatle?'"

PAUL: "No, not quite."

(laughter)

JOHN: "Actually, we only do it in each other's company. I know I never do it alone."

RINGO: "We used to do it more. We'd get in the car. I'd look over at John and say, 'Christ, look at you; you're a bloody phenomenon!' and just laugh... 'cuz it was only him, you know. And a few old friends of ours done it, from Liverpool. I'd catch 'em looking at me, and I'd say, 'What's the matter with you?' It's just daft, them just screaming and laughing, thinking I'm one of them people."

PLAYBOY: "A Beatle?"

RINGO: "Yes."

... and with Bob Dylan in 1966.

PLAYBOY: Why do you think rock 'n' roll has become such an international phenomenon?

DYLAN: I can't really think that there is any rock 'n' roll. Actually, when you think about it, anything that has no real existence is bound to become an international phenomenon. Anyway, what does it mean, rock 'n' roll? Does it mean Beatles, does it mean John Lee Hooker, Bobby Vinton, Jerry Lewis' kid? What about Lawrence Welk? He must play a few rock-'n'-roll songs. Are all these people the same? Is Ricky Nelson like Otis Redding? Is Mick Jagger really Ma Rainey? I can tell by the way people hold their cigarettes if they like Ricky Nelson. I think it's fine to like Ricky Nelson: I couldn't care less if somebody likes Ricky Nelson. But I think we're getting off the track here. There isn't any Ricky Nelson. There isn't any Beatles; oh, I take that back: there are a lot of beetles. But there isn't any Bobby Vinton. Anyway, the word is not "international phenomenon"; the word is "parental nightmare."

By the time I went to college (in 1969), I viewed Playboy as a thing of the past, where my father lived, but irrelevant to the new generation. The culture had moved to a new place, and we had new viewing-and-reading material....

But Hugh Hefner lived on, selling his particular vision of the good life. The music was jazz, the smoke was tobacco pipe, the sex was glossy and clean, the mansion creepily dark and ornate. It would not die, and the vision got planted in who knows how many heads...

Without Hugh Hefner, where would we be today? Who would we be? The cultural influence is beyond calculation.