

That wild energy is how, in 1967 when he was a 21-year-old enfant terrible, he created a magazine that chronicled a generation, serving up a flambé of music, drugs, alcohol, sex and politics. Wenner a letter about how working for Rolling Stone was “like being invited into a bonfire and finding out the fire is actually your friend.” He added, “Some people were fried to cinders, as I recall, and some people used the heat to transmogrify themselves into heroes.” I was tough, but I was also super-indulgent. “But I just would not take less than your really best effort.

“I wasn’t raving around tearing up people’s copy,” he said, looking relaxed in a blue linen shirt and black pants at his Montauk home in August. “More than anyone I know, he’s always just done what he wanted,” said his friend Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live.” He turned a darkroom into an in-house drug-dealing operation called the Capri Lounge, as a perk for staffers.

He gave out roach clips with subscriptions. His own mother told him he was the most difficult child she’d ever encountered. The founder of Rolling Stone magazine always had a baby face, but he was never timid. Rock may be dead, but Jann Wenner is still rolling.
