"... like the one he did with Jimi Hendrix. And he had to edit the work of [Hunter S.] Thompson, who loved his cocaine and whose office supplies included Wild Turkey and beer on tap, and an air horn. Mr. Thompson’s first dispatch from D.C., when he covered George McGovern’s 1972 campaign, began like this: 'I feel the fear coming on, and the only cure for that is to chew up a fat black wad of blood-opium about the size of a young meatball.'... Mr. Wenner recounts one day early in the magazine when Mick Jagger stopped by for blow and a long visit. On another, [Annie] Leibovitz dropped three large rocks of coke on his desk as 'a gift from Keith for you.' 'Cocaine had a stranglehold on the music business,' Mr. Wenner writes in the memoir. 'Drugs were the coin of the realm, enabling bad behavior, bad relationships, and lapses of judgment all around.' Dinner parties might have silver trays of neatly arranged lines of coke passed around every half-hour. When John Belushi fell off a stage doing his samurai skit and ended up in the hospital, with his leg in a cast suspended by wires, he mischievously pulled out a vial of coke hidden in the cast to show his friend Jann."
A snippet of the long article "Jann Wenner Wants to Reveal It All/The Rolling Stone founder talks about LSD, not reading the magazine anymore and how the Stones now look like 'Lord of the Rings' characters onstage" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).
The size of young meatball. Now, that was some choice writing. I suppose it was a young meatball the size of an old meatball. But who really cares about these old meatballs these days? They took a lot of drugs. It doesn't look glamorous from this old-meatball distance. The headline highlights the LSD, but I excerpted cocaine.
पोस्ट्स
४१ टिप्पण्या:
Losers. All of them.
Makes me glad I was so poor in the 70s
don't forget the fact, that Coke didn't just get you high, and keep you up; it got you chix.
In the late '70's, early '80's; even gilbar could get babes.. 'cause he had coke.
'Drugs were the coin of the realm, enabling bad behavior, bad relationships, and lapses of judgment all around.'
As they always do, and as users always acknowledges in retrospect.
Degrading the culture, showing that anything goes, was the real coin of the realm. Bad was passé, judgment for bourgeois schmucks. From Hunter T. to Hunter B. is a small step. As Joe's rise shows, the American elite couldn't care less.
Another member of the vast gay Hollywood mafia...
Rolling Stone now is just another platform for leftist D-hack propaganda.
Some people may not remember Rolling Stones famous story that turned into its most infamous story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus”..
...but Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Fifty years, wow. A half-century since George McGovern ran for president. Like a lot of college students, I supported him because I was strictly a one-issue voter. He may have been wrong about other things, but not about the stupidity and futility of the Vietnam
venture.
Sounds exhausting!
Money can sure help to provide a suspension system for life's speed bumps. He had an excessive and self indulgent life and lived to tell his version...I won't live to see it, but I wonder what posterity will make of him, The Rolling Stone, rock music. his writers... Do younger readers find Hunter Thompson mannered or have they even heard of him? I guess the music will live on, but I'm not sure if it's in a class with Gershwin and Rodgers. Wenner doesn't seem like a sympathetic character, but you can't deny that he had an impact on his times.
I suggest Wenner visit AA and tell his war stories there.
"Almost Famous" says much of the same with less crassness and more sweetness.
As they always do, and as users always acknowledges in retrospect.
With a few loved ones and a number of acquaintances who have struggled with addiction, I find myself unable to get behind the "legalize everything" crowd, even though I understand the arguments for it. I'm watching what legal weed alone is doing to young people in California in real time and it's breaking my heart.
Stones now look like 'Lord of the Rings' characters onstage
Tolkien? Are you kidding me? Mick and Keith fell out of a Dickens novel. I'm thinking "Oliver Twist".
That's why Hunter S. Thompson flamed out so early. Drugs/Booze took their toll. He kept writing the same early 70s style crap in the 80s/90s. Then petered out, altogether. I can remember his newspaper column in the 80s, you could have done an "alt-replace" with Nixon for Reagan. It was that bad. We all thought it funny, an old goober liberal thinking Reagan was Nixon.
He died in 2005, but the cutting edge journalist/writer kicked the bucket 30 years earlier.
‘…'cause he had coke.’
Cocaine is dandy, but Ecstasy will unleash their super freak. Or so I’ve heard…
"Looking a bit chagrined, he confessed that he enjoyed a bit of LSD a month ago at the beach, listening to Bruce Springsteen, U2, Dire Straits and Bob Dylan."
That's really the main problem with Rolling Stone -- those exact same dinosaur rockers are the only thing they've really cared about for the past 40 years. They'll have plenty of articles on the latest sexy young pop stars (and semi-clueless coverage of rap and hip-hop), but their editorial mission seems to be keeping rich, politically connected dudes seem relevant at 70.
HBO has a two episode bio of George Carlin. Coke and alcohol play a major role. I love the Hunter s Thompson interview with Nixon we're all they talked about was football. Facebook about the hells Angels is incredible. I've never read the rolling Stone magazine. Although the first album I ever bought was by The rolling Stones called aftermath
"Losers. All of them."
Depends on what metric you're using to make that appraisal. Under all the pertinent metrics of capitalism, they're smashing successes!
I worked there in the last days in San Francisco. I never knew if Jann liked me or my work but then a little before Christmas he gave me two doves in an ornate five foot tall brass cage, had them delivered to my house in the Haight. In the middle of the first night, I found out why when they started cooing. And cooing and cooing and cooing. They were a gift to Jann from John and Yoko. I kept the cage and traded in the birds for a pair of cut throat finches.
I'm a boomer (about the same age as our host), and am terribly bored of hearing about boomers who, back then, were people we either admired or were supposed to admire. Enough already.
What is the difference between an alcoholic and these people? Would we read an article about a falling down drunk, vomiting on himself, with the same perspective? I think not. Glamorizing drug use is insane. These people had no impulse control.
Just an aside, I am really sick tired of people who glamorize drug culture, especially when we have 100,000 dying every year from fentanyl or heroin drug overdoses.
You can say a lot of (true) bad things about Wenner. But he supprted some of the best work of Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and P.J O'Rourke.
They did not know they were tripping because they were high on coke.
Or something like that…
Supposedly, one reason Hollywood movies from the mid 70s to mid 80s were so bad is because everyonne was snorting coke on the set.
I've read every Altman move after McCabe to The Player was directed while he was high on MJ or Cocaine. Makes sense to me. It certainly explained Peckinpah. He could direct while drunk, but once Cocaine came along, his director days were over. His heart attack in 1980, was probably caused by snorting coke 24/7.
Caan, Segal, Ryan, Gould, Dreyfus, all got hooked on Coke too. Of course, they eventually made comebacks.
Drugs and booze made Carlin's career. Without a stoned audience, he was a flop.
"Running Rolling Stone required special skills."
Some things are not worth doing well.
Wenner has always struck me as something of a snake. He supplied drugs to people whom he knew were drug addicts. Many of them died from drug overdoses, or committed suicide, or were bankrupted. But not Wenner. And he got the copy he wanted.
mold the copy into something readable after drug fueled interviews
Did Rolling Stone do a fawning interview Hunter Biden or John Fetterman yet? Can't imagine much has changed.
Not being a Boomer, I never read Leaving Las Vegas until just this past year.
I couldn't tell what all the fuss was about. It was about what I expected.
Beasts of England said...
Cocaine is dandy, but Ecstasy will unleash their super freak. Or so I’ve heard…
never Personally had women (apparently upright moral women (or were 3 months ago)) whore themselves to me for X. Happened ALL THE TIME with coke.. ALL THE TIME. Nearly EVERY TIME
pious agnostic said...
Not being a Boomer, I never read Leaving Las Vegas until just this past year.
If you're not a Boomer, and you want to depress yourself; read Tom Wolfe's Electric Koolaid Acid Test
Those people were Literally child molesting shits
(drugging and gang banging a 13 year old Canadian IS child molesting)
IF you want to see what Hunter Thompson could do; read his Good Book, Hell's Angels.
Hunter's Real Problem was: His 1st book was his Good Book. All downhill from there.
BUT! Hell's Angels is REALLY good (even though this apparently makes me in agreement with Howard :(
I assume Wenner is hawking a book; otherwise he's not even close to newsworthy. Interesting that he admitted dropping acid recently; in the 1980s Rolling Stone began drug-testing its employees. Rolling Stone mag was interesting, provided you weren't really into music; their reviewers were hilariously awful (google worst Rolling Stone record reviews--they panned Are You Experienced), which wouldn't have mattered but Wenner and Dave Marsh's limited musical tastes infected the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I kept the cage and traded in the birds for a pair of cut throat finches.
My kids have an Aunt that insisted upon giving musical devices to the kids. Cheap drums, horns, and strings.
Thankfully, there were no finches.
"Not being a Boomer, I never read Leaving Las Vegas until just this past year."
Do you mean "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?" "Leaving Los Vegas" is a completely different book and movie.
Rock is dead. Why is Rolling Stone still around? Time to pack it in. Take Saturday Night Live and Esquire with you.
Rolling Stone played a large part in creating the fucked-up culture we now live in. Eff Jann Wenner.
I never understood why cocaine is/was celebrated by entertainment and 'fast living' college degreed cool people, but crack cocaine is/was considered a drug for the dregs of society who need to be punished and prosecuted.
That is a two tiered justice system and gives credence to the idea that the war on drugs is meant to keep the little people in their place.
I agree with keeping drugs off the streets, difficult to obtain, and out of the hands of young people --- but rehab confinement rather than imprisonment seems a better way to deal with an addict.
Do you mean "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?" "Leaving Los Vegas" is a completely different book and movie.
Yes, you are correct. I meant the former. I've never seen or read the latter.
Thank you for not directly mocking my mistake.
"Rolling Stone played a large part in creating the fucked-up culture we now live in."
Not in the least. It simply reported on the "youth culture of the 60s" as it was occurring and evolving. There are plenty of things that have led to what is fucked up about our culture at present, but a pop-music/culture magazine is not among those causes.
I took way too many drugs in college, and it messed me up. I dropped out, then got cleaned up, then went back to get my BA, MA, and JD.
But I never got a cocaine habit, because it was just too damn expensive.
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