#1877 - Jann Wenner

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Appreciate everything you've done. Thank you. You have been a part of some wild changes in this country, my friend.

Jann Wenner (0:21)

Well, I think, I started my life, my book out at a time in the 50s, in the Eisenhower era, where none of all of this, what we see today was conceivable, I mean, let alone carrying around telephones in your pocket or being able to talk to people, you know, on your wristwatch. But I came along in the 50s with the post-war baby boom, and it was the largest population cohort in American history, and it became the most educated, the best educated, and also the wealthiest, because America was going through this great boom of, financial boom after winning the war.

And when we came of age in the early 60s, when people, I turned 21, and whenever it was, mid-60s, as we grew up, we kind of discovered that America wasn't what they told us it was going to be, you know, that life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness, which I believed in deeply, it wasn't that way. You know, in fact, first off, we were running this segregation system, Jim Crow. I mean, blacks, people, human beings were kept in the most worst circumstances, and it was an outrage to see that. And then all these other things started becoming apparent, the hypocrisy of the society we were in, and that's the stuff Dylan was writing about. And boom, boom, boom, all of a sudden we're in a war. Our young, beautiful president is assassinated.

The dreams we were told in the American dream weren't quite true. We were...

So it created this crucible, which made us a further, even more unusual generation. I mean, a generation raised, unfortunately, to not trust the government and to think the government's doing wrong in Vietnam and all these things. It was disillusioning. So that's how we grew up, and it made us more rebellious than ever and more skeptical and in a certain way deeply committed to human justice. And human rights and to caring for people. And the things I think became the dominant themes of my generation and music that desire to do good in the world. To make the world a better place.

Joe Rogan (2:30)

It was a giant change in culture. I think the change in culture in the 1960s was one of the greatest changes in human history. And such a shift from the 50s to the 60s.

I mean, I always, I attribute it to a lot of things. The Vietnam era, for sure the war like galvanized a lot of people to understand the dangers of not understanding really what's going on with the government and what the country is really all about. But also psychedelic drugs, which is really a huge part of it.

Jann Wenner (3:05)

Well, let's throw some sugar into the next one. But one of the point is our parents, my parents grew up at a time when we fought, the United States fought a world war for justice, democracy, defeated the bad Kaisers, victorious, you know, the army started integrating America, more European fascist coming home. My generation, our generation, grew up with the war in Vietnam, a war we were ashamed of, didn't want to fight, it split the country in two. I mean, so we had an entirely different experience. But your point that in this crucible, as we got old, I mean, as we started our young maturity and going to college, two giant things happened.

The emergence of rock and roll and the emergence of drugs. And I'm at a third, which was the emergence of technology. It starts about then. So psychedelics were tremendously important in my life to me. I write about it openly in the book. I thought, you know, why cover that up? I mean, I took a lot of acid when I was in college.

I learned lots from it. It changed my world view.

It deepened my love of rock and roll and deepened my love of just the natural world around me. You know, just, wow, everything's so cool and so precious and so unusual. Every little bit of it.

Joe Rogan (4:24)

You know, it's a wonderment enhancer.

Jann Wenner (4:26)

A wonder that's...

I expressed... I was trying to figure out how to say it. And when I said, well, I thought in a way it gave you the sense of the oneness of everything and the preciousness of everything. And it's hard to describe all that philosophical stuff, but everything is interconnected.

I mean, at such a fundamental level.

But this was also the message of music. And two things. It just overpowered me and changed my life and made me want, in the end, to start Rolling Stone and bring that news to the world.