Quotes from Jann S. Wenner

I had asked Hunter once, when he was in a rare calm mood, 'Do you know when you're about to change? Are you aware of it?' Hunter said, 'Sandy, do you know what it's like? I'm just standing here, and I have a sense that something is about to happen. And then I start to turn my head, and it's here. The monster's here.

The Hall of Fame concert was shown on HBO over Thanksgiving, and the next day Dylan called. "How come I wasn't there? Those were my people. I should have been there.

Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer got into a fistfight.

The Who played the entire rock opera Tommy at Radio City Music Hall as a benefit for the Hall of Fame and gave us a check for $1 million.

My personal mindblower was "Desolation Row," but the song that cut the deepest was "Like a Rolling Stone." The song was about discovering what was actually going on around you, realizing that life isn't all that you've been told it is.

LED ZEPPELIN HATED Rolling Stone, and me in particular.

MADONNA WASN'T GOING to give it up to a regular reporter. We thought first of asking Norman Mailer to do the piece, but in retrospect that could have been an ego train wreck. She agreed to Carrie Fisher. (Carrie said she was our "lower-budget alternative.")

THE NOBEL PRIZE for Literature was given to Bob Dylan. The affirmation of Bob's talent was obvious and overdue. He was one of the twentieth century's literary masters, and this was the world's highest honor. No artist meant more to me.

Suddenly you're scrounging for your next meal, but "say, do you want to make a deal?" There's fear in that line, in that melody, in that voice.

and the lawyers, as usual, got the money, far, far more than anyone else did.

I began my research by taking Diana Ross to lunch. She said she couldn't help me; she barely knew Michael. The story about her discovering the Jackson 5 was made up, as was the idea that she had mothered him at Motown.

The key line is "You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal

Terry liked fiction, so we had Joe Heller, Richard Price, Tom McGuane, Robert Stone, J. P. Donleavy, and Kurt Vonnegut writing for us. Terry was not a rock and roller; Terry liked hanging out at Elaine's.

YOKO LEANED ON me as she built a new life. My first piece of advice was to get rid of the off-duty cops and security inside her apartment.

After the wedding Michael invited me to tour his private amusement park. We got on a mini-train that took us to another part of the property, another world that had rides, attendants on duty, a merry-go-round, and a Ferris wheel. It was nighttime.

Inside Yoko's apartment was a world of Dalís, Magrittes, and Egyptian sarcophagi. The shades were shut, blocking the views of Central Park.

I was trying to find a paradigm for "rock and roll values." I asked Jerry Garcia for advice on how big an organization should get. He said I should stop hiring people once I started not remembering everyone's name.

Tom Wolfe, of all people, was the first person who ever told me about rap music. He liked to go to Harlem and the Bronx to watch the crews battle it out, and he was writing rap lyrics of his own.

The Warhol scene in general was plastic anathema to us nature-loving San Francisco hippies, but seen in his natural habitat, New York City, Warhol made sense.

The most potent song on the record was the masterpiece "Sympathy for the Devil." It was a historical essay on the power of Satan.

IN APRIL, I. M. PEI turned one hundred. His adult children had a party for him on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel. Talk about "It was an older crowd.

The Stones were also about to release Let It Bleed, with "Midnight Rambler" and "Gimme Shelter." I think by this point the magazine had anointed them "the world's greatest rock and roll band.

The next week, I brought my ten-year-old son, Theo, G. E. Smith, and George Stephanopoulos to watch the band rehearse the full show for the first time on the Voodoo Lounge stage to an empty stadium, sitting with the Stones' wives and their kids on blankets around the pitcher's mound. The all-time private show.

Now we commissioned William Shawcross, a tall, gangly Brit, to review Kissinger's memoirs. Willie's father had been the British chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. After an Eton and Oxford education, Willie, who was just my age, had become an international activist and journalist.