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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd. It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. My guest is Joe

Hagan. He's written a book called Sticky Fingers, The Life and Times of Jan Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine.

Now, it's my belief that much of the fiction and poetry that you hear me talking about

are the result of a change in the culture. The change in the culture began, say, in the mid-60s, when it became important

to figure out a way to write about rock and roll and to write about movies. These were

valiant forms beating at the door of the culture, and the youngest writers were trying to figure out the new sound,

not just the new sound of a song,

the new sound of a sentence that would make for rock and roll criticism,

movie criticism, and then on beyond that, in the time between 1967 when it published

its first issue and now they published Hunter Thompson at Rolling Stone, they published

Tom Wolfe, They published major critics.

Tell me, you come to talk to Jan Wenner.

Did you find that he knew what he had done in this regard?

Well, yeah, he was proud of having published these people.

They were like, you know, jewels

and his crown, really, you know, especially Hunter Thompson, whose, you know, legacy he feels

...