My story about Jann Wenner is apparently part of a
piece. I knew Jann in the late 1960s
when his Rolling Stone had just passed the 100,000 circulation mark.
I was a banker studying the investment potential in the San Francisco music scene. I took Jann to lunch. He asked me to help arrange a loan so he could buy out Ralph Gleason, his partner, a friend of mine, and the leading local pop music critic. When he told me he planned to buy Gleason out for $25,000 I said that the price was ridiculous, Ralph’s share was worth something in the hundreds of thousands --- I wouldn’t help him get a loan from my bank, The Bank of California.
Jann remembered my moral rejection of him. When The Seven Laws of Money was published in 1974, to widespread acclaim in the alternative press, only the Rolling Stone wrote a negative piece. Not just negative; nasty.
Just another Jann Wenner story.