As early as the late 1960s, Hip Capitalist Publisher Wenner was already apparently collaborating with record company executives of corporate media conglomerates like CBS, that wished to make a lot of money by exploiting the youth market of rock music fans. As Joe Hagan's 2017 Sticky Fingers book recalled:
"...Rolling Stone's relationship to the `Columbia Rock Machine' had grown increasingly tight, starting with its first advertisement in issue No. 8. Clive Davis, having ascended to president of CBS Records...viewed Wenner as an ally in building a new industry out of rock and roll, and he gave Rolling Stone its first steady advertising contract to keep the newspaper afloat...Davis put Rolling Stone into record stores through Columbia's distribution system, which...accounted for 15 percent of the newspaper's single-copy sales [in the late 1960s]...In addition, Jann Wenner was using Columbia's office in New York as a virtual bureau of Rolling Stone. In a letter to Bob Altshuler, the publicist for Columbia, Wenner thanked him for the `favors, the lunchs (sic), the tickets, and the use of your secretaries and office...'...Wenner...set up camp at Columbia to lay out a promotional ad for...a full-page in The New York Times..."
So, not surprisingly, when Abbie Hoffman and other Youth International Party/Yippie activists in the late 1960s U.S. antiwar Movement called upon U.S. music fans to protest against the Vietnam War, the System and the U.S. Establishment at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and participate in "Festival of Life" antiwar music concerts in Chicago, hip capitalist publisher Wenner urged Rolling Stone readers to stay away from both the antiwar movement street protests and the planned "Festival of Life" concerts and rallies in Chicago's parks.
In exchange for apparently acting as a marketing and public relations/propaganda tool of the U.S. Establishment's corporate media conglomerates' record company subsidiaries, by 1970 Rolling Stone magazine apparently began receiving additional funds from some of the same record companies whose special corporate interests it promoted. As Joe Hagan noted in his Sticky Fingers book:
"[In 1970] Ralph Gleason...recognized that Wenner was in real [financial] trouble. It was Gleason, Wenner said, who pointed him to the record labels; perhaps they could be convinced to help bail Wenner out of his financial woes. Wenner first approached Jac Holzman of Elektra and explained his situation. `I'd say,...' recounted Wenner,`...I need an advance of money, give me some money, I need money in the bank.'
"...Holzman became a strong financial booster of Rolling Stone, and Wenner put his artists, the Doors and the MC5 on the cover. Along with Clive Davis of CBS, who gave Rolling Stone more than 30,000 [equal to over $202,000 in 2020] in advance advertising and some free business consultation, Holzman agreed to help Wenner by explaining his situation to Steve Ross...who was rolling up the independent record labels under his corporate umbrella...(later renamed Warner Communications). Holzman was about to sell Elektra to Ross for $10 million [equal to over $68.1 million in 2020]...Ross owned Independent News, the magazine distributor...Independent agreed to cut Wenner a check for $100,000 [equal to over $661,000 in 2020]..."
In addition, according to the same book, "Wenner recounted in 1976" that "`then Clive and Jac each advanced me something like $25,000 [equal to over $170,000 in 2020] or $35,000 [equal to over $238,000 in 2020];'" and "Wenner said Gil Friesen of A & M weighed in with another $30,000 [equal to over $202,000 in 2020]. And "by the end of 1970, Wenner had...the financial backing of the American record industry...and...a new investor on the hook, Max Palevsky, chairman of the Xerox Corporation, a multimillionaire prepared to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into Rolling Stone in 1971..." So, not surprisingly, "a story line gelled in the underground press: Jann Wenner was the man who sold out the revolution for dirty record money;" and "The Yipster Times ran a story called `The Day Rolling Stone Sold Out To Xerox'" in the mid-1970s "claiming Xerox paid off Wenner's debts in exchange for opposing antiwar demonstrations." (end of part 3)
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