The Joe Rogan Experience - #1877 - Jann Wenner

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Jann S. Wenner is the founder, co-editor, and publisher of "Rolling Stone" magazine and author of several books. His most recent is "Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir." https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/jann-wenner/like-a-rolling-stone/9780316415392/

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Appreciate everything you've done. Thank you. You have been a part of some wild changes in this country, my friend.

Well, I think I start 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, little 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 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 grow 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 to become apparent, the hypocrisy of the society we were in. And that's the stuff that 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, the American dreams, weren't quite true. 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 desired to do good in the world, to make the world a better place. 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, you know, 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's really all about, but also psychedelic drugs, which is really a huge part of it. Well, let's throw some sugar into the mix. Yes. But one of the points 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 guys, was victorious. You know, the army started integrating America, more European fascism. 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. 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 had a third, which was the emergence of technology 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 worldview. 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. Yeah, it's a wonderment enhancer.

A wonderment that's... I was trying to figure out how to say it and 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 to, in the end, start Rolling Stone and bring that news to the world. What year did you start Rolling Stone? 67.

Wow, perfect timing. So in 67, when I started in San Francisco, we had Bill Graham started. The first FM underground radio station started. There was Monterey Pop Festival. Sgt. Peppers was issued. A clear, clear shout out around the world saying, hey, come on, let's all have fun. Let's get on this love machine together. I mean, it was, and Rolling Stone.

So it was like a real call around the world are you ready for a brand new beat you know i mean and wow the world responded well it's such rolling stone magazine particularly then was such an important part of the counterculture because there was no voice in mainstream media that was equal to it. There was nothing like it. There was no voice that spoke to the young people that were dissatisfied with the way things were going. If you take a time capsule back to 67, there was nothing about rock and roll in magazines, newspapers, television, whatever the mass media was. And in fact, the thing with them, Time Magazine, they all looked down on rock and roll. It was all like raunchy or for teenage girls or nonsense or foolishness. I mean, they didn't like it.

And I don't think it was so much music. They just didn't like what young people were doing. And the threat of rock and roll, which was always there was something deeply sexual about it. And I don't think there's so much music. They just didn't like what young people were doing. And the threat of rock and roll, which was always, there was something deeply sexual about it. And then it was also long hair and all these little things, which, I mean, long hair. I mean, come on. I mean, you, I know, Joe, you don't get this analogy, but I mean, can you imagine people didn't, they were, you were discriminated because your hairstyle. Oh, I get the analogy.

Let alone at the time, you would go to jail if you were gay, if you got caught having sex with a man, or that you could not drink out of the same water fountain as a white person if you were black. I mean, anyway, a far field. So music was the only medium that young people could speak to each other and could communicate with each other and share values and ideas. And that was kind of the power of it.

And we called it, Ralph, we called it the tribal telegraph. You know, the music was the glue that was going to hold the generation together. And we were the only place other than the jukebox and Top 40 radio where you could hear anything of this music or hear about it or read about it or participate in it. And so we became one of the more powerful means of communication for the generation and certainly this great way in which rock artists could communicate with their audience.

John Lennon or Dylan could say what was on their mind or what their intentions were or how they wrote a song or be taken seriously. And Rolling Stone was like a letter from, was this love letter from home for, or this letter from home for so many people that I meet today and that I've met all through on people saying, I lived in this small town and you were the lifeline or you, you know, you meant everything to me in my life. Did you have this sense of what it was going to be when you first created it? Like, what were the early days like?

Well, I don't think – I had no sense of what it could become. I mean, I had these kind of grandiose ideas that it would be the best magazine in the world, of course. It would sell zillions of copies, of course. But I had no idea what success really was going to be, how you define it, either financially or spiritually or emotionally or if it's in the world of magazines. It was just like I was on my trip. We put out with volunteers. So it wasn't like a professional operation. We were kids. I had never done it before't like a professional operation. We were kids. I had never done it before.

I knew nothing about the business of it, but people liked it. And it just quickly started growing and growing and growing and growing because it was good, and it was about something we all loved. It was about music. It was the only place you could read about something that was so passionate to me. I mean, that Berkeley experience of taking LSD and going to all those shows every weekend with the airplane and Jefferson and the Grateful Dead and Janice and all the groups that were then powerful for me. I mean, really, I wanted to be a part of that and listening to the Beatles and the Stones. I wanted to be a part of that.

I wanted to be part of that world. I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be part of that world. In a lot of ways, what the Internet is today and this sort of new independent voice, that sort of Rolling Stone was like that for that culture in that era. There was no other message like that that was out there in mainstream media you know yeah alone and um it was kind of like the big one of the biggest stories in american history and the media mainstream media was missing it which was the boom the cultural revolution in which we thought culture consciousness could be the most powerful way of changing society. And while it's not the same as guns and gasoline,

it's had a powerful, huge effect on what America is, what America stands for, and what America looks like. It's not that it's changed it entirely over, you know, in 50 years. It's entirely different. Change is always evolutionary, but it's made a huge change. And it was one of the most important periods in our history. Yeah, it was a massive, massive time. And, again, you guys were really the only ones that were covering it in a way that represented how the young people felt.

And, you know, there's so much of your magazine that's tied into, I mean, I know you walked around here, you saw the Hunter artwork. There's so much of, you know, when people think about Rolling Stone, a lot of people think about the early days. They think about Hunter. You know, they think about when you guys covered his run for sheriff. I mean, that was a giant moment in culture, too, that this fucking madman was running for sheriff. And the panic, the moral panic that people had about, oh, my God, what if this guy actually becomes a sheriff and takes up all the streets and locks up all the drug dealers who are actually selling drugs? No, he wasn't going to lock up drug dealers. He was going to lock up bad drug dealers.

All the drug dealers that were selling drugs. They were selling bad drugs. He was going to put up bad drug dealers. Right. All the drug dealers that were selling drugs. They were selling bad drugs. He was going to put up stocks on the main square, and you had to be in a stock like in old Williamstown, Massachusetts or something. He wanted to that big sod the streets, in other words, rip up all the asphalt and make everything grass, which was a good idea. Rename the city from Aspen to Fat City. On the theory, Hunter came up with it, it would be more difficult for land developers to sell something called Fat City Estates than Aspen Estates, you know. And then you couldn't. The police had to be unarmed,

and then there would be a giant parking lot out of town that you could park at, and nobody other than residents could not hunt or fish. Non-residents couldn't hunt or fish. But he came close to winning. And this was in a very wealthy resort town that was starting to have a hippie population. When we published his piece about that, and it was the first thing he did for Rolling Stone, it was called Freak Power in the Rockies or the Battle of Aspen. So it got such serious attention, and other press and film crews

from New York and all, oh, the hippies are going to try and take over the ski town. Well, let's see what happens, you know. So much press came in. It just raised the stakes. It became quite a serious showdown campaign at this wealthy resort, which they came very close to winning. wealthy resort, which they came very close to winning. But two things about Hunter just off the bat. Hunter became just the DNA of Rolling Stone. I mean, his spirit, his thinking, his sense of adventure, his sense of fun, his commitment to a better America were at the heart of what we did. And these were the same things that I felt.

And so we just fell in. We became very fast friends. I mean, we just locked in almost immediately that we saw something special between us that we did together. He could write and I could edit. And we were very partners in a very real sense of the world. After we first met, it was never a question of whether or not we would not work with each other. From now on, we worked together. And he was always overseeing what we were doing at the magazine, with ideas, story ideas, and writers. And

he felt very committed to making the magazine a success. And he did his own career. Hunter is a, and I love Hunter. And to this day, miss him terribly, terribly. And I wrote in my book, I said, well, wherever Hunter ends up, I want to go there too. Who knows where that'll be, but, you know, I mean,

you know, he just meant that much. Yeah, the documentary, the the gonzo documentary that was the the first time i ever really got to see you talk about him and you know you you're kind of the glue that holds a documentary together because you're sort of the rational observer that was there during all the wildest and most mad times. He had, I mean, everybody loved to be with Hunter. I mean, you couldn't get enough of being with Hunter, you know, and including me after having Hunter for so much.

When you're with Hunter, when you were with Hunter, you felt you were going to have more fun and be close to the edge of craziness and danger than you were ever working in your life. You know, just getting in the car with Hunter. You know, he would always have to do something that scared the piss out of you. You know, U-turns in the middle of a snow-bound highway. And one night we were driving from Cambridge to New Hampshire to visit Norman Mailer for some strange reason. We had spent the night in Cambridge and we had taken some acid and we got on the road, head full of acid, driving up in the middle of the night to Maine and it's all mountain roads.

And so we go along and then all of a sudden, like Hunter would turn the headlights off. And I mean, you have mixed feelings at this point. I've by this time developed this sense that I'm safe with Hunter, no matter how crazy he is, he knows what he's doing all the time, which he did. So on the other hand, he liked the idea of freaking people out. So I would go, oh, Hunter, stop it, stop it. And it would just make him happier to know that I was freaking out. So it was partly just to keep him going. But then I realized what he was doing is he was looking ahead two bends and memorizing the curves ahead so he could turn off the lights, which is risky in itself.

But we got to the mailers. We were visiting a colleague of ours who was staying at my house. We were visiting some colleague of ours who was staying at my mom's house. We had the night before and made a tape, an old cassette tape of screaming, like an exorcism, you know, screaming in the house. Ah! Ah! Ah! You know, the ghouls going nuts. So we get up there at 7 a.m. in the morning and set the tape deck in the kitchen of the house, punch it so it starts with the screaming at top volume,

and run out the door and don't come back. Well, he loved to do that. We'd steal restaurant signs. I mean, there's all sorts of madness and crazy. And it was fun. And it was innocent. It was like being a kid. In part, Hunter was a big kid but also you know i he he was just a wonderful guy and of course the funniest writer ever i enjoyed his copy come in i just laughed my head off at

some of the things he'd say i mean unbelievably funny i think the first thing i read was the the vegas story that was one of the first pieces I ever read of him and I remember thinking like who the fuck writes like this like it's it was I don't remember how old I was when I read it but her you know it was before I think it was before or around the time Johnny Depp played him in the movie no much before no I mean when I read it. Because I think the movie introduced me to him. The movie introduced you to Hunter? Yeah. Wow.

I mean, you believe such a person took place? But that was a faithful portrayal of an individual. And lucky me, he got to be my closest friend for many years. And we worked together so closely and all the time for many years. And he was, Johnny got him really well, and Johnny loved him. He wrote Vegas in, I think it was 1970, I think was about the time, 70 or 71. No, 70, because 71, 72 was a campaign trail. He wrote that.

It was when he was writing. He started writing it in my basement in San Francisco when he was staying with us. And he was on assignment to do something else, some serious thing about the Chicano uprising in East Los Angeles. But in the middle of that assignment, he had to go to Vegas

to cover a motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated. And they wanted like a 200-word caption. But he never turned that in. Instead, he started writing this piece about going to Vegas saying, we were somewhere on the edge of Barstow when the drugs took hold. And then the image of this red Cadillac in a trunk full of Amos uppers, downers, guns. You know, just madness. and a trunk full of amels up or down or guns, you know, just madness.

But that piece was so strong in two parts. It was a novel, you know, a short novel. Clearly it became regarded as a classic of American literature day up with, kind of like Huck Finn or Catrin and Rye, stuff like that. You know, interesting, another story about the kind of like Huck Finn or Catrin and Rye, stuff like that. You know, interesting, another story about the kind of adolescent spirit in all of us, of men who just can't give up being little boys and cherish that wonderful freedom and sense of fun that none of us have ever liked to give up, really. It still lingers.

I look in your eyes, I can see it. But I've lost my point. It ignited this appetite for chaos in people that were dissatisfied with the narrative that they had been told about the life that you were supposed to live and the way you're supposed to go about things. And, you know, and then the seventies was just such a pivotal moment too, because they had illegalized, they had made, uh, all psychedelic drugs illegal.

And there was this water that was being thrown on this movement and so quickly sort of evaporated so quickly that the shift between the 50s and the 60s was kind of paralleled between the shift of the 70s into the 80s at the end yet things change I mean this come that's a complicated let me just you think what you said about it liberated the chaos and yeah they ignited an appetite for chaos exactly that. That it was accepted that you could live loosely or openly

or you didn't have to obey all these rules. That's what Dylan was about too. You know, about the complexity of life and all things going on in your head. The two great Dylan albums, Bringing All Back Home and Highway 61, are about chaos.

at the end of the 70s, I mean, the 80s was the era of Reagan. I mean, once you have Reagan leading a country, things change. You know, the mood is different. The values of society seem different. In the 70s, we had either a full-scale rebellion going on against Nixon, In the 70s, we had either a full-scale rebellion going on against Nixon, which was an exciting time to be alive and seeing the Watergate hearings and just the triumphal and stuff. And then Carter, as the end of the 70s, the first real rock and roll president and who Hunter had a great love of and who Carter loved him. And Carter loved Dylan and was of that spirit it's a great there's a great moment in the documentary where um it talks about hunter

being at carter's speech and going back to get his tape recorder and and recognizing that this is uh this is a very unusual moment this guy's's different. He was going up there, and Carter was talking about the quality of justice. Yeah. And talking about his spiritual ideas that he got from Reinhold Niebuhr, if I've pronounced that correctly, and quoting Dylan.

And very unusual for a politician. Yeah. And it was an accident. It looked like Teddy Kennedy was going to run for president then to be the nominee. So Hunter was following Teddy around and Teddy had to go to Georgia to be a guest of honor at the law school there

for law day. And Carter spoke and gave this remarkable thing. You don't hear politicians talk like that. Then anyway you didn't. And Hunter was knocked out. and we kind of got aboard the Carter campaign, wrote about it. Hunter almost, you know, kind of became a part of it in a way. And between Hunter's coverage of the McGovern campaign and the

Carter campaign, particularly McGovern campaign, put Rolling Stone on the map in a way, although we'd done big stories and broken things before, the idea that the rock and roll magazine was covering national politics. And furthermore, the guy doing it was best known for covering motorcycle gangs. Plus, sweating all the time because he's boozing and driving. That riveted everybody. And it brought real attention to us because Hunter wrote the best coverage of the campaign. The best stuff about the candidates, the best about the political strategy.

And also, Rolling Stone was part of the annual big national story, competing with the New York Times. Everybody else had on, and he beat them all. We were better than the rest of them. else had on and he beat them all we were better than the rest of them yeah well that was that was where it really sort of captured the way young people were actually feeling versus the way it was being described once more than that i think i'll go with the water okay I mean that was you know what your magazine had covered and what he had covered with Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail

it was the way young people were feeling about it versus the way it was being represented on television and in newspapers and it was people finally had a real voice that spoke to them. And it really resonated with people.

Yeah, because to see it through Hunter's eyes. Also, it was the first time that 18-year-olds were allowed to vote was in 1972. And so that made it extra interesting to young people. And also, there was a war in Vietnam. That's a big background. I mean, that makes everything stand out, high relief. But also Hunter was extremely funny.

There were pieces. You don't have to know anything about politics to read those pieces. They were so funny. I mean, these things, his coming up with Senator Muskie was shooting Ibogaine on a campaign. I mean, literally, people would come up to me and say, is it true about the Ibogaine? Come on. Ibogaine being a drug from the pineal gland of some exotic South African animal that enables you to stand still without making a movement,

but your functions are breathing still for 24 hours, and Muskie was having a problem with this drug? I mean, and people ask me, or Hunter would give away his credentials to some wild-ass hippie to imbibe them on the campaign trail. It was a prank. I mean, you just couldn't have asked for anything better.

And as I say, that year of the campaign coverage, I just had the best time. Occasionally, I'd go out and meet him on the campaign trail. The late nights were hysterical. But the filing of the copy when he'd write this stuff, and you just couldn't understand where the hell did this idea come from.

How did McGovern describe his book? He said it was the most accurate and least factual. Something like that, yeah. Which was a great way to put it. It's true. I mean, in the end, Abergain didn't. But it true. I mean, in the end, Ibogaine didn't.

But it became so important to everybody in the campaign because Hunter was also writing the most accurate stuff about where the campaign stood and the mood inside the campaign. So he was the leitmotif for the candidate himself, McGovern, who called him the sheriff all the time. And everybody working on that campaign, some called them the sheriff all the time. And everybody working on that campaign, some campaign who became friends over the years. I mean, it's really the music kind of that went along with that, a very special campaign, because McGovern

was a very special man, a very, really human, good man. And, of course, heavily defeated. I mean, there was a lot of sourness. You know, if you think it was funky when Trump got elected, it was funky when, I mean, it was just doom. What do you think would have happened if McGovern's vice president hadn't gone through shock treatments and that hadn't been exposed? Do you think he could have won?

I don't think so. No? I mean, it wasn't just the Eagleton thing. And that was an example of things being done kind of half-assed. But remember, there's a nominating convention. He didn't get nominated until like 2 or 3 in the morning. And the thing is you lose your whole primetime audience. You've lost a shot at it.

And that level of, you know, haphazardness was probably affected at all levels of the campaign. I mean, and Montgomery was just a little ahead of the times, a little too radical. Nixon was a formidable political strategist. You know, they had boxed McGovern in. I mean, I don't think he could have overcome that Nixon juggernaut and the opinion juggernaut. Well, one of the fascinating things about Hunter's coverage was the fact that he would mix in fiction, like the Ibogaine thing, but he would mix in fiction with reality without a wink. But he would mix in fiction with reality without a wink. Like it was very hard for some people to understand, you know.

But it was so good. During Watergate, Hunter, we were writing about the strings coming from the nose leaps from the west balcony. Werewolf. Yeah. Leaps from the west balcony of the White House, you know, roaming the grounds looking for chows to eat, you know, for the spirit of Nixon. And then is peering outside Martha Mitchell's van. I mean, that's the best stuff. When you get that, you just kind of crack up. It was a great run.

It was a great run. As I say, the spirit of Hunter lives at Rolling Stone. Yeah, well, it's just inexorably tied to Rolling Stone. I mean, when I think of Rolling Stone, I think of Hunter. I really do, especially the early days. Yeah. And then at the same time, we had Annie. Glebe was another incredibly strong personality.

She turned out to be another genius, you know, kind of world-class. I mean, Annie, who lives today, is considered the world's greatest living portrait photographer. These days, she was, the last several years, she sought a portrait of the Queen of England a couple of times as her official royal portrait. So Annie goes from our loft in San Francisco and the Rolling Stones tours and so forth, running around the Allman Brothers or Hunter or whatever, to being the official photographer. I mean, she's so good. But again, she brought to the magazine an identity that along with hunters and, you know, a bunch of kind of hard charging newspaper guys that I had hired from three different newspapers

were the kind of backbone. Tom Wolfe, Annie, Hunter, this newspaper, and a couple of college kids I hired as editors. And we had a rock'em, sock'em 10 years there in San Francisco before moving to New York and did things like the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the John Lennon interviews, the Silkwood case, you know, caused the demolition of the Northern California narcotics squads

that were already in, you know, investigated them, and a bunch of other stuff, which formed Rolling Stone. And Hunter was not, it was the spiritual ringleader of it. Everybody wanted to be like Hunter. Everybody wanted to write important stuff. Nobody imitated him.

Everybody knew better than that. But to be as good a writer, to be as good as a reporter, to do meaningful, important stuff like Hunter, that was the formation, foundational spirit of Rolling Stone, was that stuff. How hard was it for you to watch the wheels come off on him? It was tough. You know, I mean, after the Watergate, we kept trying to work together,

but I'd give him assignment after assignment, and he wouldn't do it. Or a couple, like he went to Zaire to look at the Ali fight there, the rumble and jumble. It was Ali and Foreman, I think? Yes. And didn't go to the fight. Yeah. Spent the afternoon lollygagging in the pool, you know?

It was because he thought that it was a mismatch? Is that what the idea was? I don't, I think there's two things. I mean, I think that you'd have to, what do you write about a prize fight when there's 50 other writers there? You know, everybody's got every angle covered. But on the other hand, he had access to Ali.

Ali and he were both hometown Louisville boys. They were homies. Not that they didn't know each other, but also we were really close with Bob Arum, who was, I mean, he could have gotten it, but also we were really close with Bob Arum. I mean, he could have gotten it, but I just think he got frightened of it. He got lazy, too much drugs, those things. And, you know, since we worked together, it was all less of me.

He'd come to New York. We'd always get together. I'd always see him in Aspen. But, you know, it just became frustrating. We'd sit down and talk and have a big, long session all night about what we'll do next and this and plan and come up with some ideas and laugh our heads out about them. But then it wouldn't happen. I'd go back, and he just couldn't follow up. But finally, I think in the 90s, he did two of the best pieces he ever did for us out of the blue.

One was called Fear and Loathing in Elko, which he started to write because there's a snowstorm in Aspen, which shut down Aspen for about 10 or 12 days, during which time he couldn't get his hands on any cocaine. And he started to write this really beautiful piece. And it was hysterical. It was like very dark compared to Vegas. But it was like Fear and Love in Elko

where he runs into Judge Clarence Thomas in the middle of this desert who just had a car accident. And Judge Thomas is running a whorehouse in Elko, Nevada. And it goes from there. And it was, again, hysterical.

It was like old times. It was great. Then you'd find one last piece about Roxanne Pulitzer, which was beautiful, beautiful piece. It was so funny. And it was really about rich people living in Palm Beach, taking tons of blow. And blow was, you know, the right assignment for Hunter. It was, the assignment really wasn't so much about the Pulitzer cases. It was about what blow does to people, you know,

and this is something he knew about. And he wrote, it was painful. And, you know, I had to talk with Hunter, of course, it was in my book about trying to get him to go to rehab, but willing to pay for it, do whatever necessary. I said, you know, I appreciate it. He wouldn't get angry at me. He said, I appreciate it. I know what you're trying to do here, but I thought about it, but I'm a drug addict, you know, an alcoholic, and that's what it's going to be. And, and, and frankly, if I didn't take drugs, I would probably have, an alcoholic, and that's what it's going to be. And frankly, if I didn't take drugs, I would probably have been an accountant, you know, that might have been

the mind of an accountant. But he remained lifelong friends, and, you know, it was a very sad day when he died, and very upsetting, and, you know, but, you know, he always knew I had his back, and vice versa. He had mine. Oftentimes when someone becomes a cultural icon like that, like he was, you become kind of a captive to what your audience thinks you are. This exactly happened to Hunter. When we were covering the 72 campaign, When we were covering the 72 campaign, he was a little bit of a celebrity on that campaign among the other reporters on the campaign. All the establishment, you know, major Washington, White House correspondents and campaign writers at the Times and everything.

And they were going, oh, there's Hunter. Or maybe sometimes Timberland. There's Hunter. He's the real deal from Rolling Stone. Because everybody read Rolling Stone at that point. And he's the real deal. But his behavior and his charm was such that just everybody wanted to hang around with him. And it made him difficult for him to sometimes write.

He'd have to get away. Yeah. So he'd have to write his stuff. But I'd go out there and everybody's hanging out. I mean, the most distinguished people. You know, wanting to hang around with this drug addict and a rock and roll editor? But, that was a bit of annoyance

but it was fine. But then it just became too much. I mean, and then there was the Gary Trudeau Doonesbury cartoon. Yeah.

Strip. In which he took one of Hunter's best characters, Raoul Duke, whom was the original author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. We never said it was by Hunter.

We said it was by Raoul Duke. Right. And made a cartoon figure out of the character. I mean, it was this outrageous. He took Hunter himself and made him a cartoon character. And it was really diminishment of his talent. Did he ever talk to Gary about that? I think in a ho-ho way, not in any.

I think Hunter was, I told Hunter he could and should sue and stop it. It was clearly an appropriation of his intellectual property being used whole hog by somebody else. And I thought he should stop because I just think it's bad for him. That created more celebrity than anything. He was Uncle Duke, the crazy guy, not the serious writer, but the crazy goofball. How did that get started and why did it get started? The crazy goofball? Yeah.

But why did Gary write about it that way? I don't know. It was a surprise to me. I mean, I guess, you know, Hunter became a figure of mythology, you know, in a way, during his lifetime. You know, he was an icon to young people and still is an icon to young people today. And I guess it worked so well for Gary, he would never stop. You know, he didn't stop. And I think Hunter was afraid to stop it.

He was afraid to stop it? I think he felt if he was the guy who ordered Gary to cease and desist, he would be really disliked for having stepped in and squished a really popular cartoon character. And I think also it was Hunter, to another extent,

enchanted by the idea of Hunter himself as a cartoon character. I mean, Gary used to put me in that cartoon strip in relation to Donder and not in relation to Donder for doing different things. And while there's always a little bit of put-down involved in it, you know, nonetheless, it's, like, totally enjoyable and fun to pick up the Sunday papers. Remember his papers?

Yeah. And, you know, there's 12 four-color panels, and you know the character in it. You know, wow, that's totally cool. Well, Doonesbury was also this sort of counterculture comic strip. It was a very original comic strip in that regard. I, and Gary, who is a friend of mine, and I liked his comic strip,

and I thought he's great at that, and did an important service, in a certain sense, for that era, by bringing the so-called counterculture, beatnik culture, whatever you want to call it then, to a more serious audience and explained it in a way that was kind of wholesome and funny without being dangerous. Gary was a divinity major at Yale,

kind of square, and married Jane Polly. I mean, it could be square, and I like Jane. But he bought that message to the adult audience well. And so that had a big effect on Hunter, that character? I think it did. It was part of a corrosive effect. I think there's a bunch of things going on.

Corrosive. There was drugs and drink, which after a while, you just take over you. Yeah. There was drugs and drink, which after a while, you just take over. Yeah. And the fame. And the fame within that was this particular type of fame of the comic strip. And the fact that everywhere he'd go, people surrounded him.

If he, you know, if he went to, you know, TV, everything. He just surrounded by groupies all the time. And just, where did he have the opportunity to work? And it was the drugs more than any single thing. Well, I think the fame is a drug. Fame is a drug. It's also a drug that most people don't understand. They've never experienced.

So there's not like a blueprint. There's a road map of how to navigate this correctly mm-hmm so and when you deal with fame on the level that hunter hunter was dealing with you're dealing with this he was a cultural icon as well as being a very prominent and well-known person. So there's expectations for his behavior, expectations. And people look to him like, oh, Hunter's here. It's going to get crazy. So Hunter's here. We're going to take drugs. We're going to get crazy.

So Hunter was a generous person and felt obligated to all these people and was non-immune to taking drugs. So anybody would show up, but people wanted to hang around him, and he would try and fulfill their expectations. And their expectations were always that of fans or a group of people. Somebody was saying, oh, I want to be with Hunter because he's a great writer, and I'd like to learn

at his feet where he comes up with these, like other writers are treated. There's always the ho-ho thing. It just ate up his time. Then also, you start to play that audience. You know, you start to, you're getting approval. You know, you, you know, bound people, you like to make them laugh.

You like to entertain. You like to, you know, satisfy them. And then Hunter just got swept up in that. It happens to so many famous people. I mean, all your worst stuff gets reinforced. Yeah. And your ego gets reinforced. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it happened to Sam Kinison, too. Is that? And I think drugs there, too. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of in the same way. He became that guy that everybody expected to be wild and out of control.

And with Kinison, he just kind of stopped writing. And Belushi. Yeah. Who was a big friend of mine and Hunter's and a number of our mutual friends. But I was very close with John. It's the same thing. Just too much drugs. I've got a scene in a book.

John used to come out flat to stay with me in San Francisco every weekend after Saturday Night Live, come out, decompress for a few days, go back to San Francisco. So when I go back to New York, he always. Is it Johnny? John Belushi. Okay. And he was in the hospital one time, and his leg was up in a sling. He insisted I come by as soon as I land. He had just done a samurai skit and fallen off the stage at Saturday Night Live and broke his leg. And I go visit him in the hospital.

Of course, he reaches up into a sling, into the cast, and inside the cast, he pulls out a bottle of Coke. So you know it's gone too far. And I thought cocaine in the end, and I again say so in this book, was a real waste of time and real destructive. I mean, I embrace LSD. Rolling Stone was on a crusade for the legalization, decriminalization of pot for virtually the beginning, going after narcotic squads and drug laws and on and on. We just had so much space to this hideous laws that locked up innocent young people, particularly black people, for the crime of smoking pot. A victimless crime of smoking pot, which was so much less dangerous than just drinking. But people go to jail for years.

They'd be the sole... In any case, we advocate for that. I think LSD is a good drug for lots of people and properly used. But cocaine and speed are just kind of a waste of time. You don't really get much done.

You end up going around in circles. And I say in my book, if I could take it back, I would take back all that cocaine. I also quote Jimmy Buffett in the book, who's another good friend, who I thought had the best line about saying, there is nothing worth talking about after two o'clock in the morning.

And that's it. So, I mean, waste of time and waste of opportunities to have wonderful sex. Yeah, I've never fucked around with coke. It's not too late. You can throw your life away, Joe. Come on. Well, I was very fortunate that when I was in high school... Somehow, Rogan

deteriorated over the years. He went that way with Hunter. Some of my favorite people did a lot of coke. Yeah. Richard Pryor, the shirt I'm wearing. Mm-hmm. Kinison. I mean, so many of them. They were into coke. But I was very fortunate that when I was in high school,

a good friend of mine, his cousin, was selling coke. And I watched him deterior school, a good friend of mine, his cousin, was selling Coke. And I watched him deteriorate rapidly. He was doing Coke every day and he was selling it. And him and his girlfriend, they had an attic apartment and they would hide in this apartment. And I went to visit him once and it was like I'd known him before he did Coke and then I knew him afterwards. And it was like a person who had been bit by a vampire. He'd become a different person.

He'd lost all this weight and just seemed creepy And that's a description of like creepy amphetamines. Yeah, same kind of thing. It's stimulants. There's something about stimulants That they they grab ahold of you they become physically addictive unlike marijuana, which I mean, I guess could be psychologically addictive But there's the physical addiction part of it Was very bizarre to see. And it affected other people that I was around, too, at the time. And at that time, I was very straight-laced. I didn't do any drugs or partying or anything.

And I remember thinking, that is something I never, never want to be a part of. Lucky you. I mean, it damaged tons of people in the rock and roll community. Oh, yeah. And I think it set a lot of things way off track, you know? Well, it gives you confidence and reinforces bad ideas, which I think the last thing a super popular person wants is confidence. That's the last thing you need in your life. You got plenty of that. That's why you're there. You don't want to reinforce that and feed that demon, which is one of the things that I

think is very powerful about psychedelics and about marijuana because it erodes all of these cultural expectations and all these thoughts of who you are and what you are and all these egocentric ideas. And it leaves you with this sense of vulnerability. That's what marijuana does. It gives you this vulnerability and connection. It gives you what you need. Marijuana. And appreciation sensitivity slows you down.

It's great for listening to music. I used to be a big skier and I loved skiing on popcorn you know it would be like at 10 o'clock in the morning is it time to open the office yet and other than I can't you know

if I smoke a joint then I start coughing I've got a really raspy throat and edibles last so long you know that I've got a really raspy throat. And the edibles last so long that you've got to, it's almost like, and then I get tired. But in any case, speed and cocaine, the last thing you need when you've got a lot of coke is money. Because then you're never going to stop. Right. And that's what happened.

It ruined Sly Stone, Ike Turner. It caused me to still be in Nash. It kind of fell apart. On the other hand, it gave us Fleetwood Mac, that great record of theirs. Was it Rumors? And it gave us Hotel California, which is a great record. It gave us Sticky Fingers, which is also a great record.

And, you know, and Exile on Main Street. Well, it gave people, you know, the chaos of it all. The wildness of it all gave people a lot of art. But it's like many things. And arguably with Hunter, too. Yeah. But after a while, it takes you over you can't right sustain so later drugs start taking you it's kind of like a management issue like how

do you manage that force an addiction too so an addiction yeah and also again now no real blueprint as to how to do it correctly especially when you do you know people kind of i mean there people certainly get out of control with drinking but there's sort of a blueprint for how to handle drinking. Entire structure around the country, AA. Yeah. Devoted to that with thousands of people enrolled. Yeah.

But alcohol is, I mean, like, I know what the number is, but I thought it was in the millions of people who die of cirrhosis of the liver. Yeah. Every year. It's a lot. A lot. And directly caused by drinking. Yeah.

Have you heard of one person who's ever died from marijuana? No, it's non-toxic. Yeah. It doesn't kill you. It doesn't. I mean, there might be some rare person that has an allergy to it. I don't want to eliminate possibility. And there's also a real risk of schizophrenic breaks.

You know, Alex Berenson, who wrote for the New York Times, wrote a book called Tell Your Children. And it's basically about the risks that people have that have a tendency towards schizophrenia where marijuana can push them over the edge. And I've seen that. Absolutely. I mean, I decided in my book Like a Rolling Stone available for sale to be honest. Is it out now? It is out

now. It's on the bestseller list. Congratulations. Thank you. I just thought in my book that to be honest about drugs that I could the tendency of people who write about this era, young people in general, is to kind of leave the drugs part out of it

or maybe acknowledge it slightly or acknowledge inhaling or something. But it would be dishonest to tell the story of this generation without telling the story of drugs and that amount of use that took place. In the 20s, with the jazz age, I mean, it was bootleg gin all the time. There was talk about gin-soaked age. Not unequivalent to what we're in now. It was a prosperous period

and technology with the invention of the radio and the automobile and the fashion change. Anyway, but to be honest about drugs, you have to honestly say pot's cool. That's good.

What the real role of acid was. Come to really understand, denounce cocaine. But I told the stories of it as if this is the way we live because it was the way we live. And I would be lying to whitewash it. And I'd be lying to say that Coke was a terrible drug. And I'd be lying to say LSD was anything but super positive for me. And share those lessons with people.

I was asked once by the head of the Partnership for Drug-Free America, which was then the leading anti-drug thing in the country. They were famous for their commercial, This is Your Brain on Drugs. which was then the leading anti-drug thing in the country. They were famous for their commercial, this is your brain on drugs. You know, they fried the egg in the pan frying. I was doing a gun control program at the time, big public relations, public service campaign.

And I asked this guy for some advice. So he said, I'll give you advice, but you have to look at our commercials and give us a critique. So I said, okay, I'll do that. So I look at those commercials. I go back into the creek. He says, the problem with your commercials is, which is, you know, how these athletes are going out there and winning varsity championships. And meanwhile, the drug kids are in a corner in a hallway smoking. The drug kids look like they're having the most fun. You know, The drug kids look like they're having the most fun. Yeah.

You know, you're not scaring. These are ads for drug use. Right. You know, you're crazy. And it was kind of like I felt I was giving a secret away to the enemy. But I thought, I said, you have a problem with partners. Just tell us. You can't tell the truth about pot.

Right. Until you can tell the truth, nobody's going to trust you about anything else. The problem with the war on drugs is it's been fought by people who are not on drugs. They don't understand what they're talking about. Like, this is your brain on drugs and you're showing eggs? That's the last thing you should ever show to someone who's hungry. You know, that was the stand-up comedy bit that so many people had. Bill Hicks had a great bit about it. Like, you got any hash browns? Like, what the fuck are you doing?

You're cooking eggs for people that famously have the munchies it was so stupid and it was also there was so many of those did you ever see the ones that were done uh i think it was in the 80s or the 90s there was a a man and a like kind of a young sort of curious not knowing what's going on guy talking to this old no-nonsense guy And they're they're eating dinner at a restaurant, and he's saying if you buy drugs you support terrorism. He's like what? Well, how was that true? It's just it's a fact you buy drugs you support terrorism And that's the that's the whole commercial is this guy just saying this one thing with no fat means a Clear thing that you could get away with sort of before the internet

You know it's like a narrative they were trying to push. But it was one of the dumbest things because it's this guy who's like – they're eating at a steak restaurant. He's like eating salad or something like that. It's like this is – you support terrorism. That's just a fact. Did you ever see that commercial? Yes. We did a story in Rolling Stone once and more in the 2000s, I think.

We had passed a bill called Plan Colombia, and it was under Clinton, which we allocated, I don't know, $700 million to fight the drug war in Colombia. Of that $700 million, we gave $60 million to Colombia for an alternate crops program. So they give money to reseed and grow potatoes or coffee

or whatever. And they're like, okay. The balance of it, $620 million went to a defense industry contractor in Connecticut to build helicopters. I mean, that's what the drug war money. And so, by the way, the sponsor of the bill was Chris Dodd, you know, who was a senator from Connecticut. And, I mean, what do you do with this? What do you do with a system that really is an excuse to lock up black people? But it came down to, finally, because if you're a middle class, you might finally figure out a way to get out. Yeah. might finally figure a way to get out.

Yeah. But, eh. Well, that was one thing that Rolling Stone did cover, too, is the difference in the discrepancy of the laws between crack cocaine and regular cocaine, about how if you got arrested for crack, you would have far steeper penalties, far longer sentences. And, you know, one of the things that Dr. Carl Hart, who's a guy out of Columbia, who's famously discussed, is like, it's the exact same drug.

The only thing you've done with this is criminalize black people, criminalize poor people, people of color, and people that would be more likely to use cocaine so you could arrest them and lock them up for much longer sentences. Exactly what it is. cocaine so you could arrest them and lock them up for much longer sentences. Exactly what it is. It's just cheaper and so more affordable to people who live in the ghetto or don't have money. Lock them up. It was a race war. I mean, we've come all this country today, I'm asked as our generation, have we made a difference what's changed and it's not true of every single corner of america but it's true of most of america the majority of america we don't lock people up for this anymore for drugs people get off sex between same sex is no longer criminalized

is you can get married now you couldn't get married before my generation came along. Treatment of black people, the attitude towards the environment. You know, it's just a more liberal and humane place today. And I try to make that point in my book, not by, you know, a lot of political lecturing and stuff like that, but just showing what we covered and what we wrote about and how we went about those things and what we advocated for and the way it all. I thought if you took Rolling Stone, the history of Rolling Stone, and looked at America through the eyes of Rolling Stone, the prism of Rolling Stone,

kind of a cultural history of our times in rock and roll and all the great characters and the people we met, the scientists and the environmental scientists and the writers and the presidents and particularly, you know, the rock and roll people, you get a real true understanding of what happened during this whole period, which I'd never read anywhere before. Right. And then I would use my own development as a narrative device.

You know, I didn't think my own story was that interesting per se. I didn't want to read a factual heavy duty history of the civil rights laws and this and that and the other thing. But a cultural history of the times seen through my eyes and how much fun it

was and how much fun we had. I didn't want to in any way shrink from the fact that all these big issues were at stake, which we were involved in. But we had a great time. It was a great generation. Well, I don't think there's another publication that captured that like Rolling Stone. I really don't.

I think we would have a distorted understanding of what went on during those years if it wasn't for your magazine. I really, really think that. I think we went in to report it accurately, to be the spokespeople for the musicians and for the musical community and the fans. And the people really thought music was important in their lives, as I did.

Get involved in the social issues and say what was important to us as young people. You know, what we stood for and sort out what was the fluff and fluff.

Like I never thought the yippies were something of major cultural significance. What's a yippie? A yippie was a thing formed by two revolutionaries, Abbie Hoffman and a friend of his, which tried to promote a demonstration in Chicago Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, which turned into the riots. But I never thought that radical politics was quite where young people were at and where our generation was at.

It was political. But we didn't advocate violence. We weren't, like, throwing bombs or telling people what to do. I mean, we were saying, go have fun. What were the Yippies trying to do? I'm sorry I brought them up. Why? I don't know.

They were just kind of a performance art thing. They would go down the Wall Street and throw money onto the stock. It was fun. But it wasn't the serious mainstream part of what young people, the new generation, was about. The new generation was really about, you know, love and all that stuff. And love doesn't conquer all, but it conquers. I'm sounding like a hippie here. I think you are a hippie. I think it's spirit.

I'm still. I think I'm a hippie too. Yeah. It's just there's parts of it that got fucked up. Yeah. Or that were maybe nonsense. Yeah. To begin with.

I mean, I don't need to live with, you know, 12 different people in the community anymore. Right. I don't need to eat brown. I mean, there's a lot of extremes on it. There was ideas that people had, I think, and they didn't pan out. Yeah, idealism. Yeah. And yeah.

So in any movement, it goes a little too far. Right. Like in Me Too, you know, that becomes ridiculous. Right. I'm sorry. I'm in trouble. And it goes too far. It has to be brought back to think.

But there's a good idea in there. Right. There's a meaningful idea in there. Right. There's a meaningful, valuable lesson for us. And there was a good thing in the hippie scene. There was a great thing in the rock and roll scene. And some of it just got excessive. Yeah. But, you know, I just think you guys captured that.

You captured all of it. You captured all of the chaos. And you did it in an honest way. And you did it in a way where I don't think the writers that wrote in Rolling Stone would have ever had the kind of freedom to capture things the way you allowed them to be captured. The way, you know, you guys were the only voice. It's true. I mean, there was a village voice. There was a couple other publications that, you know. But not with the circulation impact.

Right. And also the incredible amount of talent. Right. Of writing skill and photographs that we brought to the occasion. I mean, you go through Rolling Stone or the covers of Rolling Stone, it's the story of your life. Yeah. And even as the last 10 years and so like that. And it was a point of view about the world.

And I think that point of view still stands. It doesn't, you know, it's... I think young people today, for instance, are still idealistic. Yes. Still want, I mean, save the earth. Yeah. And I think they don't look down on a baby boom.

I don't believe in this go boomer stuff. I don't think there's an attitude towards boomers from young people with ready boomers, steady, whatever it's called. Yeah, yeah. I don't. Okay boomer. Okay boomer, that's it. Yeah. Well, there's always a dismissal of the previous generations because the new generations are moving in a different direction or at least expanding. You know, they're learning from the lessons of the past and what they didn't like about

their parents' generations and they're expanding. You know, it's just today it's hard to track because there's so many voices and there's so much going on. And there's also this fear that things are actually rolling back in the wrong direction, like this overturning of Roe v. Wade. That scares the shit out of a lot of people. And the talk of overturning same-sex marriages, that scares the shit out of a lot of people too

because they really are worried that some of these people that don't like this progress and don't like the freedom that people are enjoying today and they want to pull things back and they want to control people more. This is a Republican Party. And what the Republican National Republican Party says is so retrograde, is so out of step with America, is so cruel. And every one of those policies you cite, there's cruelty at the basis of it.

there's cruelty at the basis of it. Every economic policy they advocate comes at the expense of the poor people, whether it's abortion, welfare, medical care, these big expense like tax policies. It's never at the expense of the rich. It's at the expense of the poor. And these people are supposed to espouse Christian values.

I find that the most unchristian party in the United States is this mean spirit. I mean, take away people's rights. Let's restrict what people do. Let's control their lives. I mean, it's terrible. And that spirit has always existed in America in various forms and places over the years. We've had the Ku Klux Klan and we had the Civil War and we've had Father Coughlin and McCarthyism and stuff like that. But never has it been so mainstreamed as Trump has been able to act as a champion.

And I just don't see how people can live with themselves. Act as a champion. And I just don't see how people can live with themselves. And I think everything we're worried about in a future America, including anti-environmentalism, including your fuels to face the facts of science that we're ruining the planet, comes out of the Republican Party. Well, I think the fear is that we're going to deteriorate the country economically while trying to fix it environmentally and that there's got to be like a more sensible approach to it. I understand. I've heard that. And I think that's bullshit. that the opportunity to create all this new manufacturing, to go green, to commission the rebuilding of America is an enormous economic opportunity. If we deficit financed a trillion, two trillion dollars to rebuild the energy infrastructure, you create more jobs, more opportunities.

Yes, you have to retrain people. Yes, there will be dislocation of jobs and all these things. But I don't think it'll go fast. Your pal Elon Musk. I mean, that's new. That's creating jobs. That's all positive stuff that can be replicated. And the government is trying to replicate it with tax breaks for companies that do all this kind of stuff. Batteries. That could be done around the world. That could be done here first and foremost. Skipping the fact of that, if we don't do it, what do they say about life is better than the alternative? I mean, if they don't do it, we're done.

We're done how? Planets can become unrecognizable in 50 years. In what way? Look at Florida today. That's going to happen with increasing frequency. Look at the West. Fires will increase. The amount of extreme weather, the melting of the ice, all these things are underway.

They're visible. They're known. We're not talking about pie-in-the-sky computer models. We're talking about actual historical records of what is transpiring with the weather around the planet. And we're going to upset the weather system, and to put it a different way, we're going to upset the weather system and become extremely destructive and extremely costly.

Miami will be underwater, I guarantee you. And I'll pay you. I'll owe you money if this is true. Within 50 years or less, all of Miami is one random hurricane away from destruction. Look what happened this week in Florida on the west coast of Florida. You know, that's always happened in Florida, and that's always happened with hurricanes. Do you know that hurricanes are more frequent but less destructive now than they were in 20 years? I've heard the opposite.

I've heard the opposite. They're less frequent and more destructive because they contain more water in them, more wind in them, due to the heating of the Caribbean. In fact, the Caribbean is about 2 degrees, 3 degrees warmer this summer than it was last summer. But it'll happen. I mean,

these things randomly strike and they're more destructive. All it takes is one of those hurricanes. It was a 12-feet wave coming into Fort Myers. It'll happen in Miami or it'll happen in Virginia. We've covered this extensively in Rolling Stone and I know my stuff and we've had it on this subject and I pay attention to a lot and it's no joke. I mean it's nothing you can think is going to reverse. These things are too powerful. We do things as men, as humans, like build sea walls that can hold back and deal with consequences.

I think I deal a lot with that. But we're too vulnerable. The forests of the West, the rainforest, which is being cut down by Bolsonaro in Brazil or in Congo, they're just going to now open that up. I mean, we can't be doing this anymore. I mean, honestly, it's a hard thing to see. Carbon is an invisible gas, odorless and caused. And you can't, it's hard to grasp that as an enemy. But we cannot no, we can no longer burn up the earth itself, the stuff we pull out of the earth, the coal, the gas, all this fossilized stuff that's been here for a couple of million years as the earth became what it is now. We're burning it up and putting it back where it came from.

In the atmosphere. You know, I mean, one of you know, we could end up with about 500 million people left on Earth living at either pole. What? Yeah. We have 8 billion people on Earth right now. Where have you heard that?

One of the leading scientists, the guy came up with a guy. We're just going to be living on the poles? And the rest of the country is going to be uninhabitable? We're going to be uninhabitable. The middle Earth is the desert. Really? The desert is creeping larger and larger now. Right.

I feel like I'm sounding like a nutcase here. But are there real models that think that the Earth is going to be uninhabitable except for the poles? I've never seen anything like that. This was hypothetical stuff assuming certainties are going to keep on going. It wasn't absolute prediction but there's absolute data on the melting of the poles. There's absolute data on the warming of the seas. There's absolute data on the warming of the seas. There's absolute data on all these other things which can only lead you to one conclusion. It'll be too hot to live in certain places

in the United States, in Arizona, Texas. What do you think about nuclear? I think it's got to be part of the solution. Yeah, I think so too. I think we're terrified of it because of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and fallout in Fukushima. But I think that modern nuclear, I mean, those power plants that we're talking about were very old. Old and recklessly built. Yes, recklessly built.

And inappropriately built on the oceans or the rivers. Yeah. And inappropriately built on the oceans or the rivers. Yeah. And whereas France, which has like 50% or something, or maybe more of its power comes from nuclear, they never have had a nuclear accident. And they've had nuclear for 50 years or more. They've never had an accident because they got one reactor in shape and they decided to replicate that reactor all throughout the country. Every new reactor wasn't a newly built design that cost twice as much because you had to redesign the entire thing from scratch. Do you think that the general public has a distorted perception of the safety of nuclear, though?

Well, we're scared of nuclear. A lot of people are. Yeah. Because of the panics you just mentioned. Yeah. Chernobyl, they had to vacate, you know, thousands of miles, miles of territory. I think so. Well, they had to vacate thousands of miles, miles of territory. I think so.

I think that we'd be – I don't think it's the solution, but I think it's part of the solution now, and that should be one of the things we go after. But we've got to go after the other things. Rebuilding America is a more energy-efficient place. But do you think that the Democratic Party is any less fucked up? They're pretty fucked up, too. I think much less so. But don't you think they're all captured by money? Not all of them, but less of them, far less of them. The money that's being allocated for the environment or for any of these things,

they're passed with only Democrats voting for them and Republicans voting generally unanimously against them, whether it's voting rights, whether it's women's rights, whether it's abortion. The entire Republican Party will vote against abortion, you know, at this stage if it's introduced in Congress. Do you think that's just a political issue? Like they think that that's what their political issue? Like they think that that's

what their constituents want? Do you think that there's some sort of a more nefarious agenda? Like what do you think? I think that they want to keep their jobs as senators or congressmen. And they live in fear that the people with the majority of the minority of the Republican Party that controls and goes to primary elections, because it's always on both ends, the activists who are really ideologically driven, whether Republican or Democrat, can control the primary. And they're afraid they'll lose their jobs

because if you say, I'm for abortion, they'll turn out this huge thing. And Trump will come down the road and start screaming at you too. And they've been blackmailed by Trump by this. You're not going to get reelected. I think these things we're talking about are all moral issues.

The survival of the earth is a moral issue. The right to abortion is a moral issue. The right to marry who you choose is a moral issue. The right to have equal rights if you're black are a moral issue or if you're a woman. And I think there's much more morality in the Democratic Party which is more liberal and they are

they are but every time you read about a money scandal or a sex scandal, nine out of ten times it's a Republican representative. It's the guy with his hand in the till or in the hoochie you know and it seems look at it seems, look at

the presidents. Look at Reagan. Look at Bush Jr. Look at Trump. I mean... Wasn't Biden involved in a lot of nefarious and shady shit too? I don't think so. You don't think so? You don't think all that stuff that's going on with his son in Ukraine and... I think the Ukraine thing, what

hundred Biden didn't... Oh, sorry. What hundred Biden didn't... that's going on with his son in Ukraine. I think the Ukraine thing, what Hunter Biden did in Ukraine was wrong. Try talking to him. Pull that mic. Oh, sorry. What Hunter Biden did in Ukraine was wrong and I think was wrong for his father-in-law's sake. You can't do this, you know. This is the risk of my career and reputation

because this just doesn't pass the shady test. Right, but he's been involved in a lot of shit that doesn't pass the shady test. I don't think so. Hunter or Joe? No, Joe. Like what? Well, just what has been shown on the laptop,

that his son was paying money to him. I don't think. I've never seen that written anywhere. You haven't seen that there was kickbacks? No, I haven't. No. I'm totally unaware of it. I mean, so I'm not going to.

Okay. All I can say is that if it's not in the reputable media, the New York Times or other places or the official agency of government don't endorse this point of view or say it, I am suspect of a non-vetted process which is not investigated because there's so much rumor around throughout the internet that the internet is unvetted. Nobody,

anybody can put anything they want on the internet. Right. No matter how scandalous this grows or made up. I mean, come on. But have you read Matt Taibbi's stuff on it? Oh, yeah. I know.

I mean, Matt writes for me. Sure. I haven't. He doesn't write for Rolling Stone now, but no, I haven't read the recent stuff. Okay. So I will go to that. Yeah, Matt is probably one of my favorite writers of today, my favorite journalist of today. I can understand why.

He's the only person who ever came close to Hunter. Yes. No, he's hilarious. His coverage of the economic crisis. That was great. I mean, especially the 2008 crisis. It was fucking amazing. The vampire script.

Yeah. I mean. That's right out of Hunter. Matt was another guy who, his copy would come in, his story, and I'd read it, and he just sometimes just burst out laughing. I mean, he had so much funny stuff. I really wanted to quote him extensively. I couldn't quote him extensively in the book, but several of his best things are in the book. And

his sense of outrage, he was perfect for this time. Matt himself is, though, also subject to a little bit of a conspiracy, you know, bomb throwing, let's mix it up, you know, stuff. So, I mean... Conspiracy? Like how so? I think, I'm just saying mentally, I haven't seen anything. The theory that all parties are the same and that it's not going to make

any difference to our lives and Democrats are as bad as Republicans. I think that's nuts. So you think, well, I think socially Democrats, at least in spirit, what they're trying to do, at least on paper, what they're trying to say is more in line of like this idea that you're talking about with the original Rolling Stone, the hippie movement, more in line of expanding rights and giving people more opportunity and giving people more freedom. I think that's when you talk to like a liberal or a progressive ideologically, that's what they're hoping for. Like that's whether they're captured by money, you know, at the highest levels, which I think they kind of all are, until you remove money from politics,

we're always going to have a problem with special interest groups that are financing both sides. But I think, and that's true, and I think there's a long record of Democrats accepting just, I just mentioned Joe Dodd and the $620 million siphoned off for the drug war into the defense industry. But if you look at what, and money will always be in policy. There's ways to reduce money in policy.

But the Republicans bought you the Supreme Court decision to let corporate financing back in, which is why now elections are so expensive. I think it's always going to be. But let's look at fundamental fairness. Is it right for billionaires to pay no taxes or effectively very little taxes, some of them, and the working man gets tax bills? I mean, the inequitable, the distribution of wealth is so inequitable. And then on top of it, we ask the poor, the middle class, to pay enormous medical costs that they can't afford without giving any

really much meaningful aid to them. We ask that the carbon industry continue to pollute. And their pollution, by the way, located always in the poorest area of a town

is where the refinery is, all this stuff. These are Republican agenda items. These are all on record. Take legalization of marijuana. It's an official part of the Democratic Party platform. But why haven't they done it? Why hasn't Biden done it? Because one of the things that they talked about during the campaign was decriminalizing marijuana and exonerating people that were in jail for nonviolent drug offenses. Why haven't they done any of that? I think because one, right now it is happening at various states' levels. These laws are not being enforced anymore. And I think that's the general climate. Why they have not moved in the Congress and Senate, in the House and Senate,

to pass this plank, I don't know. I presume they may not have the votes because some people want, are still too scared of voting against it, or they are lined up with the police. The prison industry is very likely lined up with the Republicans. But the fact that it's just on the platform itself. Remember, when you and I started smoking, it was disrespectful. You go to jail. Now the Democrats are saying, legalize the fucker. Well, everyone should be saying it at this point in time if you're really a fan of freedom.

Yeah, but the Republicans are not. I mean, Trump, I mean, okay, this is my current hobby horse. So I'm not, I'll just shut up. Your current hobby horse? Well, the thing I go on about is, because it's political season, is the Republican Party, which I just, I know you're not supposed to talk politics or whatever, but, you know, as a party, they're a roadblock to the kind of America I believe in, which is a progressive America, a liberal America, a compassionate America that says to its poor people, you know, we'll help you, we'll provide

you medical care, we'll make sure you get food, we guarantee you the right to life, which includes health care, liberty, your own personal life, and happiness. And I think those should be the founding principles of America, and I think they should be offered to everybody, not just to the super wealthy or the mid-wealthy or people like myself. This is a basic American promise. I just don't see that in a Republican Party.

I don't see any part of it. No, I don't see that from enough people in general, period, especially people that are already doing well. I think particularly those things you talked about, I mean, my thought is education. The fact that people are so bored, just burdened with debt when they get out of college. You can never escape that debt. That's a fucking, that's a crime against humanity. The fact that they've decided to make that one debt, the one debt that you kind of have to take on. Most people think when you get out of high school, you have to go to college and it's going to cost you some money, especially if you don't have a scholarship.

That debt, you can never escape. That to me is insane. Okay. Who is behind that debt? The only thing that's now moved to change that, to start lifting the debt off, is Biden and the Democrats. Got that stuff through. What did they pass through? Oh, they passed through laws, which you can get $10,000 taken off your debt now.

But haven't they rolled that back? No, they haven't. Wasn't there just some discussion where there was – Four Republican governors. No, but it wasn't Biden just backed off of it. No, he didn't. There was something that was in – that I was just reading yesterday. No, he didn't.

There was something that I was just reading yesterday. It's been held up because Republican officeholders have sued in the courts to stop as being unconstitutional. Donald Trump has his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Here it is. Biden's rollback of student loan forgiveness plan pulls up the curtain on his Potemkin White House. Where did that come from? Fox News. Surprise, surprise. No make that a little larger. Fox News. Surprise, surprise.

No, no, it's not. That's from Fox News. It's the New York Post. The videos. Same difference. The videos. It's on the, okay, the video, the site, the source you're citing. Biden has fear legal action excluding these borrowers might make it harder for anyone successfully to stop it, but that's practically an admission the whole program is legally dubious. Thursday, Department of Education said

borrowers with privately held federal student loans will no longer qualify for President Biden's one-time loan write-off program. So this is borrowers with privately held federal student loans will no longer qualify. Indeed, just a year ago, the Education Department admitted it lacked the statutory authority to forgive student loans en masse. Yet then, Team Biden, under pressure from progressives and hoping to boost Dems' hopes in the midterms, suddenly announced a huge forgiveness program, claiming it had the authority after all under post 9-11 Heroes Act. So this is a – first of all, I'm not going to accept the factual accuracy or the general theory of anything that as I read in Post the Poster or the Fox, both Murdoch, super Republican, totally prejudiced, totally discredited.

Here's an NPR. Okay. In NPR, in a reversal, the Education Department is excluding many from student loans. Right. Yeah, but that was the people that didn't hold. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is a true story. Okay.

Let's read what this has to say. Okay. So it says, In a remarkable reversal that will affect the fortunes of many student loan borrowers, the U.S. Department of Education has quietly changed its guidance around who qualifies for President Biden's sweeping student debt relief plan. At the center of the change are borrowers who took out the federal student loans many years ago, both Perkins loans and federal family education loans, FFEL loans issued and managed by private banks, but guaranteed by the

federal government, were once the mainstay of the federal's loan program until the FFEL program ended in 2010. Today, according to federal data, more than 4 million borrowers still have commercially held FFEL loans. Until Thursday, the department's own website advised these borrowers they could consolidate these loans into federal direct loans and thereby qualify for relief under Biden's debt cancellation program. All loans eligible for student loan pause are eligible for relief, including loans held by ED and guarantee agencies. ED assesses whether to provide relief to borrowers with privately owned federal student loans, including FFEL, Perkins loans, and is discussing with private lenders. In the meantime, borrowers with privately owned federal student loans, including FFEL, Perkins loans,

and is discussing with private lenders. In the meantime, borrowers with privately held federal loans can receive this relief by consolidating these loans in a direct loan program. All eligible borrowers will have until December 31st, 2023 to submit an application for debt relief. So what does it say? Thursday, though. Here it is. Scroll down lower, please. Thursday, though, the department quietly changed that language. The guidance says now, as of September 29th, 2022, borrowers with federal student loans not held by ED cannot obtain one-time debt relief by consolidating these loans into direct loans. So here's the thing.

They passed student loan relief. To survive the challenge by Republicans in courts as to whether this law is constitutional or not, whether it can be done under the authority that you presided precedently, they've pulled back on some. Meantime, the other half is still eligible. So while they haven't gotten everything, they've gotten at least half or 30 percent or 40 percent, 20 or 70 percent are still eligible for loan relief. This is passed by the Democrats. It's being challenged by the Republicans.

And the reason it's been pulled back is to make that challenge go away or be less potent in court by those things that they thought might be questionable constitutionally. They pulled them back. So it's the Republicans that have caused this. The Republicans have caused this. Trump had as a secretary, Betsy DeVos was the head of the Secretary of Education. They refused to do anything about student loan relief. In fact, she owned one of the biggest scam private college systems that was around. And all the scam – and she refused it.

And she – what did she do with the scam? She didn't bail. She wouldn't reimburse for all the scam stuff that the private education business of what she was one of the biggest factors in. What's a scam? was one of the biggest factors in. What's the scam? Giving them loans to go to Alpha University, which happens to be in Hoboken and exists on mail-order universities and stuff like that.

It wasn't called Alpha University. But my larger point is this, and the larger point is that the money for education, which, as you said, is the ticket to society, to productive society, and for lower education in a public school system, we will not spend that money on education. Instead, you've got people worth $100 billion. You've got dozens of people with $100 billion. That money would be

better spent on the purposes of society that we want, which is we want an educated and employed and productive population. How would you go about allocating that money, though? What would you advise? How do you think? So you're talking about like a redistribution of wealth. I'm talking about a fair progressive tax system in which the relative tax burdens for poor people and wealthy people

are much the same. So relative to their income. So relative to their income. Say relative to their income. Maybe they should each – a poor person who makes $20,000 a year. It has to pay $5,000 in taxes. Should pay no taxes. I mean $20,000. You can't – you know.

Right. You could barely live off that anyway. You can't live off – you know. So they should pay no taxes. Nobody under $50,000. I'm guessing at the numbers. I haven't done them. I understand what you're saying.

Whereas people who are making income of $100 million a year, let alone $10 million a year, should pay – start paying at a rate of 50 percent and escalate up. So if you're making a billion dollars – Escalate up? Yes, absolutely. More than 50 percent? Absolutely, I think. But 50 percent would at least be a huge start in getting those money. Here's my question.

Where does that money go? How about education? Right. But who decides where that money goes and how do we keep people from profiting off of the redistribution of that money? Much like you were talking about the war on drugs, that the money went to defense contractors to make helicopters. That was the bulk of it. Like how do you stop that money when it's being reallocated? How do you stop that from being pilfered?

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's very – that's tough. It requires really vigorous attention. And we don't have that with anything. Well, we have it with some stuff. That's what people are terrified of. What people are terrified of is these laws getting enacted and then watching the same sort of scam play out now under the guise of it being progressive. How much money had been pilfered out of the funds for COVID relief?

A lot. It was huge. I mean, hundreds of millions. Yeah. And a lot of it went to corporations that didn't even fucking need it. Or maybe, yeah, I mean, I would see, you know, concert promoters who are super wealthy ask for relief because they didn't need relief. But anyway, I think that you're going to have to, in all government, big spending, whether it's government or corporate, accept a certain amount of fraud or leakage or shoplifting. I mean, that just comes with the territory.

People may need to shoplift, and there's evil people and scam artists, and you try and do your best. But in a system this big, you can't be perfect. Right. Even though you can't be perfect, you can do a lot of good. Right. Even though you can't be perfect, you can do a lot of good. And is it better to not help people who are starving or living on food stamps or can't get education for their kids to help them and accept a certain level of fraud? And you can also pass laws that call for inspector generals and effective prosecution of people. I mean, again, the Trump departments looked over every, they didn't care about it at all. They cut the tax services.

They wouldn't let them hire more people just to audit people. I mean, that's not fair, you know. So I'm all for people getting rich. I'm for people making a lot of money. But there's a point at which your money, you can't do anything with your money. You're for that money getting allocated to things that are going to help the country and help human beings as a whole. You know what, Matt Taibbi, I got this idea reading his stuff he wrote at Rolling Stone

at the time. He said this vast private wealth that's being held in investment banks and Switzerland and corporations and by billionaires, it is the least productive use of capital in the world. This is money being held privately, not being used to serve any useful purpose. Improve health, an educational system, decent lives for our workers, starving people in foreign countries. This capital is the least productive use of our human wealth. Do you think it's just that when people get money, they want more money, and then they get into a position of power, and they want to do whatever they can to keep that money going and keep it rolling. And the idea of being altruistic or being generous and trying to, for the greater good of the country, gets lost.

I think that's it. I mean, I think it's greed. And I think about it a lot, but I can't figure it out. And then I think of my own personal situation and say, well, do I, even though I'm not up in those levels at all, would I give up the money? I mean I don't need this much money. I could live on less. The question is where does it go and who's going to manage it?

That's the real question. What people are terrified of is the reallocation of wealth by people who are not good at managing anything. They're worried about the idea that you're going to do this, but then it's just going to penalize the people that are out there hustling and doing their best and trying to get ahead. And it's going to incentivize people that have already become accustomed to this system of pilfering money. Well, I would maintain on that front that a number of people have this much money have already been pilfering the system. Right, for sure. And there's stock things and IPOs and all this stuff and tax breaks they've been getting and not paying any taxes at all.

I think it's already being pilfered by those people. So stop them from pilfering it. Let the smaller guys pilfer it. But also, I think that who pays the expense money? The government is the instrument we have. And we can choose our government

and we can expect that it's going to do a pretty good job because our government by and large now does a pretty good job. Whether it's fire departments, police, the Pentagon, a health system, you know, we run an enormously amount of complicated things. Some of them well, some of them bad, you know, because every bureaucracy can get corrupt. And then I mean, we've got to have it. What else do you have besides democratically

elected government to choose from? Autocracy is in China, which distributes money fairly well. But I don't trust a billionaire to be that person to judge what they're going to endow, what wing of what hospital, what their name on it. Because when you get to be that person to judge what they're going to endow, what wing of what hospital, what their name on it. Right. Because when you get to be that wealthy, something changes, I think, in most people. I mean, in 99% of people, you think you're smarter than everybody.

You think you've got the world figured out. I'm surprised how many wealthy, wealthy, super wealthy people I've met who don't understand politics and political power because they have no sensitivity for the people or other things. I mean, everybody who gets that wealth thinks they're really smart. Everybody who gets that wealth. Yeah, they think they're really smart. Do you think that it's akin to fame in a lot of ways? Is that, you know, you can get captured by fame.

You can get captured by extreme wealth too? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Dead on. So it becomes a thing where you're captured by this pursuit. I'm so special. Right. I'm in a special position because I'm so special.

And then you're around other people that also feel the same way. And then you're in this sort of billionaire's weird club where you're only surrounded by people that are doing the same kind of thing. Sounds like you're living in New York City. But it could be anywhere. It could be anywhere where you get massive wealth and people that are in that tiny percentage of human beings. Checking the time? Three o'clock. You're good?

I'm good. I'm keeping track of you, buddy. Don't worry. I got you. Because I could roll over. Don't worry. I think that we really have to try our best to confront this situation. In the history of the world, never has been the wealth, the disparity been so great. I've had people had so much money. What do you do with a billion dollars? I can't figure it out. What do you do with a hundred billion dollars?

Even if you say you're going to give 50 billion dollars away, it's to the things you like or the museums you like or the particular causes. But let the people decide what it should go for. Do we want to educate our kids better? Do we want to do drug programs? Do we want to do this thing? We'll elect our representatives. And it's true in a good functioning democracy, which this is.

This is what happens. Do we have fraud? Yes, of course. You have fraud in every level of society. Do you have greed? Yeah, we have greed in every level of society. The whole phenomenon of being anti-immigrant I think are racist as part of why should we let them have that money? They don't deserve it. It's our money. We

live here. We're Americans. It's the worst of people. Trevor Burrus Well, I think your philosophy and your mindset speaks to why you started Rolling Stone in the first place. You generally want the world to be a better place. Yeah. And I think we came along and got so much money and education, so much privilege, that it's only natural. And then we were taught to share it, that there was an American dream. Right.

And we were taught the principles that found this country were justice and liberty. I think where people get confused and scared is they don't see a clear path. They don't see a path that makes sense. They don't see a leader that speaks in a way that resonates, that really seems to – seems like a person really just does want better for people. They see people that are speaking to their special interests and they're just saying all the right things. And then when they get into office, they do the same shit that everybody's done and fund the military industrial complex and get us involved in interventionist foreign policy and make it more and more dangerous in the world. I think you're right, except there's degrees. Except there's degrees.

And I think what I've learned growing up and getting older person, what I've learned from watching politics and watching all these movements is that change is gradual. And nobody is, very few people are perfect. Take a senator we have from New York, Chuck schumer on the one hand like he sponsored this campus legislation he sponsored he's gonna try and do everything he can to bring back the rights to abortion also on the other hand he's a major acceptor of contributions from hedge fund guys from all the banking industry new york and stuff that is all about keeping their tax rates, keeping that damn 14% tax, the tax investment funds, what it's called.

I'll forget the name in a second. So he's good and bad. You know, I mean, which good do you want? Which bad do you want? You know, and we have to look for the balance of good. I think, for instance, Joe Biden is a more populist-oriented president for people, for Ma. I mean, his heart and sympathy runs to helping people versus that he has been a part of voting for the Defense Department every time. I just can't expect perfection is what I'm saying.

And what do they say? Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. That's a good quote. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. I've always had this philosophy that the best way to make the world a better place is to have less losers. How do you have less losers? Give people a better chance. Give people a better opportunity. And, you know, one of the things that's always frustrated me the most in this country is that we have all these places that are economically disenfranchised and filled with drugs and crime,

and we've done very little to fix that. Why? I ask you, I agree with you entirely. Now ask yourself why. Money. And who's got the money? Who does have the money? There's money people. Finance people. Billionaires. Don't worry about it. Coffee stains make the desk look better. Or big...

I'm with you. I love this place. Thank you. The... You're a hippie at heart. I mean, this is what we're getting out of this conversation. And I love it. I think it's great. I mean, I think nothing you said reeks of greed. Everything you said reeks of love and compassion. And that's the best we could hope for, for someone who has lived as long as you have and had as many experiences as you have?

I mean, I don't claim to wear the hair shirt and have sacrificed everything, and I live well. And I think all of us who are successful in American society get a chance to live really well. And I think though we need to extend this compassion. It's just human spirit. Yeah. It's just the human spirit. I just think that the fear that many people have is how is this going to be accomplished and how is it going to be allocated and how do we keep people from profiting off of this philanthropic notion?

I don't think you can keep people from profiting. And I don't think maybe stealing, you can try, but still be stealing. But even profiting, I mean, I think what we need is a much better regulated capitalist economy. I think that capitalism is a wonderful way to harness the human spirit for ambition and accomplishment and even – and for personal wealth and gain, which are all legitimate human feelings. It's just that it's gotten out of control. And that greed has become the driving force. Greed is good. That was the 80s.

That was the cocaine era. Right. The Reagan decade. Well, that's what we need. We need a new psychedelic era. That's what we need. The psychedelic mentality and the psychedelic mindset is the total opposite of that. I'm totally voting for you.

Yeah. I mean, tell me where to send the money. I don't think we need to send money. I think we need to send money. I think we need to send drugs. I think the legalization of psychedelics would go a long way to changing the way people poor people live or into the ghettos and say, ever say this is right. I can go home and not think about, not have this image in my mind. I should help. I think you're right. I should be part of it.

And I totally agree. You know, the big fear of the 60s when LSD came on, the authorities said, they're going to spike the reservoir. Everybody in town is going to get stoned. Oh, panic. Well, let's do it. Well, I don't know if we should do it involuntarily. Of course. But I think having it available to people to understand that there is a different way to look at the world and that you're on this ride for a short amount of time.

You know, you say you're on this ride for a short amount of time. You know, you're, you say you're 76, I'm 55. We, you know, we don't have much time left. It's a quick ride. And, and you spend so much time just trying to accumulate numbers and that doesn't help anybody. It's not, it's not what this thing is supposed to be all about. And it doesn't enhance your experience on the ride, which is really what it's supposed to be about. Do our best to enhance the experience for ourselves and for others. And when you're just trying to enhance it for yourself, and you're around other people that are doing that as well, and that's all they concentrate and think about, then that becomes the mentality that you operate under. I think that's a real problem.

mentality that you operate under. I think that's a real problem. I don't think drugs are the only solution, but I think there's a real pathway through psychedelics that allow people to understand that you're just a part of a pattern and that this pattern is not mutually beneficial. And it's definitely not beneficial to people that are disenfranchised. It's not beneficial to people that are stuck in a bad situation. And that the best way forward for everybody, including the wealthy, is to make the world a safer, happier, healthier place. And what's the best way to do that? Well, definitely allocate more money towards fixing places that are traditionally disenfranchised and historically disenfranchised. Well, I is – I love to see that. I mean this I think is the major challenge now of the age is there are two of them.

Climate change and disruption and how to deal with that. And the economic distribution, fair distribution of wealth. And who is going to get a share of our resources on the world. Right. And a dose of kindness and understanding and perception is so beneficial for everybody.

Yes. Particularly, you know, there was a story of the guys, the two partners who founded the duty-free shops in airports around the world. There were two partners in it. And one who I know's family lived the most lavish life and put on five $10 million weddings. $10 million wedding. And married their daughters off to princes, lived the most lavish life. The partner you never heard from until three years ago,

he gave his entire share of it away. He never gave any of it, and he gave it away. Who's the happier person? The striving? I mean, I'm down. I don't know. I have to party with both these guys to find out what's up. Well, I think that if you gave...

The guy who gave it away might be suicidal. Yeah. I'm not sure. I have to see how the rich guy parties. Yeah. You're right. I mean, that's a stretch. I know what you're saying, though.

You're doing it—the way you're approaching it is from a peaceful, kind way. Or can't you look at Trump and say, Donald, or Mr. President, whatever you call him, just do the right thing for these poor people who are suffering down there. You could let all these people out of jail, by the way. You don't have to just let your political conspirators or – And I think – how do I express it? These are ideals I still believe in. I feel I've tried my best. I've done my part.

I'm off the stage now. I still do what I can. I'm happy now. I feel grown up and no longer full of FOMO or ambition to have more money or to achieve more. Did you have FOMO when you were young? Oh, we all live with, yeah. I mean, doesn't everybody feel they're not at the right party? I don't know.

Or not at the right backstage or, you know. I mean, I guess if you're in a social situation, you feel a lot of FOMO, you know, but you slowly overcome it. But even to that old man, that was a glamorous situation we should have been in, you know, or if it wasn't glamorous, it was some other situation that was pretty fantastic. Oh, shit, I should have gone.

You know, I don't know. I always had it. I'm not alone. FOMO people can call me for a friend. Yeah, but when someone look at you and all the experiences that you've had, like, my God, how could you have missed out on anything? Yeah. I wanted to say that in the book because the book in part does look like a recitation of these fantastic places. And people I've met and vacations with people I've met and great concerts I've seen.

It's just there's so much fun in the book. And I wanted to – I didn't quite capture that level of insecurity I'd always feel, you know, behind some of those things. I wasn't at that backstage or somehow that. It looks like it's all kind of natural and easy. It wasn't so natural and so easy. But it worked. No one would think of you as a person that would fear missing out on anything. I mean, hearing you talk about these times and talk about what you've been through and talk about what you've experienced and you know starting rolling stone and being a part of them being at the helm of one of the the biggest engines for cultural change this country

seen in the last 30 40 years well i mean it was a hell of a ride i mean it was so much fun and to see these places to hang with the the most talented rock of our time and go to the White House and sit in the Oval Office and interview the president and try and grill them as best you can and just feel you're a part of that. But you don't know that when it's happening. It's only when you look back at the end and put it all together do you realize, Jesus, I was at that place and that place and that place and how it looks and it seems sort of, you know.

You didn't realize at the time how crazy it was for you to be where you were and do what you were doing? No. Really? No. What did you think? Did you think it was normal? What did you think it was?

I never gave it that much. It's something I wanted. I was ambitious to do. I was excited about going to the White House or working with Hunter or working at the Stones concert tonight or listening to this record. But it either came so easy or there was so much of it that I never thought – I mean, I think, oh, man, having that time of my life. I'd sit there. I can't believe it.

I'd be places. Listening to music would make me cry. It was that special. But I never thought, oh, I'm at the one world shaking event here. Oh, my God, I'm so lucky. I'm special. I never thought of that. Not special, but fortunate.

Fortunate, yes, always fortunate, yeah. I mean, clearly, But. Undeniably fortunate. Then you think, it becomes never less than special, but it becomes more predictable. You get to be a little more. Jaded? Jaded is not one where you're more used to it. You know, you're less, each time is less startling. Right. You know, you're less, each time is less startling, you know. But if I hadn't been to a place for a year and all of a sudden was it the Bruce show, I would be going out of my mind, you know. And I still go out of my mind when I see the up at all these places like the Invisible Man or like in Forrest Gump and he's always right next to Johnson or something like that.

It's like that a little. I mean once when Jerry Brown was running for president, he was using our office in New York for his headquarters, the convention. He wasn't going to win that thing. But I went down to the convention with him and stand on the podium with him as he's giving his speech. And then he leaves. I stay on the podium for a while while Clinton comes on and stuff like that. And I wasn't allowed to be there.

I kept my backstage pass, which they take away from me. And your stage pass, which they take away from you as soon as you're done. They won't stage card. But I end up staying there for an hour or two hours saying, wow, this is amazing. What a place to be or be in the campaign trailer with

the Carter people at the moment. He goes to the top of the nomination. They're passing out cigars. I know I'm in some place special. I get them to sign the cigar thing and going, wow. How could I be at that? I once, or on the other side, like one year after the Academy Awards, going, wow, how can I be at that? Or on the other side,

like one year after the Academy Awards, that party afterwards, a small party, Michael Jackson comes in and sits next to me, sits down, we start chatting because I had some other business with him. And then Madonna comes in, she sits down, she wants to chat with Michael, she sits down on my knee. Which is, she works out hard, she sits down, she wants to chat with Michael, she sits down on my knee. Which is,

she works out hard, by the way, it's not fun when she sits on your quadriceps. She's dense. She is dense. So I've been like going to, well this is history, I should say, listen to everything that Michael and Madonna But your leg hurts. But my leg hurts!

And my will is to be over. You know? But still, it is to be over. You know? But still, it had to be amazing. It was amazing. God, I mean, just hearing these stories is amazing. But I would imagine that being you while you were there, it's hard to imagine someone else viewing this and seeing how, I mean, while you're there, it's life.

That's your life. You become accustomed to it. Yeah. And so it seems normal to all of a sudden be having dinner with Michael Jackson. That's bizarre. And it is bizarre. And you talk about it afterwards. What was he like?

He was actually, I mean, I didn't know him that well. He wanted to do an interview with me. And I thought, well, of course he hasn't given me an interview with anybody. I'll do it. It's not my cup of tea. It's not what I know a lot about. And furthermore, I don't know what there is to say with Michael Jackson, you know, what he's going to say. But I spent all this time.

Oh, so to do the interview, he wanted to meet me first, so we had dinner. And he brought all his loan chef. It was his manager's house. Table set for two of us in the private room. Just you and Michael Jackson. Just me and Michael and his cook who serves him. So he wanted to do this before you could interview him.

Yeah, he wanted to interview me first to make sure I was cool. Were you going to interview him? Yeah. And I didn't particularly want to, but he insisted on me doing it. Not because I probably think I knew anything more than anybody, but since I was the editor and the owner then it would make him more special be right more reflective of his glory unusual yeah he so he was very nice and polite and he really is curious and smart and every me and he's very soft-spoken and everything is wonderful. That's so sweet. You know, and you talk like that. So,

so he's set up. So he agreed to do the interview, which he has suggested. Then I get a call saying, and I spent the weekend studying and listening to every record and reading everything. Then I got a call from his manager. Is it okay if you do it in the dark? Michael would like to maybe do it at night to interview and maybe do it by the fireplace and there would be no lights on, just candles in the fireplace.

Would that be okay? Sure, of course, that would be okay. Why not? So, then, a week before the interview is to take place,

he calls us, well, Michael's too scared to do the interview. Doesn't want to do it, so they cancel. Absolutely. Now,

remember, this is amazing, he never gave, he gave some interviews earlier. What year was this? It was the year – it was 90s, 2000s, maybe 2000s. Okay. So this is post-thriller.

Yeah. Was this before the allegations? It was before – yes, it was before the allegations. There was rumors around about him, but this would be – he was still in the hyperbaric chamber, pet monkey stage. He hadn't gone into the extreme plastic surgery. He hadn't gone through that yet? Boy Scout phase. Let's call it the Boy Scout.

So he changed his mind. So, I mean, that's fine. I didn't know what he was going to say anyway. So then I got invited. He invited me to the Elizabeth Taylor wedding that he had on his ranch neverland ranch to attend that and me and my wife went up for that and had a great day and it was this wild wedding you know celebrity wedding helicopter stuck around somebody in a parachute you know flew in to crash the wedding and dropped in all stuff and afterwards he took me on a tour. Someone from a parachute?

Just a random person? A random person jumped out of a plane above the wedding, which is outside. They had balloons hanging, you know, streaming up in the air to keep planes and helicopters away. They had balloons up half a mile and, you know, trying to block the airspace.

And this guy in a parachute comes and lands right in the middle of the wedding. And then he hustled him out, of course. The upshot was after the wedding, he gave me a private tour of Neverland and his little Ferris wheel and movie theater. So whose wedding was this? Elizabeth Taylor. Which number?

I think this was number seven. This was the truck driver she met in rehab, Larry Fartensky. But so, I mean, Michael's polite, nice, but he obviously has an extremely difficult, dark side. I mean, oh, yeah. So there you go. Wow. So that's me in the back. What year was that, Jamie?

91, it says. 91. Did I say 2000? So there I am in the back. Wow. See, just to the left of Michael. I sat at a table with Marianne Williamson, the one who just ran for president last time.

It was a strange way. Nancy Reagan was there. Did you have a conversation with him afterwards to try to assure him? Yeah, that, you know, you didn't have to worry about this interview. No, because I was, relieved. Really? Yes, because as good as you are at this, you would not be able to crack him. And part of it is that

obviously inside he's so tight and tense because he's concealing this other thing, you know, this thing with boys. And it's obviously driving him. He's learned how to guard himself like so much, so insistently. And also, I honestly don't think he had much to say. He'd been in show business since he was four, singing. There was nothing indicating he was any kind of intellectual or had anything to say about politics. I mean, everything was all about his show business. Yeah, but even that alone would be fascinating.

Just to try to get into the mindset of a person that's living this very, very unusual life. I mean, to say that he didn't have anything to say, he's a human being that's experiencing something that no one will ever understand because this is pre-internet. He was one of the biggest stars the world had ever seen. Let me give you an example. If I said to him, well, a really legitimate question is,

what was it like to be a child star and at age seven have your father manage you and tell you what to do? He would then have to open up. He either do one or two things. In my scenario, he would say, oh, it was wonderful. We had such a wonderful time of

giant privilege and we had the opportunities to travel around the world. My dad was a loving, wonderful thing. All bullshit. Or the legitimate answer, which I don't think you'd get out of him, which is it was tough. Our dad beat us. We didn't have school life. I had no friends.

I was constantly on the bus with this, that, and the other thing. That's the truth. That would be interesting. He'd explore his feelings. He wouldn't, I swear to you, I don't think you would have gone there. Let me give you an example. Before doing the interview, I was in research. I called up Diana Ross, who I know, and said, come to lunch.

Let's have lunch. I want to talk to you about Michael because what I'm about to do at this know and said come to lunch let's have lunch I want to talk to you about Michael because I'm about to do this interview I want to pick now the room the word

the story the official story of Motown she discovered the Jackson family in Ohio and no excuse me

in Indiana and brought to the attention of Barry Gordy and was kind of like a mother figure to him. So Donnie says, you know, that was all a lie. That's not true.

I didn't discover it. I've never been there. I barely know him. In fact, you know, I mean, I tried to look him up a couple years ago and I went to the ranch to see him and I had to sit around for two hours and finally just left.

He had no – this giant myth. It was a giant myth. And Michael, I think, was leaving this giant myth. I mean – and he had to believe that his relationship with boys was entirely innocent, which it wasn't. Did you see that documentary on him no i tried not to because not a happy documentary and this is from the victims yeah yeah yeah not happy did you read any of the stuff that the doctor who uh went to jail for um anesthetizing him that that you know when he died that the doctor said that he was chemically castrated by his father.

And that that was, you know, you know about these young boys that were taken into the opera and turned into castratos. Yeah. That that was how Michael preserved his voice, that he was chemically castrated when he was younger. And that's why he had that very high-pitched voice and no muscle mass. And, you know, essentially he was a eunuch. And that that was – you've heard Castrato sing before. Yeah. Very bizarre, haunting sound.

There's only a few recordings from Castrato's. But that was a practice, that they would take young boys and castrate them to preserve their voice and raise them through this singing, and that that was what gave Michael Jackson that incredibly feminine but yet also very unusual voice. He had an astounding voice.

Astounding. I mean, some of you have asked me, is it proper to listen to Michael Jackson's music today, knowing me? Knowing, I just say, of course. He was one of the genius artists. What good does it do you to deprive yourself of his music? Anyway, is it possible? I suppose. I've not really, I think I've heard that before. How would a guy in Jackson, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Michael's father, Joe Jackson, get his hands on the materials and know-how to castrate? How would you get it? How would you do it? You would get it from the way they chemically castrate sex offenders, the way they do it. Okay, you're right. Yeah. I think the mechanism was well known. Especially, I suppose. Yeah. Okay. Especially to an incredibly wealthy person that had a lot to

gain by enacting that. If you have the financial mechanism, like if you think about what is powering the Jackson Five, what's powering Michael Jackson's career, it's his voice and the voice that was developed when he was very young. You go listen to ABC or listen to some of the – Tiny little voice. Yeah. It's so fragile. Powerful. Yeah.

But, I mean, listen to human nature. It doesn't sound like any man that you've ever heard sing a song. It's not a falsetto. Yeah. It's a different thing. It's like there's a power to his voice that's extremely unusual. Well, I'm not really giving that a lot of thought,

but it's plausible. It's absolutely plausible. I think you could have gotten something out of talking to him. Excuse me, I hear that you're a castrato. Can I see? No, I wouldn't say that. What would you say? You wouldn't say that.

I mean, I think the way you get a person like that to reveal themselves is through time. You would have to have a long conversation with them and then inconsistencies. And you would chip away at the veneer and you'd probably find something. At the very least, personally, you would get an experience with a very, very unusual human being that is going through a life that no one will ever understand. Because it's like Elvis, the Beatles, there's a few people in human history that have achieved that level of fame and notoriety and popularity. And, you know, we're talking about being captured by fame. I mean, who the fuck was captured by fame more than Michael Jackson? What human beings will ever experience what that guy has experienced? Well, you're of course right about that. I don't think that Michael was accessible to a normal or even a long thing. I mean, again, you only get three or four hours with these things where you come back because you've been friendly.

But I don't think that time – I just don't think you could have broken Michael. I don't think you'd have to break him. I don't think you'd have to open him up. You just have to let him talk. I don't think you would have done it. I don't think you'd have to break him. I don't think you'd open him up. You just have to let him talk. I don't think you would have done it. You would get something in him not opening up. You would get something in him just the way he communicates. Maybe.

I mean I certainly got a sense of it in the way our own communications were that he wasn't going to open. But even not opening, you get something. You get a window into this human being that is living one singular life that no one will ever understand. Well, I certainly had that list of questions. I certainly had all those things because I thought the growing up part was the most fascinating of it all. And the early experiences, that early fame. Because that you don't get talked to. When I did John Lennon

in another long, in a long, long interview I did, which was the first interview he ever gave after the Beatles broke up, and the first long interview he ever gave, he was full of pain. You know what I mean? the first long interview he ever gave. He was full of pain. You know, I mean, it was, you didn't have to say anything. He was just spewing it all out.

And he was so angry about the way fame had treated him. I mean, that he had been trapped, you know, in this bubble. And he said, but inside it was like orgies and whores and junk. And the story's never been told of what happened. He wanted to spill that confinement. I want out, out, out, out, out. And that was a wholly different experience. So I don't think Michael, he knew if he revealed himself as he did like posing naked on the – for the two versions on which we ran in Rolling Stone, him and Yoko naked, was a way of getting out of this trap of fame.

Saying, oh, well, we're the most famous couple in the world and the biggest pop star in the world. But you know what? We're ordinary people like you and me. We are ordinary naked people. We're not unusually great looking. We're just average, like you and me. How did John feel trapped when you were talking to him about it? Because he couldn't do what he

wanted to do. He was a man of lots of opinions and ideas and politics and ideas about peace and art, and he had to be a Beatle for all those times. And so he's, for five years, taking drugs, taking acids, smoking pot, going to India, Maharishi, meditating, and he can't say anything about it.

He can't tell the world, I've got another vision of things. I've got the way they worship. We need peace or whatever. But ultimately he did, right? Ultimately he did. And part of it was through that interview, he just decided to burst the whole thing wide open. You know, I'm not gonna live with this anymore. Here are all my secrets.

Here's everything I've got. We took junk, we did that, all that. People use the Rolling Stone, you know, access sometimes to do those kind of things. Like David Cassidy, who had the popular television show, The Partridge Family, to get out of that, he posed without his clothes on for the cover of Rolling Stone. Not a full frontal, but...

He did that to get out of it? To get out of it, because he was a genuine musician who wanted to be a musician and in a rock band. Instead, opportunity knocked and made him a teenage TV star in his Goody Two Shoes show, you know, the Nelson family or whatever. And as soon as he came out, as soon as he looked like he had been naked, we didn't show him naked, but the sponsors all deserted. ABC wanted him off the air, and he was free. There was no other way he could get out of it. Otherwise, he was contractually bound for five more years of being a teen idol.

So they kicked him off the show for posing naked on the cover? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Teen Girls, ABC, 1970s. Things were way different then. Now you can't go on a TV show. And did you talk to him about this feeling of being captured by fame?

No, I didn't. I mean, I didn't do the interviews with him. I got to know him later and liked him. But I didn't do that with him. But it was clear in what we did run that he just, it was just not what he wanted to do with his life. I mean, he had to live in a hotel surrounded by security. Yeah.

Yeah. So – but he broke the fame spell. And I think John did too. And I think that Michael couldn't have just – Do you think he was just too captured by it? I think that if he was too weird. If there was, he put one chink in that armor of his, it would have led to the,

he feared that it would lead to the unraveling of his innermost secret. And that was the boys. That was the boys. And if that unraveled, his entire life would have unraveled. I mean, he was ostracized. His career would have been over.

Nobody would have talked. I mean, the penalty for that was huge. Well, ultimately, that did happen. Ultimately, it did happen, and it was over. Yeah. He could never record again. He broke apart mentally. You know, it was over.

Well, there was no chance of him ever being normal. Yeah. Excuse me. His career didn't break apart totally because he was going to go on the road. Remember that? Because of that movie. His own... The documentary, you mean?

Yeah. This Is It? Yeah. Was that his own sense of self or what people thought of him or this fantasy he had? Right. This level of shame or something? You know, he had to... I think that he was broken. Hard.

Yeah, it seems like that's your phone. Kill that thing. Okay, that's right. Yeah. I have to the plane takes off at 520. You're good 520 You're good

For New York I'm good now Oh this Oh I'm sorry It's 3.30 I never reset my line It's only 3 Okay

It's 3.30 Oh fuck We're alright Yeah Yeah I got you Don't worry Get you out of here You said but

Don't worry We're pretty close to the airport too Yeah It's alright And Austin traffic's a joke I heard it's tough today It's hilarious Why is it what What they a joke. I heard it's tough today. It's hilarious. Why is it tough?

What they think is tough is extra five minutes to get somewhere. How far away do you live? 20 minutes. Nothing. 15 minutes. But it's like Los Angeles. Everything's an hour and a half. Oh, you can't.

It's fucking death. You're always stuck on the highway. You can't. You can't get anywhere. This is a different world. Yeah. It's so much easier. But this parallels to what we're talking about with Hunter and many people that become extraordinarily famous

that I find really fascinating because they became famous because of this uniqueness, and then they get captured by that, and then the public demands. Let me ask you a question, Joe. How do you do on that front? I mean, obviously, you've asked me a bunch of questions about it, this issue of handling fame. How are you handling fame? What do you do to not bend your mind over? I'm not sure. It seems to be just normal for me. How's that? It doesn't bother me that much.

I mean, it bothers me going out in public and sometimes it gets hassling and sometimes people just don't leave you alone, but a lot of times they do. And I think it's like the way you handle any other drug. You know, you've got to know what it is. And you've got to take steps to mitigate the effects of it. How do you take those steps? I mean, you've been being famous for a long time now. Yeah. You have a very passionate audience that go to you and believe in you and respect you and all the things that could make you feel pretty swell-headed. Well, fortunately, I'm famous for just being me, which is kind of a different thing.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I just talk and have opinions and have conversations with people or do stand up or whatever I'm doing. It's just me, you know, which is a different thing. You know, I don with physical exercise and making the things that I do on purpose far more difficult because it makes the rest of life easier. But I do it purposely. Consciously.

That's a very interesting... As much as performers and writers are doing what they do and are there being me, there are also people in the case of Hunter, wearing a mask. Right. and writers are doing what they do and are there being me. They're also people, in the case of Hunter, wearing a mask. So Michael Jackson's wearing a mask. John Lennon's got that mask. I mean, if he – and you don't.

You won't wear it. I mean, and that's probably where the contradiction starts and the thing you always have to deal with and fight with yourself. And suddenly you realize the mask is more attractive than you maybe. Exactly. And then you've got to be that. Then you have to put on a persona. Yeah.

I'm very fortunate and I don't have that trap. That's what's lucky. Joe, you need a mask. What kind of mask? I don't know. That Freddy Krueger one's been used. I like the one from Sons of the Lambs. That thing was pretty good.

Why do you think I need a mask? I mean, are we on video? Yeah. Tell me why. You don't need a mask. I don't, but why? I just, as a joke, you know, just as a, I mean, I think you, from what I can see, you seem to have it pretty knocked in terms of the way you live, what you do. I mean, what a, I'm an interviewer as well as other things.

And what a thing to be able to do. Yeah. Live nearby and then start bringing in interesting people. It's awesome. Yeah. I love it. And so it's satisfying. You're not too, you're not putting on anything particularly.

No. I'm trying very hard to not. It's very conscious, though. What's underneath that Joe Rogan mask, though? I don't know. I don't have a mask, I swear to God. I mean, maybe I should. No.

But, you know, I think psychedelics have helped me tremendously in not having a mask, you know. And the way to connect with people is also to not have a mask. I think if you did this over hours, I mean, I've done thousands of these, hours and hours of conversations. If I had a mask, it would have come off, you know. That's what my point was about talking to Michael Jackson. That's what my point was about talking to Michael Jackson. I think if you did sit down with him for long enough, you would at least get an understanding of just the way he communicates, the way he answers questions, the way he deals with situations. If you just talk to him about the world itself, talk to him about things outside of himself, how he views things, you'd get a sense of how bizarre the journey he's on is. Because he's in some bizarre rocket ship

and some uncharted part of the universe. But what do you think when somebody says to you, or if I came in here and said, Joe, I really want to do your show and all that stuff, but do you mind if we turn all the lights off and you can't see me and there'll be some candles on the side? Does that make me, I mean, doesn't it sound to you like this man doesn't want to be some candles on the side does that make me i mean doesn't it sound to you like this man doesn't want to be seen he's this man hiding very

uncomfortable imagine that he's very uncomfortable and he's just terrified i don't even see my facial expressions well you know i mean because before he was already having some plastic surgery right because he probably had some distorted perception of his appearance and you know i mean just the whole world watching you in that way has got to be very fucking strange to be this young boy who grew up in a completely abnormal way like he never i had a normal life growing up pretty normal you know i mean normal for me. I mean, not extraordinary. And for him, everything's extraordinary from the beginning. I know, you know, through this,

I've met all kinds of performers and artists and singers. Some are good friends, some I know casually. I've seen a lot of performances, and they're all involved with their image and how they present themselves to the public versus who they really are. You've seen all kinds of combinations. People are just dying to kind of expose themselves and talk a lot and think a lot and be

valuable. And I, for instance, mono is, you know, he just nonstop talking, you know, and open about everything,

you know, his love, his wife, his kid, everything there is. And, uh, and then you meet others like,

say like, uh, Bruce or Mick who don't like talking about – well, Mick doesn't like talking about himself. In fact, refuses to. He probably feels so overexposed. I think it's his way of protecting himself. Yeah. I think he is – it's his way of keeping people away from him.

Yeah. of keeping people away from him. And not exposing him. I mean, he believes in the advantages of mystery and show business and always keep them wondering. But he's very British. And Brits don't like to talk about their feelings about themselves. Yet he's a very sociable individual. I mean, Bruce, one of the greatest performers of all times, and on the stage, he pours his heart out, you know, lifts you up, makes you cry,

just every conceivable thing, communicates joy beyond belief. I think, to me, I've never seen anybody so happy on that stage as Bruce. But to me, I just love watching him more than anybody. But, you know, on the other hand, he's reserved, quiet, not shy, but almost shy. He holds himself back. He, again, doesn't want, he's very private. He doesn't like to reveal all the things he's, you know. Even down to the silly stuff, like that he's working on an album.

He doesn't want anybody to know that he's working on a new album. He'll tell you about it two months later. But meantime, it's omerta. You know, you can't, you know, this stuff. Yet, one of the smartest, most thoughtful people and this performer who has gathered audiences that worship the cults. I mean it's beyond anything. And yet at home, quiet, shy. Well, maybe that's because the way he expresses himself is through his art.

He doesn't feel the need to express himself in any other way. And that whatever his thoughts are and his feelings about things come through in his songs. I wrote in my book, the truest Bruce I've ever seen is on stage. That's the true Bruce. Well, maybe that's the best way to do it for him. Yeah.

You know? Maybe he's preserving true Bruce. Well, maybe that's the best way to do it for him. Yeah. You know? Maybe he's preserving his talent. He doesn't want to just use up some of that Indian mojo. Right. By spilling it in the living room, you know? Yeah. Sure. And also, you know, maybe there's a sense of uncertainty about his thoughts and opinions

and the way he sort of solidifies them is by the music and is through his art. You know, there's something to be said for that. Yeah. I mean, he takes his music more seriously than about anybody I've ever met. I mean, they all take their music seriously, but he's... What he's saying... What a fucking incredible catalog. What he's saying through his music is so serious.

Yeah. He's got a new record coming out next week, I think, which is unbelievable. Yeah. And it's Bruce doing new record coming out next week, I think, which is unbelievable. And it's Bruce doing covers, not his own material, but doing covers of soul music from about the 70s, the Commodores and the Chilots,

Motown stuff. And in modern arrangements, the same arrangements, he recognizes the song immediately, but he's singing it so powerfully. There's so much fun in that record and so much passion in that record, and he's never pushed his voice beyond his own lyrics and what he's trying to say about things to these more simple songs

that are beautiful songs but express the deep universal things about love and losing love and my girl doesn't love me anymore. My girl does love me. Yeah. And, you know, you lied to me, you know. Right. You said that. You lied.

You lied, you know. Mm-hmm. Is that you, baby, or just a brilliant disguise? This is great. That's a great fucking song. Yeah. And to hear Patty sing it with him? Yeah.

Boy. Did you hear Patty sing it with him? Yeah. Boy. Honestly, I mean, knowing Bruce is, well, is like really one of the great honors and privileges of my life. I think he's that, he's one of the most thoughtful people I've ever met.

And, you know, it's just a privilege. I mean, the guy's a genius. Yeah. Well, that's probably how he preserves it. You know, the way he preserves that magic is by releasing it through his art, you know? And maybe that's why he's reserved. I mean, he did a podcast with Obama. Did you ever hear that?

They did a podcast. I saw a little of it. It sucked. It just wasn't, it wasn't, there was nothing that's, there weren't loose i it just wasn't it wasn't there was nothing that's there weren't loose enough it wasn't enough there you know it was just uh it was too reserved and orchestrated and cultivated and curated and it was homogenized pasteurized wasn't, you know, I mean, he would have to decide that he wanted to be the real person. It would have to be dirty and unproduced. It would have to be messy and real.

You have to have some purpose. Yeah. There was no purpose to it other than to do a, honestly, to do a commercial thing from Obama. I mean, there's nothing that Obama's going to draw out of Bruce that would have any interest to me. Well, it could. It could. It could. But they would both have to decide to do it that way.

And there's nothing Bruce and Obama that we hadn't heard before. So I started listening to it. And then I hear Obama say, well, you know, sometimes you just got to get out your guitar. I was like, what is Obama saying guitar for? I mean, in real life, you say guitar. What are you putting on your. So it was so faked. Right.

From just that little signal. Don't you think that Obama in a lot of ways is also captured by fame? Oh, totally. I mean, he's one of the most important presidents ever. I mean, he's one of the best spokesmen, the best statesman the world has ever seen. And, you know, so beloved and so captured by that. I mean, that's who he is. Here's my analysis of Obama.

The presidency, his presidency was historic, transformational in so many ways. And it was another part of the baby boom moving up, although he wasn't a boomer. But that sensibility, equal rights. To see a black man elected president was one of the best things we could say in our lifetime has happened. Just the sheer symbolism of who we were as a nation. Was he a consequentially important president? Other than that, he was very competent, very good. But I think that he made a big mistake,

is that he wouldn't play politics. And I think if you're going to be the president, you've got to play politics. And I think if you're going to be the president, you've got to play politics. In what way? He wouldn't engage too much with his contributors, with the party people, the people who run the party locally in various places. And he left behind a party that was in weak shape

for the next election, the Hillary election. And a lot of pissed off people who felt they weren't treated right. Our friends, the billionaires or less, he didn't want to deal with them. He didn't want to deal with this ugly business of fundraising. But these are the people who give you the money for the campaign. You've got to have them. So what did he do when you're saying

he didn't play politics? He didn't cultivate the party mechanism. He didn't cultivate the party mechanism. He didn't cultivate the donors, right? Here's what I thought was wrong. I thought at first. Nancy Pelosi and the congressman from Detroit, whose name I forget from him, wanted to have investigations conducted by the Senate of the Iraq war. Why did we go to Iraq? And have full Senate hearings and investigation undercover, all that. He shut it down. They wanted to do it. He

said, no, I don't want to do it. I want my administration to get off to a great start and peace and harmony and we're going to be bipartisan and all this stuff, which I was a horrible mistake because there was no such thing as that in this lifetime right now. I think Obama thought somehow he could magically change politics and just, you know, kumbaya, not exactly kumbaya, but achieve better president because he himself thought thought I am such a excellent conciliator that I have been a community organizer

for most of my life. I know how to bring people together. By sheer force, by intellectual power, and my gift of oratory and all that, I will bring this together. That sounds like a great notion. It's a great notion, but it's completely not in this world. Let's look back at the history of the modern Republican Party.

Look at the investigations that they've been conducting of Clinton. I mean, Clinton barely got into office, and all of a sudden they start right after him. Obama gets into office, and the first thing that happens to him is that Senator McConnell says, my main objective for the next four years is to make sure this is a one-term president. That's not a noble fucking goal. No. But the hostility and the danger of the Republican Party was so apparent. I mean, look at how well the Republicans have used these investigations throughout years.

So here was the opportunity for Obama to say, go ahead, investigate the war. First off, morally, it should have been done no matter what because, I mean, this was a war under false presenses, which was put together on the basis of bad evidence, either deliberate or indeliberate. So somebody should be held to account. And he could have knocked back on their feet all the current then leaders of the Republican Party who had brought us this war. So you think he was trying to unite everybody and he was trying to be bipartisan and in doing that, he hampered himself? Yes. Yes.

And I think it was also due to his own sense of self-worth, of his own overestimation of his skills in the climate of Washington. Washington is not a kumbaya town. It's a power game, top to bottom virtually. And he had the opportunity there to wield it. How could he know what it was like until he got in there, though? I mean, how could he not have these? I mean, if he is that guy that we wanted in there in the first place, he was this idealistic visionary.

Of course, he would try to carry that on. Well, I think you also have to be realistic, too. If you want to get things done, you're going to have to play politics. Would you? I mean, he had people around him who are skilled professionals, including Joe Biden, and he had Nancy Pelosi with him and, you know, all these, Chuck Schumer, a lot of people. Did you get a chance to talk to him about that? I've not. I've had three long interviews with him over the course of his presidency.

And I never did bring that up with him. Why not? I never did bring that up with him. Why not? I think that there's a – I don't like asking gotcha questions. That's not even a gotcha question. I know it's not. Well, it is a gotcha question. Is it?

Well, it's not a gotcha question, but it is – let me say, I don't – my thing with the interview is I want to draw something out of you. Yeah. I'm not – you are not a politician, you're artist, you know, or you're, you're trying, you know, let me say, you don't want to piss the guy off in the middle of the interview for one thing. Right. Uh, secondly, I hadn't really formulated that idea until my second interview with him. And you know, he's going to be angry if you ask to say,

were you chicken shit to, why did you do that? You don't want to say it like that. You would say it like, what were your intentions? And what did you want to accomplish? And if you would go back and do it again, would you do it differently? And what do you think could have been done to bring people together, to be bipartisan, but also to expose some of these things that were critical issues? Like why did we get involved in the Iraq War? You formulated it exactly correctly. What if? You formulated it exactly correctly, you know, what if, you know. But let me say this to you.

Politicians, all of them, except when they're out of office and so on, of the presidents and the presidential candidates I've interviewed, which have been Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Obama, are tough interviews. They are not there to reveal themselves. Like Michael Jackson. Like, but with super high stakes. Right. A candidate makes a spontaneous comment and says, I should have investigated that because, you know, Bush was a really, he's a war criminal. He should have, or Cheney should have. One false remark

and you've got, you've blown up the world all of a sudden and the newspapers and the media, and it's a week of your time wasted because you said some harmless kind of thing. So they're not, especially in the middle of the campaign, going to say anything that they haven't really thought through or hasn't been

pre-tested or vetted somehow. They're not going to piss off this industry or that industry. When they're talking about energy uses, they're not going to piss off the agricultural interests by saying this thing about it. The minute they say, oh, it's a transitional fuel, then those states

are up. You can't really speak the truth anymore. You don't want to ask them questions which they can't answer truth anymore. So I was, you can't, you don't, so you don't want to ask them questions which they can't answer truthfully, you know? And you give them, they give them the opportunity to answer questions

they can answer honestly. So I ask generally about how do you feel about things? You know, what was your point of view or purpose? And not only, just skip the gotcha questions or the questions that everybody asks every day of the present,

when will this be passed or do you think there will be peace or whatever, the kind of daily I go into trying to figure out who the person is and kind of take a measure of their thinking and their sensitivity and how they're feeling about things because everything else a president

says is vetted or formalized. You can't be truthful. But every now and then you get them. I mean, there was... I love talking to Clinton because he's always talked like some kind of corn pone from the South. You know, he's talking about the NATO allies

and something. They were madder than three chickens in a hen house. And he talks Southern about NATO. I mean, what are you doing? And Obama, to be most honest, I was scheduled to interview Obama for the exit interview. And it was scheduled to take place the day after the election. And that night, Trump won.

So when I got up in the morning, very drunk still, being hungover like about everybody. I mean, anyway. I called the White House and said, look, I had to leave at 8 o'clock. If you want, I'll postpone this interview until next week so you have a chance to. The deal is no, no. Obama wants to. We'll call you back.

Obama wants to do it. Sorry. And come on down as scheduled. And come on down as scheduled. So I had prepared, you know, for three days for the interview, all kinds of questions, you know, like what do you think the world should be? And what advice would you give Hillary, your successor? What are the big problems you're concentrating on? The valedictory lap.

So I had to scramble and create a whole new interview. But we got to the White House. I went down with my son, Gus. It's deserted. The whole town is gray and cloudy anyway. It's virtually deserted. There's nobody there. There's the Marine Guard at the reception desk and a secretary, and that's it. It's completely dead.

And then Obama walks up, gets us coat and tie, chip, you know, like energetic, says, okay, let's get this done. Let's go. Come on. Go in the Oval Office. So I'm trying to – the main question now on the table is what the fuck happened? How did she lose? What's the future of the country right now?

You want to ask – because now everything was completely, you know, completely up in the air. And danced around, danced around. I said, well, I said, what do you, what, what? He says, well, I said, what makes you, what do you hope that changes? He says, well, why are you hopeful? He said, well, because when you get to the Oval Office, you change and you sit here

and you look up at that picture of George Washington over that portrait and it somehow changes you. I I said, well, Mr. President, he is 75 years old or 74 years old. What do you possibly think is going to change about him and make him into a president? And he looks at me and says, well, look, Jan, if you want me to get on my knees, get down on the floor and curl up in a ball and start crying about this, I'll do that for you. Do you want me to do that? This is not a tragedy. My mother died of cancer two weeks ago.

It's a tragedy. This is an election. And after that, if you don't like it, you get up and you work. Great thing to say. I get up and you work. Great thing to say. I mean, and absolutely right. And also, I mean, so states, versus the tradition of you don't dump on

your successor, he's got to now reassure the country that things are going to be okay. Don't push the panic button yet. Reassure our allies in particular overseas that this is not going to go off the rails. He had – there was nothing he could say. So, I mean, I could have again – gone further with the thing.

But he said this. How can you say that and discuss the dangers he represented or the things that might happen or the fears that people have. But it wouldn't have gone anywhere because he wouldn't be able to speak to it. I remember early on asking Al Gore when he was running for president, what are we going to do about Drugley's legalization? Al said, well, I think we need to study it more and get the scientifics. And I'm thinking to myself, this is so tired. Al, I know. You know.

You smoke dope. You have smoked dope. Let's not. But I thought, why? He's in a position, if he says the wrong thing about this, that he may not get elected. He may be thrown out, won't even win the primary. They'll get him so hard. And I think, what is the point of doing that?

I mean, I know Al well, actually. I know what he's going to do when he gets in there. He's going to start moving towards legalization, decriminalization, as fast as he can. And constrained only by, constrained only by public opinion, other things lifted. So I don't push it further. I say, well, how's it?

After he lost the election, we had lunch one day at my office, about a year after. He hadn't decided whether to run again or not. Everybody was pushing me. He asked me what I thought. I was very flattered that he was curious about my opinion. And I said, what do you think?

He said, well, you know, I just don't have the appetite to lie anymore. You know, I'm tired of this. You know, I want to be able to speak what's on my mind. I thought, wow, that's the truth. Yeah, that's the truth. And that's a man who is weary. I mean, how do you live with that? You know, and he's a brilliant man.

And he can't tell the truth. Right. Michael. Well, that's the beauty of having a conversation with a person like that. And I think your approach is very similar to my approach. my call well that's the beauty of having a conversation with a person like that and i think your approach is very similar to my approach you're just trying to get the person to express themselves and it's very difficult for someone to express themselves when they're in a job that literally prohibits them from expressing themselves and could inhibit, could change the way they view the world and the world views them.

Yeah. Very, very complicated. I would imagine that's the – those are the worst people to try to get something out of. Again, I mean all these – as you say, all these people that I've dealt with over the years are really under public pressure. Yeah. Or under private pressure like Bob dylan yeah to keep their keep privacy yeah keep people reveal a little of yourself but don't reveal as an artist if you reveal too much and destroy that sense of mystery then you've lost a little there the thing is about a president you

don't think of him as an artist so you don't think of that as an option you but you don't of that as an option you but you don't you want them to express themselves but they don't want to do that because they have a narrative and they have a they have a thing that they're trying to push yeah it's a very fucked up way to not just to govern but to be governed with to just like to we understand that they're full of shit. We understand that they're putting on a persona and an act and we accept it. And there's no other options. I mean, in a lot of ways, that's what people liked about Trump was that he was this guy that wasn't going to do that. And he was going to talk in a way that seemed at least he was revealing a few more layers of the onion than anybody else was. It's true.

He had, you know, he had the look of being spontaneous. Yeah. revealing a few more layers of the onion than anybody else was. It's true. He had the look of being spontaneous. Yeah. Ironically that he was being honest. He wasn't a politician in their eyes. He came on as if – I'm going to tell you the honest truth. He was the most dishonest president we've ever had. And he – but he looked like he was no bullshit.

And I think that – That resonates with people, especially people that aren't doing a deep dive into what is actually going on. I wish we'd have people who would be almost in office to be more open about debating the stakes and tell the truth about what they think is going on and let that out. But it's not in the nature of our society. It's not in the – I mean we punish people who show vulnerability. Well, that's what people liked about McGovern, right? I think he was – yeah. He was not a – he was a sincere, deep man. He came from a religious background, a small state.

He seemed sincere when he was talking as well. Yeah. And I believe he was. He loved Hunter. Hunter loved him. And I plagiarized a few things in my book from an article McGovern wrote in Rolling Stone because it was so well expressed. And he was able to tell the truth about the Vietnam War because he was not politically challenged in his state. He felt passionately about the morality of it.

He embodied the hopes and dreams of a generation there. Is it possible to have someone like that today? I don't know. I mean, the media is so nutty. It's always been nutty that you get punished so hard by the opposition party, the mainstream press, and the internet press, internet people, for speaking out on anything, you know?

You get mocked one way or the other. So there's a real premium to say nothing, you know, to be as obscure as possible. And it comes from the mainstream press just as much as it comes from the Internet. I mean, not that's true. It comes, the Internet is the craziest thing ever. Social media. Yeah. And because it's totally unregulated.

Well, it's not just unregulated. It's also orchestrated by foreign entities and by even national entities. National entities more than foreign. Yeah. There's a lot of that going on that people I mean, people want to talk about like Russian troll farms. If you don't think that that shit is going on through American, that's there's without doubt there's interest in this country that are orchestrating narratives. That's there's without doubt there's interest in this country that are orchestrating narratives. Totally. I mean, that's all this Proud Boys stuff coming in. All kinds of shit. All kinds of I mean, one of the things they found out.

I mean, there's just so much of what we discuss that's orchestrated. You know, they found out that 19 of the top 20 Christian sites on Facebook were troll farms. It's wild. So they're organizing dissent and organizing conflict and getting people riled up in arguments, and they're doing it purposely. Well, this is the difference, I think, between the Internet now and what we've had as a robust press in the past, which has riled up wars. They're not innocent either, but the internet is totally unregulated, and yet

it is a public utility, just like television and radio waves and stations, that has been financed, particularly by the government. The government paid for the internet. They developed it in the Defense Department. It was put out there with

government. It's owned by the public. It should be regulated as a public utility and by the same rules that govern radio and television. You know, the internet should not be this free, do-anything place. There are rules and regulations, laws about fairness, about libel, about reckless disregard for the truth, about publishing, about libel, about reckless disregard for the truth, about publishing something with malicious intent, about deliberate lying. And if it was just governed by the basic rules by which we regulate the rest of the press.

Free speech. The rules is free speech, which means that you can't yell fire in a theater and you can't publish stuff knowingly false. And you can't publish stuff you're doing out of malice. But don't you think there's also some real benefit to it in that it allows real investigative reporting that's not popular, that's not popular with corporate entities? It's not popular with banks. It's not popular with the. It's not popular with

the military industrial complex or politicians. And you get opinions that resonate with people that would not be expressed in any other way. I think that's totally important and totally worth doing. But we're not looking at opinions now. We're looking at malice disregard. We're looking at reckless disregard for truth and we're looking at malicious intent. And orchestrated. And orchestrated on top of that. So that's what evil is.

On the other hand, it's brilliant at democratization of communication and expressing opinions and making the cost of investigative journalism lower because you have to have something with all these eye over it. I love the Internet. It's great. And I love social media. have something with all these eye overhands. There's, I love, the internet's great, and I love social media, you know? But like every other industry in the United States,

it has to be regulated. If you don't regulate it. But who regulates it? The government. Do you trust the government to regulate the internet? Absolutely. You trust the people that got us into the Iraq war under false pretenses to regulate the internet? Do you think that makes any sense? Well, wait a minute. I would not. The people who got us into the Iraq War under false pretenses to regulate the Internet? Do you think that makes any sense?

Well, wait a minute. I would not. The people who got us into the Iraq War. It's the government. It was the politicians. It's the government. In the end, yes, it's the government. But who else is going to regulate?

But if they're going to be in power and they're regulating the Internet, they're going to regulate the Internet in a way that suits their best interest, the same way they do with the banking industry, the same way they do with the environment. The same way they do with the banking industry, the same way they do with the environment, the same way they do with energy, the same way they do with everything. What represents their interests? You're talking about so much money involved in disseminating information in a very particular way. And the richest companies in the world right now are the internet companies, rich beyond belief.

Yeah, but it's a disruptive thing that has never existed before. I think it exists, and I think where we're at is where we're at. respects truth and that appreciates opinions and reality and an understanding of things that's not necessarily possible with corporate interest involved in dissemination of information. But there's no way to do that except through the government. There's no way you can do that except through the government. Human nature is not going to change. But the government's not going to change either. But the government is capable of change. Okay, look. The government regulates, for example, the food supply.

Or it can regulate. Let's take the— The food supply. Yeah. The Department of Agriculture. Why have they let glyphosate infestate all of our foods? Let's state one thing at a time. Yeah, but that's a problem.

That's the government regulating— Well, then we better get better politicians in them to appoint better people. I mean, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Right. Okay, so let's take the SEC or take the Food and Drug

Administration that regulates big pharma. On the one hand, we've got a very safe supply of drugs in this country. Safe? Drugs are tested. You don't get too many bad drugs, prescribed drugs. 25% of all drugs approved by the FDA get recalled. That's better than if we didn't regulate it.

You'd have patent medicine. But it's also like, why is it even that much? What can we do to stop that? So you're saying we just need better government. Better government. No, I guess. You'd have patent medicine. But it's also like why is it even that much? Well, I agree with you. What can we do to stop that? So you're saying we just need better government. Better government. But the problem is money, right? The reason why these drugs get approved in the first place is because these people know they can profit off of these drugs.

And not just bad drugs, as you recall, but fake drugs that are one molecule different than the original drugs so they can copyright a new drug. So they can keep the patent going. Keep the patent going instead of cheap alternatives. Why are we charging so much for insulin in this country? I mean, that's life dependency. Your life depends on your supply of innocence. And this is called life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where's that guarantee of life? When you look at the internet, which is this incredibly disruptive technology, and you

see the expansion of technology in general, that technological innovation just seems to be a part of our culture inexorably, where do you think it goes? What are your thoughts on the metaverse and just the complete integration of technology into human beings' lives. Well, the metaverse itself, I just think that is a marketing slogan of Zuckerberg's. Well, it's not just Mark Zuckerberg. Forget the metaverse. I'm talking about full integration of human beings and technology, which seems to be happening whether we like it or not.

I can't. What I think is that what scares me is the kind of future that's kind of predicted in Star Wars. You know? Yeah. Or I recently read 1984, which is we're at 1984 now. I mean, if you think about the Internet and you think you have in your pocket a device every day, the phone which tracks you, which can be now turned on to listen to you without you acknowledging, which knows everything, your shop, your health history, everything about you, who you hang out with, everything that's possible you do. And you cannot live in a connected America without having an iPhone. And eventually it's going to be in your body.

Well, it eventually will be in your body. And eventually it'll be in your body. And in 1984, they had this device on your wall. It's a TV, so it's a two-way internet. So we're there. I think it's good and bad. I mean, I think it makes life a lot more convenient, but I think we better get the internet under control

because we're going to get to that point. I mean, it's just a part of life now. It has demonstrated it can really enable our get to that point. I mean, it's just a part of life now. It is demonstrated it can really enable our lives to be better. I mean, that's the reason iPhone is with everybody who carries it. It's not by law. It's because it's convenient. Because it's better.

It's got maps in it. It's got the internet in it. It's got – it's such a bargain. It's the cheapest thing you can get. I mean, really, for whatever you're paying for it, you're getting the world. You're getting interconnectivity to Bali. It's just very, very, very complicated. And it's very seductive.

Yeah. You know, like a TV screen. It's designed to be that. So I say you better get the regulation in there now. And the last people who are going to regulate these people's property are wealthy people or the internet themselves. These guys have no interest whatsoever despite the fact they've already got $236 billion in the bank in Ireland like Apple does or something like that. Those are inexact facts but that's –

Trevor Burrus I know what you're saying. Peter Van Doren So government is who we've got and government has done wonderful things and it's done blering things. And we've got a system of checks and balances there, however imperfect, of the three branches so that nothing gets too out of control. It goes back and forth. We won World War II through the government. We lost Iraq through the government. The government is doing a great job now, I think, with Ukraine.

But on the other hand, we could have had Trump, and he would let Russia run all over the place and actually – and then be dominant Europe, dominant Europe. We've got to just get out there and run for something. Go run for school board or go run for – just get yourself into some kind of local politics, you know, get yourself in a system and vote. John, we got to get you to the airport. Okay. We're about that time. I told you I'd look out for you.

I'm looking out for you. I really, really appreciate your time though. I really appreciate you being here and I really appreciate what you've done with Rolling Stone. And what I said is 100% true. with Rolling Stone. And what I said is 100% true. You guys and what you did, it helped give voice to people that didn't have one. It was the narrative for a lot of people that didn't feel like they were represented in any other way. And it has been an amazing thing for me and I appreciate you very much. Joe, thanks. First, it's a pleasure being here. A lot of fun to do it.

But thanks for what you just said about me, man. It was my life's work and I feel just honored and gratified and humbled to know that it worked and that you did something special. That you're proof that what we did worked. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, everybody.