Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Jann Wenner has had an outsized impact on Bay Area history, music, popular culture and the world of magazines. In 1967, with the founding of Rolling Stone magazine in San Francisco, Wenner not only created the "bible of the counterculture," he helped catalyze a generation of young people into a force that would go on to transform the politics and lifestyles of much of the country. In his deeply personal new memoir, Like a Rolling Stone, Wenner vividly describes an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond, and the role his magazine played in it. His book goes on to explore not only his own work, but the lives of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono and Bruce Springsteen. He also discusses the role he played in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and Annie Leibovitz. After leaving San Francisco for New York, Wenner's journey took him to the Oval Office with groundbreaking interviews with Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, leaders to whom Wenner's publication gave its historic, full-throat