Quotes from Jann S. Wenner

John Lennon was on the first cover.

Mick had just performed at the White House, and Obama had been in New York singing impromptu with Al Green at the Apollo, so he enjoyed telling those stories. We got sidetracked into gossiping about Bono, whom, he said, he had drunk under the table one late night at the White House.

The first Rolling Stone interview was with Donovan.

I led the record review section with Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant ("excellent")

He talked in curlicues and long, winding metaphors. I started out as a partisan on Artie's side in his long and tortured relationship with Paul Simon. As the years passed, I got a far more nuanced education on that partnership. Artie remained a lifelong pal.

I didn't love Jane in that swept-away sense. I didn't put her needs first or think about trying to surprise or delight her. I didn't take time out of my daily life to find that "special something" for her.

Date night? It was always about me and what I wanted to do.

I brought Yoko to meet the Gorbachevs, who embraced her. Mikhail told Yoko how much he admired John's peace crusade and his music

When I told Yoko about my visit with Paul, she said something to the effect that I had fallen under his spell.

That morning I got a telegram from Bob Dylan—"Happy Birthday, Jann. How does it feel? Now you know. Bob.

I decided to put Donna Summer on the cover of an issue in March 1978. Disco was considered the music of the anti-Christ by many, and the staff was up in arms.

NINETEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT WAS the year of Some Girls, which I thought was the best Stones album since Let It Bleed in 1969.

Hello, I'm Al Gore. I am a contributing writer to Rolling Stone. I used to be the next president of the United States…

Jackie Onassis had grown up on Further Lane, right down the road, and told me that East Hampton was the best summer place in the world.

Lorne Michaels and his girlfriend, Susan Forristal, had rented a rambling white house in East Hampton; Chevy Chase and Michael O'Donoghue had the house across the street from them. Paul Simon was just down from us.

At one point Jonathan said, "You have said you didn't want to be singing 'Satisfaction' when you were forty-two." "No. I certainly won't.

What I wanted to hear was "The Rose," a song of fear and the redemption of love: "It's the heart, afraid of breaking / That never learns to dance / … It's the one who won't be taken / Who cannot seem to give." She could make me laugh; she could sing and make me cry. One of the people in the world I felt closest to.

Jackie whispered to me, pointing to the gentleman seated on Ethel's right: "That is one of Bobby's oldest friends, and he's the one selling drugs to David.

Of course, lawyers are always making money either way—up, down, and especially around.

Our writer Ben Wallace-Wells visited Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, to which Obama belonged. It was led by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It wasn't Martin Luther King Jr. preaching; it was Malcolm X.

John was a constant talker. Yoko would punctuate his sentences with a "Yes, yes" or some little bit of emphasis.

MICHAEL DOUGLAS SENT me a strip-o-gram for my birthday. The editors crowded into my office to cheer on the uncomfortable moment. I was thirty-six and by any measure an adult, with a wife, a career, and responsibilities

In our first issue of 1983 we reported on a new piece of equipment only available in Japan, the $1,000 compact disc player, with the headline "Will the Compact Disc Make the LP Obsolete?

There were battles on many fronts: civil rights, sexual freedom, Vietnam, drugs. Even clothes, hair, and music were under attack by the Establishment. Unbelievable when you think about it—fucking haircuts.