-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Blacklisted News, Secret History . . . From Chicago, '68, to 1984 ©1983 Youth International Party Information Service Bleecker Publishing POB 392 Canal St. Station New York, NY 10012 ISBN 0-912873-00-0 ----- ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE WAS BRIBED TO 'KNOCK CHICAGO PROTESTS "We always knew something like this was going on," said Abbie, examining the galleys for the newest Yippie book at the OVERTHROW offices, "but, we couldn't prove it." Of all the later revelations about Chicago, this one was the most important, because the same Xerox, Palevsky, Warner Bros. crew are all continuously emerging, all during the decade, all thru this book, as a key nexus of liberal control-the advance guard of cultural reaction. Like the other selections here, this story is positioned for the sake of the narrative; publication date is noted at the end of most articles. by Mike Chance Rolling Stone magazine was paid $100,000 in the spring of 1968 by the Xerox Corporation in return for a pledge not to support leftist demonstrations at the Chicago National Presidential Conventions that summer. The loan prevented the collapse of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, for its part of the arrangement, published several editorials decrying the "Festival of Life" and urging demonstrators to stay away from the convention. After the convention the editorials blamed the demonstrators for causing the trouble. The revelations were made by Ms. Susan Lydon to Yipster Times. Ms. Lydon is one of five principals who formed Rolling Stone when it began in the summer of 1967, along with her husband, rock critic Michael Lydon, Ralph Gleason, Jann Wenner and one other person whose name was unavailable at time of publication. Ms. Lydon and her husband had previously worked for the radical publication Ramparts. After the sell-out, Ms. Lydon left Rolling Stone for "personal and political disagreements with Jann Wenner." Ms. Lydon, who has also worked for Ms. magazine and numerous other popular publications, is currently in the public relations staff of the Arica Institute, a popular psychic growth movement. At the time the loan was made "sometime in the spring of 1968," the Rolling Stone magazine was staffed with leftist-oriented writers. Big names not only from Ramparts but from the relatively new Berkeley Barb and San Francisco Oracle were pouring articles on rock culture into Rolling Stone. The sudden declaration by Jann Wenner in the editorial section of the paper in May of 1966, two months before the convention, that "rock music and confrontation politics don't mix," was greeted with massive disapproval from the burgeoning left. Despite persistent rumors of a sell-out by someone at the highest managerial levels of Rolling Stone, there had been no confirmation until Ms. Lydon's statement. Max Palevsky, Xerox magnate, has been a Rolling Stone backer. It is known that he has personal holdings in the corporation. Palevsky, a liberal Democrat who backed McGovern in 1972 until the Miami Convention, at which time he quickly backed out of his commitments. This extent of his political dealings and their effect on Rolling Stone's politics has long been a subject of discussion among media observers. Insiders at Rolling Stone, and outsiders, have frequently accused Rolling Stone of getting its initial successful impetus from a shady deal. The most common story circulated had it that Warner Communications had struck the deal for $100,000 in the fall of 1970. (See March, 1976, YT). Warner Communications had pulled several culture ripoffs, including the ill-fated "Medicine Ball Caravan." At the time of the alleged 1968 loan, according to Ms. Lydon, Rolling Stone "was on the brink of bankruptcy." Circulation for the paper had begun to drop after the first few months, and major distributors refused to touch it. Without the loan the paper would have folded within weeks. After the Chicago Convention and Rolling Stone's attacks on the left, corporate record ad accounts began to soar for the hard pressed rag. Within a few months it was on its way to being the most successful magazine of the decade. Ramparts magazine, which took no Xerox bribes, has since folded. —YIPster Times, June 76 ===== JANN WENNER BI0 by Aron Kay "The YIP protest-in methods and means-is as corrupt as the political machine it hopes to disrupt." _Rolling Stone Magazine Editor Jann Wenner on May 11, 1968 "Rock writing at one time attracted some of the brightest talents of the Sixties generation of writers; it now is obvious that it draws only opportunists. "There have been numerous instances of pressure applied by record companies to get a certain performer on the cover of a certain magazine strictly on the basis of advertising volume, of pressure applied by magazines to obtain advertising, of pressure applied by writers to obtain junkets, of performers threatening or assaulting writers ... The record industry does exert a great deal of influence and can-and often does-decide that it's time a certain performer or group got a feature article." -Chet Flippo in 1974 Jann Wenner was born in 1946. His father, Edward Wenner, was a small-time capitalist whose firm marketed baby formula. Wenner's mother was a writer who was able to get two of her books published in the early 1960s: Back Away From the Stove and Daisy. Wenner's sister, Kate Wenner, attended Radcliffe. Jann Wenner graduated from an exclusive private school, Chadwick, in Palos Verdes, California. In 1964, he enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley and used the Free Speech Movement to advance his journalistic career. He was hired by NBC in the fall of 1964 as its on-campus reporter because of his personal acquaintance with many Free Speech Movement radicals. In 1967—after being fired by Ramparts Magazine for his lack of writing skill and his anti-communist political beliefs-Wenner borrowed $1500 from the jazz critic of the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle, Ralph Gleason. He also borrowed $6,000 from his mother, his stepmother, his father, and the parents of his future wife. With his $7,500 in borrowed money, Wenner put out the first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine with the goal of marketing the publication among young people and exploiting their collective interest in rock music and folk music. The first issue of Rolling Stone was only 24 pages in 1967. On the heels of his secret, deal with Xerox to attack the Yippies and discourage attendence at Chicago, Wenner offered his services as a public relations instrument of multi-millionaire rock super-star Mick Jagger. In 1969, a Rolling Stone office was opened in London. Mick Jagger agreed at that time to secretly finance the operations of London Rolling Stone. In 1969, also, after Oakland Sheriff's Deputies blew away innocent bystanders "on his doorstep" during People's Park, Wenner came out for his own, cultural version of the revolution. By 1970, Wenner's Rolling Stone, its $40,000 per month budget financed from large record company advertisements, began to drive underground rivals like EVO and KALEIDOSCOPE out of business. Distribution was handled through CBS's chain of Discount Record Stores. Given Rolling Stone's dependence on the large record companies for its continued existence, it's not surprising that record company executives like former CBS Records President Clive "Payola" Davis. began to exercise middle-aged veto power over the editorial content and editorial personnel of Rolling Stone. After Davis complained to Wenner about an unflattering review of Bob Dylan which appeared in Rolling Stone's July 23, 1970 issue, Wenner fired the writer, Griel Marcus. Despite the huge profits Wenner derived from his sale of Rolling Stone ad space for $2800 per page and direct revenue from paper sales, a series of unprofitable investments of his Rolling Stone-derived fortune brought Wenner and his magazine to the brink of financial collapse in August of 1970. In order to save himself and his magazine from bankruptcy in the summer of 1970, Wenner secretly met with the directors of Warner Communications Corp.—which distributes the Atlantic, the Elektra-Asylum, and the Warner Brothers record labels-and begged them for another loan. The Warner Communications Company directors secretly agreed to loan Wenner and his Rolling Stone Magazine $100,000—provided that he coordinate his publication with Warner's program for the discouragement of youth revolt and mass revolutionary political involvement in the 1970's. Today-while millions of working class young people suffer from poverty, joblessness, and cultural exploitation—Jann Wenner and his Rolling Stone Magazine continue to take in huge sums of money. Through its back page ad space alone, Rolling Stone takes in $5400 each issue. This income enables Wenner to earn $6 million/year and operate 6 Rolling Stone Magazine offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, and London. Jann Wenner's current personal worth of $30 million exceeds even the personal worth of Bob Dylan (which currently exceeds $20 million). Rent for Rolling Stone's swank San Francisco office at 625 Third Street (next door to the Wells Fargo Bank) is more than $75,000 per year. With the fortune he has derived from the marketing of youth, Wenner hopes to wield political power on a national level in the 1980s. For this reason, he has begun to develop intimate personal contacts with former John F. Kennedy speechwriter, Richard Goodwin, and with JFK's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, as well as with the pro-Zionist crowd around Bob Dylan and the left-liberal opportunist crowd around Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Bill Graham, Joan Baez, and David Harris. The tentative secret plan is to push through a bunch of New Deal-type reforms and crack down on all underground "terrorist" leftist freedom fighters. Like all the more enlightened members of his class, Wenner ultimately hopes, by ending the System's most glaring inequalities, to preserve his own Rolling Stone Magazine-based publishing empire from a working-class youth-led revolution. -YIPster Times, March '76 After Chicago, with the current of events running against cold warriors among the Rock masses, Wenner's '68 denounciation of 'Festival of Life' organizers came to be seen by the whole "new left," countercultural confluence which identified with Yippie! as a particularly egregious act of treachery. Yippie collectives, with Abbie and Jerry gamely insisting they were "non- leaders," continued to replicate like a political virus in the wake of the SDS break-up, taking in non-students as well. On November 15th, 1969, thousands of Yippies, Weatherpeople and others disregarded Mobe pacifists, beseiged the Justice Dept. and, as John and Martha Mitchell looked down from the roof, broke every window. On May Day, 1970, the Yippie New Nation flag was first unfurled on the Yale Green at New Haven by groups throughout the vast Rally for Bobby Seale and other Panthers on trial in New Haven. After the Kent State Massacre a few days later, crude New Nation flags became the new banner of insurrection. Then, on July 4th, 1970, Nixon called upon the same hardhats whose unions had urged them to beat up antiwar protesters near Wall Street on May 6th, to be the fascist shock troops to smash any unsightly counter-demonstrators at his official July 4th. Though Abbie and Jerry were immobilized by their (eventually to be overturned) Chicago convictions, Rennie Davis, Nancy Kurshan and a bunch of other YlPs backed an already-planned smoke-in as a counter- demonstration. pps. 1-2 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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