During her four-decade-long career, singer Linda Ronstadt seems to have covered it all: country, rock and roll, pop, jazz, opera, Broadway standards, big band and songs influenced by Mexican and Afro-Cuban Cultures. She was awarded 10 Grammys as well as the National Medal of Arts, and membership in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Linda Ronstadt in the documentary "Linda and the Mockingbirds"Not only was Ronstadt successful with solo performances, she recorded chart-hitting duets with many singers including James Ingram and Aaron Neville. With Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, she formed the group Trio, which released two albums.
Although she retired from singing in 2011 due to health reasons, Ronstadt has stayed busy. A recent project is the documentary "Linda and the Mockingbirds," which chronicles her 2019 trip to Mexico with students from Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy in San Pablo, Calif.
From her home in San Francisco, Ronstadt spoke with Next Avenue about the trip, the importance of preserving her Mexican-American culture and what she's up to now. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Next Avenue: Why did you want this documentary to be made?
Linda Ronstadt: It came about purely by accident. I was taking a trip to Mexico with thirty kids, ages seven to nineteen, who are with this cultural group that I work with called Los Cenzontles. They take dancing, singing, instruments and visual arts in Mexican culture. They make videos of their own to document their trips.
Another couple of people were making a documentary about me. I said, 'If you want to interview me, you have to come to Mexico.'
And they said, of course, you're Linda Ronstadt. We'll go wherever to film you. 
It was more interesting than filming me in the living room as a talking head. I think they saw the value in that.
But because they wanted to bring a film crew and we wanted to bring a film crew, it was crowded on the bus so I said, 'Let's just take one film crew and share it.' But then director James Keach decided he wanted to take over the Cenzontles film documentary. He liked it, and we wanted to do that, too, so it just came about very organically.
You've been a patron of Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy for twenty-six years now. How did you get involved with them?
I was walking along the street, and they were playing on the sidewalk for change. I heard them, and they were really good. They were playing a regional haka [dance], and in Mexico, if you go across the street you have a different rhythm culture, different art, different everything.
Really?
Oh, it's so regional, and the regions are very close together. I think there might be thirty different languages that they speak in Mexico. I know they have thirty different languages in Guatemala.
"It's important for them to know that their heritage is rich in cultural treasures — like music and poetry, and dance — and that those things are not necessarily just for performance."
So, they were singing both in Spanish and in one of the indigenous languages, and I know those styles and those traditions. They were really authentic. I said, 'Where did these people come from?' thinking they'd come up from Mexico. They were in the East Bay.
They were trying to get enough money to make a trip to Mexico to this certain region where they found these masters of different kinds of music that they're studying. They wanted to take the kids there and see where it came from. So, I said, 'I'll give you some money,' so I added another concert. I was having my tour then of my Mexican show, so I added a show and gave them the proceeds from it, and they were able to go.
I love to go over there [Los Cenzontles] because I learn so much from the kids, you know. I talked to the ambassador for Mexico to the United States and she said she saw them and she said, 'There's stuff that we're not even playing in Mexico anymore.' Los Cenzontles are the only ones that are playing it, and they feel like they've really become this preserver of cultural treasures.
 
 
Why was it important for these kids to make this trip?
It's important for them to know that their heritage is rich in cultural treasures — like music and poetry, and dance — and that those things are not necessarily just for performance. They're for social interaction and processing your own feelings and reclaiming who you are with dignity, precision and musical ability.
Those kids don't have to audition to get in there. They're not pre-selected for talent. They figure that everybody can play and sing if you're taught right. Of course, they're right. They play it right.
A ten-year-old doesn't play necessarily as well as the symphony player, but they play the music right, and so it works. They learn rules of traditional music carefully, and they work on it for years. But after they learn the rules, they can break them if they want to.
What do you hope they learned from that trip?
Most of them are not from northern Mexico, so they learned about it, and it's its own little domain. It has a lot of influence from Indian, French and German people. It's a real mixed bag.
"Sometimes, we'd go to somebody's wedding, somebody's ball or somebody's picnic. Picnics were the best."
My family were German and Mexican. My great-grandfather married a Mexican woman whose family had been there since the 1670s. The Sonoran Desert is one region that happens to have a border fence through it at this point, but for centuries it didn't — and we were very happy without the fence.
I remember going to lunch with my family in Nogales, which is the border city sixty miles from Tucson. We'd go have lunch with friends and then we'd go shopping because they had fabulous stores. They had beautiful things that were handmade and imported from all different regions in Mexico. Sometimes, we'd go to somebody's wedding, somebody's ball or somebody's picnic. Picnics were the best.
We had a great time, and my dad would visit with all of northern Mexico. He owned the hardware store that supplied all the ranches, and he helped the people in the city, so it was a very urban-rural combination place. The food was divine.
My grandfather was born in a little town called Banámichi, on the Sonora River Valley, and they have the richest soil in Mexico. They've farmed in the same land for a thousand years. They farmed with irrigation techniques that the Indians developed that are completely sustainable.
Wow. 
We built these two strips of alluvial soil down on the side of the river that's just like Egypt. In the middle of the harshest most unforgiving desert, there's miles of this green snake going down through the valley between the mountains. A lot of their farmlands are communally held, so they live together in a village, and they work the land in a cooperative way, so the culture is advisal and congenial and smart because they've refined these abilities over the centuries.
How long was the trip with Los Cenzontles?
About four days.
You all did a lot in four days. 
It was amazing. They were so interested in everything. They danced, sang so beautifully and played. They got to meet a group of semiprofessionals, a regional dance group that won all of the national contests in Mexico. But they were a performance group with a different pedagogy. They throw their skirts higher, and they're more decked-out. But the kids that we took down there played their own music.
The performing group danced to recorded music because they had to dance to a lot of different regions and they couldn't afford to have all the bands there all the time to rehearse. But there's something about the dancers dancing to live music, the music responding to the dancers and the dancers responding to the music that is more special.
When you recorded the album 'Canciones de Mi Padre,' you told the public about your Mexican-American heritage, you toured with the album and you paved the way for so many others today. And you just received the Legend Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. Do you see yourself as a trailblazer?
I didn't at the time. There were groups like Los Tigres del Norte, who can outsell The Rolling Stones in any country, but American/Anglo audiences haven't heard of them — even though they're the biggest group in the world. There have been groups like that, but they just weren't noticed in Anglo communities.
Mexican music tends to be dismissed like this is something you have in the background while you eat guacamole.
Why is it dismissed?
Because Mexican culture tends to be dismissed, even though it's had a profound effect on American culture.
Just the tiniest example is the cowboy suit, which comes from Mexican culture. Mexican food is the fastest-growing food culture in the world. Everybody knows what a taco is and everybody knows what a burrito is, but they don't know anything about the persons responsible for inventing it. And they don't know the best way to eat them either, which is in Sonora where they make the big, white-wheat tortillas by hand. They make it with an old variety of wheat, and they make it with lard and salt and it's so delicious. They bake it on a griddle over the fire.
That's what I grew up eating — it's completely different from a commercial tortilla that you buy.
What do you think about the push to involve people of diversity throughout all types of media? Why is it so important?
Because otherwise people are marginalized. The group that's been marginalized probably the most are the Native Americans — and the ones from California the most critically. There's no excuse for it. It's ignorance.
They wouldn't teach the history of slavery in the schoolbooks. I had to learn about how horribly slaves were treated. In the schoolbooks, they said, 'Oh, some people were nice to their slaves.' How do you be nice to a slave? The condition of the enslaved person is not nice to start with.
Fifteen years ago, I read that history, and I was just stunned that people were tortured through basically a reign of terror for four hundred years. When it stopped being slavery, it started being Jim Crow. And when it stopped being Jim Crow, it started being putting everybody in prison forever.
It's just one continuous spread. It has to stop. We're going to have a race war if it doesn't.
I think we're going to have a civil war. I don't think there's any way around it. Race will be drawn into it. It'll be a cultural war, but race will be drawn into it as it always is. It's always bad results.
You were originally diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but now doctors have said that you actually have progressive supranuclear palsy. Is that correct?
Yeah, that's right. It's a form of Parkinson's, and it's really easy for it to be misdiagnosed as regular Parkinson's disease. But it's a little bit different. For instance, it doesn't respond to any Parkinson's medicines.
Because of it, you can't sing. But has anything changed for you in a positive way because of what you've experienced?
I get to stay home and read all the time. That's pretty good.
Unfortunately, eye problems come along with the disease. But I'm still able to read, so that's a good thing.
I'm a homebody, basically, and I've traveled a lot of places. I don't need to travel so much anymore. It's very difficult to travel and to go out, so I pick my occasions like going out to the opera. But I can't do that now.
"I loved singing with the duet partners I've had. Singing with Aaron Neville is like being in heaven singing with an archangel."
And I'm hoping that by the time the pandemic is over, I am still able. But the disease takes away a lot of things. I like to knit and I like to sew and I like to embroider, and I can't do any of those things anymore.
There's nothing to do but accept it. No use fighting it and arguing with it.
What message do you hope that viewers who watch this documentary get out of it? 
I hope they understand that dehumanizing an entire group of people who are humans is a losing proposition. It deprives us of the richness of their culture and of their ability to incorporate into the mainstream of our culture. We're losing the gifts they can give us, and besides, it's mean.
I agree. Last question: Regarding the duets that you sang, do you have a favorite?
I did my best signing on a duet with Frank Sinatra, but it was really hard to sing a duet with him. His voice was in sort of rocky shape, but he was still dangerous. I had to figure out a way to slide around him and make it work. I was really pleased with the way it came out.
I loved singing with the duet partners I've had. Singing with Aaron Neville is like being in heaven singing with an archangel. I learned so much singing with him.
I probably learned the most from singing with Emmylou Harris. She taught me a great deal at a time when I really needed to learn it.
And John David Souther — I was really happy singing with him, too.
"Linda and the Mockingbirds" will be released digitally on Tuesday, October 20.



Linda Ronstadt on Preserving Her Culture

Michele Wojciechowski

In 2013, Linda Ronstadt and journalist Lawrence Downes were talking a lot; whether it was in her home in San Francisco, while in Mexico, or driving along an Arizona highway traveling through the Sonoran Desert. 
These conversations became the crux of the New York Times article that Downes wrote about the experience entitled "Linda Ronstadt's Borderland." But they became much more. 
Linda RonstadtThat story led to the two of them working on a book together. "Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands" features stories from Ronstadt's family, recipes, songs, and photographs by Bill Steen.
The two took more road trips through the Sonoran borderlands, which feels most like home to Ronstadt. They captured her memories and wrote about her history — family that came long before she was born.
Ronstadt spoke with us about why she did the book, about her family, and how music and food have been such an important part of her life.
What follows is our interview, edited for length and clarity.
Next Avenue: In "Feels Like Home," you talk a great deal about your family — your grandfather, your aunt — and you bring up different people in your family who were musical, with music being so personal and often sentimental. What was it like for you to both cover these musical memories that you had, as well as those about people you either knew when you were a child or who had lived before you were even born?
"The first band I remember hearing, I was two. It was a woman called La Niña de los Peines, which means The Girl with the Combs."
Linda Ronstadt: My great-grandfather was musical, and he taught my grandfather how to read and write music and he could compose and arrange, so there was a pretty broad music gene. You know, in his life, you didn't become a professional, you sang in the parlor. 
My grandfather formed a band in Tucson because there wasn't one. It doubled for military parades and for weddings and stuff like that. If you wanted music, you had to get my grandfather, who was a rancher. Because he was a rancher, he was allowed to get away with being a professional musician. I don't think he made any money doing it, it was just a hobby. They went on the road to California and did well, and people got the word. They would be standing at the railroad station on the way back when they stopped, and the town would come out.
It wasn't like he could carry a Walkman or iPod or iPad, and so he needed to go seek it out and hope to find people that knew how to play [the songs]. 
But people in my family think — the husbands all sing. They don't sing to be professional. They sing to enjoy singing, you know? They harmonize, and they play guitars together, and at every family gathering the guitars come out pretty fast.
What's a memory about music that when you think about it, it takes you back to that place in time?
Well, the first band I remember hearing, I was two. It was a woman called La Niña de los Peines, which means The Girl with the Combs. She was a Roma singer and she was the best singer that [the Romas] ever had. She was the Queen of Flamenco-style singing.
They had just been through World War II, and the Romas were treated terribly. They were just about eliminated, exterminated, and she sings about that pain. It was so immediate and so urgent that I felt it, you know, and I was two. I was just a kid and was curious about something and then, I'd turn on the radio and get "(How Much is That) Doggie in the Window?" and I thought, 'Is this serious?' It didn't have anything about World War II in it.
It just made an impression on me. Shortly after that, I heard Lola Beltrán, who was a premiere diva of Mexico. She was a ranchera singer and I really liked that. I wanted to do it when I was three.
How do you want people around the country to relate to this book? For example, growing up in the Southwest as you did has its own flavor. How would someone in the Midwest, or East Coast or West Coast relate to this? 
Well, I think of it as so regional. Everything in Mexico is regional. It's a very diverse country. You walk two blocks and people's clothes change, the music changes, and the food changes. So, [the book] is not relating to general Mexican food. It's relating to the music and to the food of the Sonoran Desert.
The Sonoran Desert is a tough environment to live in, but it's very productive if you know what you're doing. The Indians lived there for centuries successfully because there's a river, and they knew how to irrigate the river. It's like the Nile Valley. The soil is amazingly rich. It's the richest soil in Mexico. But it's in the middle of the ferocious desert. 
The flavor of food is totally different. Like a tortilla, which is actually on my list of foods that I can't live without. They're so good, the tortillas they make there. Tortillas are made of wheat flour. The ones they know how to do, they pat them out to be as big as steering wheels, and you can see through them, actually. They're tissue-thin, and they're flaky. They have a beautiful taste, the wheat tastes good, and they're made with lard — flour, lard and salt. Lard has less cholesterol than butter. 
"The flavor of food is totally different. Like a tortilla, which is actually on my list of foods that I can't live without." 
I read that in your book.
The only thing about lard is you have to have it from a healthy pig or else it's going to taste [bad]. 
There's a lot of nostalgia throughout this book. Was that difficult? Was it wonderful? Was it bittersweet? What was it like for you?
To me, writing is just hard work and staying at it. I fortunately had Lawrence, who is such a wonderful writing partner. He has infinite patience, and he knows how to walk into a library and do research. I'd rather read at home and get my own education, so I don't know how to use any of those research facilities. He knows how to do all of it. He even found an article about my great-aunt and my dad. There were articles in the New York Times. 
Oh, wow.
So, he's good. The way it worked is that I wrote the first couple of pages just about being in the book and my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and then he started writing to talk about the history of my grandfather, military history, and stuff like that, and we put it together. Then I worked from the sentences that he did, but sometimes we needed the extra modifiers. 
So, he added and I added. He added good things. And we sat side by side in my living room, and he'd write a section, and I'd be writing another section. I'll give you an example.
I was writing a section about my friend who died at 101. She was a sort of fashion maven of Tucson. She had a dress store. It was beautiful. I was writing about her daughter, and in describing her, I described her as having hair that was crinkled. And so, Lawrence sent me some things and he described something as crinkled, but it wasn't hair. I wrote him back — I used 'crinkle,' can't use 'crinkle.' I come before you. [she laughs] So, he got rid of 'crinkle.' 
And then the editors said we don't think you can use 'frock' here. I said, 'No, we're using 'frock.' So, he got to have frock and I got to have crinkle.
Is there any instrument, within the kind of music you grew up with, that you never learned to play, but wish you had?
The jarana. You usually use it as a rhythm instrument. It's shaped like a narrow guitar with a long neck, has double strings. It's like nothing else.
In the book, you talk a lot about your own heritage. What would you say to encourage others to look into their own personal heritage?
We're a product of the people that came before us, and they know now that memories, emotions, experiences come down in your DNA. If your great-grandfather was an organ player, but he played the pipe organ, you might get from his yearning for that, or if your grandfather wanted to be a professional singer, you might get that.
"We're a product of the people that came before us, and they know now that memories, emotions, experiences come down in your DNA." 
My dad was offered a job with Paul Whiteman's orchestra, and he didn't take it because the Depression was on and my grandfather needed him at the ranch. But he had a beautiful voice. He might have been a professional someday — but it might have ruined his life. I'm sure he did much better off staying home in Tucson with us. He might have had that wish and I might have inherited it, I don't know.
If you could relive one experience that you had that took place that you wrote about, what would it be?
Oh, singing with a Mariachi group that toured with me.
If you could meet anyone in your family who had passed away before you were born, who would it be and why?
It would be my great-grandmother because I'd be curious about what happened. They were around in a significant point in history for USA-Mexican relationships because they went through the 1910 Revolution, and they went through the Indian Wars. My great-grandfather was a colonel in the Army. They had been trying to kill the Apaches for 100 years. They didn't stop until 1946, the year I was born. 
I don't know how much my grandfather and my great-grandmother had to do with it. I know he didn't want to be in the Army anymore, at some point. There was a genocidal campaign against the Apaches, and unfortunately a lot of the other [American] Indians joined in; the Apaches had come down pretty recently — only a hundred years before in the North. They got in a lot of fights with the local Indians. It's a pretty tough world out there in the Sonoran Desert.
But it has amazing comforts, and people band together and they help each other out. In Mexico, they build a village. They all live in the village, and they help each other, and it's a very different from the entitled kind of society we have now. They're really nice people and smart. They know how to fix anything or build anything.
There's one other thing I want to say. In the back of the book, there's a playlist. It has a description of what all the songs are because some of them are not meant to be for professional use. That's just stuff we did. And some of it is [from] other artists. It wasn't a complete list. 
Why would this book make a great gift, Linda?
Well, there's a lot of pictures. You don't have to read it. There's a lot of pictures.


Linda Ronstadt Talks About What Feels Like Home

Fans of Neil Diamond grieved this week to learn that the longtime pop singer has canceled the remainder of his 50th anniversary tour following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.
“Very sad news,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “My brother and I listened to Neil Diamond in the back of the family station wagon growing up. So many wonderful memories with his music. Need a cure for Parkinson’s.”
The creator of such classics as Sweet Caroline, Song Sung Blue and Cracklin’ Rosie said in a statement on his website that his doctor recommended the move.
“It is with great reluctance and disappointment that I announce my retirement from concert touring. I have been so honored to bring my shows to the public for the past 50 years.” The remaining shows were scheduled for New Zealand and Australia beginning in March.
What Is Parkinson’s?
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disorder, meaning it progressively causes nerve cells to lose function and die. Those cells produce dopamine, which coordinates movement. Parkinson’s affects about 1 million Americans.
Symptoms vary, but often include:
Resting tremor, which can worsen with stressSlowness of movementsProblems with balanceA shuffling gaitLimb stiffnessDifficulty chewing or swallowingCramped handwritingSpeech changesApathy and depressionConstipationSleep problemsLoss of sense of smellMany people with Parkinson's may also develop dementia or signs of cognitive impairment. "As Parkinson's brain changes gradually spread, they often begin to affect mental functions, including memory and the ability to pay attention, make sound judgments and plan the steps needed to complete a task," according to the Alzheimer's Association.
The average age of onset of Parkinson’s symptoms is 60, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. (Diamond turned 77 on Jan. 24.) 
Parkinson’s is not always easy to diagnose. In fact, as many as 40 percent of people with the disease are not diagnosed, the Cleveland Clinic says; 25 percent are misdiagnosed. 
How to Cope with a Parkinson’s Diagnosis
Currently, there are no therapies to slow or stop the disease. 
But a number of medications have been developed to treat Parkinson’s symptoms. When drugs can’t control the effects, surgery may be considered. One surgical option is deep brain stimulation, which involves placing an electrode in the brain connected to a pacemaker of sorts under the skin on the chest, the Cleveland Clinic says. The idea is to block the impulses that cause shaking. 
It is unclear whether lifestyle changes may also make a difference for individuals with Parkinson’s. But advocates say that a good diet and getting enough exercise are important for overall health and may impact how well medications work.
Researchers are currently conducting studies on the effects of exercise and physical, behavioral and cognitive therapy for Parkinson’s, the Cleveland Clinic says. Patients who are interested should ask their doctors if a clinical trial for these and other therapies might be available to them. 
Other Celebrities Living with Parkinson’s
Singer Linda Ronstadt announced in 2013 that she also was retiring because of Parkinson’s. She told media that she “can’t sing a note.” 
“No one can sing with Parkinson’s disease,” Ronstadt told AARP.  “No matter how hard you try.” The disease affects facial expressions and eventually the ability to speak.
That statement disappointed some experts, who said that advances in voice therapy have helped many (though whether it would keep a top vocalist at a performing level is another question).
“Speech and physical therapy is poorly recognized for its benefits” to Parkinson’s patients, Dr. Zoltan Mari of the Cleveland Clinic told AARP. “Too often doctors just prescribe drugs.”
Actor Michael J. Fox went public with his Parkinson’s 20 years ago and became an outspoken advocate for patients. He started the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, whose goal is to cure the disease by funding research. 
Fox and his doctors have found a combination of drugs that keep his symptoms under control enough for him to play characters with Parkinson’s, according to his foundation’s website. 
As for Diamond, he said he planned to continue writing, recording and working on other projects “for a long time to come.” 
He thanked his many fans, with a subtle nod to Sweet Caroline: “You will always have my appreciation for your support and encouragement. This ride has been ‘so good, so good, so good’ thanks to you.”
The Recording Academy announced Jan. 19 that it would present Diamond with its Lifetime Achievement Award this summer.


Neil Diamond and Coping with Parkinson's Disease

Emily Gurnon

I went to lunch with my parents last week. I sat in the back seat, where I was 12  all over again, while my mother drove home from the restaurant and my dad “corrected her mistakes.” He really is the worst backseat driver. Until Dad’s macular degeneration set in, he was always in the driver’s seat. Whether he should have been or not. As they have for more than 50 years, Mom pulled into their Long Island driveway, stopped to let me out, then continued into the garage.
Lynne and Irving KlosnerBut I’m not 12; I’m 56 and a lifetime has passed. I took a good look into the garage. Next to the car, walkers and canes stood where bicycles used to be. I thought how this house— the one I grew up in with my two sisters, the one where my sisters and I took our kids for a little loving and babysitting from Grandma, and now where we go with our grown children to help Grandma and Grandpa do laundry, get things off the top shelf or bend down and get things out of cabinets — could be a two-minute montage of my parents’ lives. Like the ones you see in romantic comedies where the couple falls in love. Walking in the rain, playing games at a carnival, trying on funny hats in a department store, and finally the long-awaited kiss. I’m still working on the soundtrack.
Snapshots of a Home Then and Now
As usual, I walked in through the garage door. The two sets of staircases faced me. One goes down to the basement, my father’s lair, where he proudly keeps his computer for his photography and Photoshop work, and his exercise equipment.
In my imaginary montage, the camera focuses in on the stationery bike. Wavy dissolve to: Dad when he was in his mid-60’s biking away with a sweatband around his head, another time to me in the living room with a baby on my lap while my father walks laps around the living room in his bathrobe to cool down after his morning workout. Another time dissolve to elementary school-age kids (grandkids) playing on the bike. Dissolve back to present day: for Dad, at nearly 91, just getting out of bed is exercise enough.
The other steps go up to the kitchen, living room and dining room level. It’s hard to climb those stairs now because a motorized chair my parents need to make the trek takes up most of the stairway.
Wavy dissolve to: My teenage older sister and I having a fight about whether the canned dog food in the fridge had gone bad and whether we should feed it to the dog. We’re furious, both refusing to give in.  As she crouches to put the food in the bowl, I take it out and throw it at her. And, guess what, she throws it back. It goes on like this for a couple of minutes, the dog looking on, very hungry and confused. Finally, we stop, look at each other, look at the dog, look at the dog food everywhere and burst out laughing.
Rooms Are Adapted Over the Years
And now I look at the upper level of this split-level home that looks exactly like all the others on the block. The top level holds three bedrooms. The little room was mine because I was the baby. My two older sisters shared the room next door, until the eldest reached the age where she demanded her own room. Just like that episode of The Brady Bunch where Greg gets his room in the attic. My parents put up a wall around the den and, voilà, a private room.
Back in the day, my room was filled with Beatles posters and a huge stereo. My sisters’ room held make-up and hair brushes, and you could hear Linda Ronstadt wafting through the walls. Cut to:  My sisters and I are grown and our rooms are repurposed. These rooms are still for kids, only now it’s the six grandkids — five boys and a girl. The girl is mine. My room comes full circle and becomes the nursery again, complete with crib and changing table.
My sister’s room, (she of the dog-food fight), becomes the playroom for the toddling grandchildren, filled with Duplos and waffle blocks, and a treasure chest of toys. Our eldest sister’s room is turned back into the den, minus tearing down the walls. The kids watch Pokémon, Power Rangers, The Power Puff Girls or whatever else strikes their fancy. At this point, the garage is filled with strollers, porta-cribs, wiffle ball bats and ride-on toys. You would think my parents were running a day care center.
As our kids grew, Duplos turned into Legos, Yugi Oh Cards, and then board games. The kids all knew they would be playing a hot game of Othello with Grandma, and they would always win, or the lightning speed card game “Spit,” which, of course, they would win, too. The house was filled with the grandkids’ backpacks. All the kids’ favorite foods lined the fridge and the snack drawers.
Remembering a Good Life
Time marches on and the youngest grandchild, my daughter, is nearly 20. My room/grandkids’ nursery has now become my mother’s roost. She has a desk with a computer where she emails jokes to her friends and checks on her Facebook newsfeed, and a TV. The Legos and all the other toys have been replaced with a rocking chair and a daybed. The fridge doesn’t hold much in the way of snacks. There are safety bars in the shower, and motorized chairs on all the staircases.
It’s a good life. And as for that soundtrack, as the camera pulls back and out the door, the music swells and we hear The Beatles singing “In My Life” over the sounds of teenage girls getting ready for dates, teenagers honking car horns outside the house, family parties, anniversary cakes, bridal showers, brises and a baby naming. And finally, the couple’s long-awaited kiss.


Then and Now: Scenes from a Childhood Home

Dana Klosner-Wehner

For anybody who fears that Taylor Swift Mania spells the end of our beloved western civilization, I want you to meet Reese McQueen. Reese is a 20-year-old biology major in the Honors program at Stony Brook University. She was the valedictorian of her high school class in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is an aspiring genetic counselor. In short: a sure winner.
Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, racking up ticket sales of $123 million in its first weekend. And Reese is also a merch-consuming, lifelong Swiftie. So of course Reese jumped on her computer when tickets went on sale last year for Taylor's 2023 Eras Tour — and she attended the May 26 show at MetLife Stadium in northern New Jersey.
I wondered why Taylor means so much to Reese, who has been a fan of Taylor since she was five years old, and millions of people.
"As Taylor grew up, so did I," Reese pointed out. "Although she was 14 years older than me, Taylor was like a big sister in a way, offering support and relatability that a young girl needed when growing up. Despite getting slandered by the ruthless, sexist media throughout her whole career, her confidence did not waver, and she served as an inspiration to keep pushing to achieve what you want, even when the world does not want you to. No matter what happens in my life, I know I can always turn to Taylor's music in times of joy, sadness, love and loneliness."
"No matter what happens in my life, I know I can always turn to Taylor's music in times of joy, sadness, love and loneliness."
Isn't that what an earlier generation of young women might have said about Joni Mitchell? Or Carole King? Or Carly Simon? Or Linda Ronstadt? Or Aretha Franklin? You bet. And society was better for it.
One more reassuring point to note about Reese. Can you guess whom she gave her coveted ticket, which might have fetched thousands of dollars, to?
"I took my Mom," she said.
I rest my case. With fans like that, we should celebrate that Taylor Swift is arguably the most successful and acclaimed musical star on the planet.
After crashing Ticketmaster when her concert tickets went on sale a year ago, Taylor routinely filled U.S. football stadiums seating 80,000 people. Most recently, "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, racking up ticket sales of $123 million in its first weekend. Oh yeah, Taylor is also the most recognizable football fan in the country, rooting on her new boyfriend Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.
A Sense of Belonging
Whether or not you love the music, identify with her deeply personal lyrics or pretend to understand the fuss, the core of Taylor's immense popularity centers on our desire to belong to something — anything. We need our heroes. We want them to be better than we are. Taylor joins the tradition of Elvis Presley's magnetism, John, Paul, George and Ringo's Yeah-Yeah-Yeah revolution, Bob Dylan's anthems, Michael Jackson's Moonwalk and Prince's Revolution.
Reese McQueen and her mom Janine dressed in honor of Taylor Swift's 'Reputation' eraWe all want to have fun. We want to forget, for a little while, our troubles and the upheaval seen in so many corners of the larger world. And what the heck is wrong with that?
I saw that on the faces of Taylor's Swifties Nation on the evening of Oct. 21, when I sat in an Imax movie theater in Midtown Manhattan and watched "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour," the ballyhooed Taylor Swift film extravaganza capturing the excitement, self-congratulation and sheer happiness of witnessing Taylor Swift's 2023 Eras Tour.
I sat right in there, among all of the Swifties, a blissed-out crowd consisting of jubilant preteen girls and women of all ages — middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students and, oh yes, the odd Boomer.
Wait. Check that: "Witnessing" is the wrong word. These are people who came to the blockbuster movie (and the concerts) to participate in all of the fun.
They dress up to look like Taylor did in one of her eras. They wear lots of lipstick and bracelets.
I sat right in there, among all of the Swifties, a blissed-out crowd consisting of jubilant preteen girls and women of all ages.
No matter their age, they all share the same characteristics. They checked their cynicism at the door. They wanted to be happy for the 2-hour-and 47-minute duration of the film (shortened from the three hour-plus concert to allow as many showings a day as possible).
"Taylor has always been insanely integrated into her fanbase, treating her fans as her friends and writing songs that seem to be entries from a personal diary," Reese McQueen noted.
Whither Taylor Swift
At the height of Beatlemania, a stunned John Lennon remarked, "How long are you gonna last? Well, you can't say! You can be big-headed and say, 'We're gonna last for 10 years.' But as soon as you've said that, you think, 'We'll be lucky if we last for six months.'"
What about Taylor? Will she have a kind of endless popularity, like The Beatles? Or will she succumb to the pressures of mass stardom? Will she self-destruct and wind up as another sad and tragic casualty of fame, like Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and Janis Joplin?
Taylor, fortunately, seems to have a strong, trustworthy support system. She seems to be having a ball. She looked completely in charge during the Eras concert movie.
I'll make a not-so-bold prediction: Taylor will survive. In fact, she will thrive and flourish. 
She looks happy to cut loose in a luxury box and cheer the Chiefs when Travis Kelce makes a big play, like anybody's loyal girlfriend might do.
It has been said that rock and roll is an easy business to lose your mind in. But look at the Rolling Stones — on top again with the release of their first studio album in 18 years. Joan Baez, 82 years young, is the subject of a critically acclaimed new documentary of her life. Paul McCartney, yet another distinguished octogenarian, is hitting the road once again.
I'll make a not-so-bold prediction: Taylor will survive. In fact, she will thrive and flourish. Taylor, who turns the ripe old age of 34 on Dec. 13, has a lot to look forward to.


Worlds Collide: A Curious Boomer Attends Taylor Swift's New Eras Tour Concert Film

Jon Friedman

On November 21, 1978, I saw Bruce Springsteen for the first time. I was a freshman at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and the wild boy I was dating had scored 13th-row tickets to hear some guy I'd never heard. (Yes, Born to Run had been released three years earlier and The Boss had landed on the covers of Time and Newsweek. What can I say? I’d never listened to him.)
This past April 23, I saw Bruce again — at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, 38–gasp–years after I got my first fix. I brought my cousin Brenda, who was a Springsteen virgin, just as I had been those many years ago. It was a rush watching her joyful astonishment as he played song after song, 35 in all. It was also a reminder of all that has happened in my life, the highs and the lows, in the nearly 40 years I’ve been a fan.
Back in the fall of ‘78, with a bright future lying in wait, I was focused on school, yes, but also fun. Animal House had come out that summer and fraternity toga parties were all the rage; I was wearing only a leotard and a sheet and downing punch when I met Chris, a junior with an appealing gap-toothed smile, a roguish attitude and a fast car.
Up until the night of the concert, my musical tastes had veered toward James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, but Chris was exciting and new and I was up for anything he suggested, even when that meant him driving to an empty parking lot late at night, gunning his car and spinning around, tires screeching.
A Fan Is Born
I’m sure Chris must have tried to clue me in to what I was going to experience during that night’s Darkness tour, but when we entered Northwestern's McGaw Memorial Hall, I had no idea what I was in for. There was no opening act, just Springsteen and the original E Street Band: Steven Van Zandt; Garry Tallent; Roy Bittan; Max Weinberg and Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, now both gone.
That night, Bruce’s 22-song power drive would introduce me to Badlands, Jungleland, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born to Run. As anyone who’s seen The Boss on stage will attest, it was a jaw-dropping, life-affirming experience; I became a convert and would go on to see him in several venues, including Atlanta’s Fox Theater and Madison Square Garden.
The next day, I went out and bought everything he’d released to date, from Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. to Darkness on the Edge of Town. My relationship with Chris fizzled a few months later, but the ties that bound me to Bruce would stand the test of even the rockiest of times.
Life Intervenes
I’ll admit to taking a Springsteen breather for several years in between. Born in the USA, released in 1984, would be the last of his albums I would buy for quite some time. It was the same year I moved from my newspaper job in small-town Colorado to an editing gig in Manhattan, where I focused on my career during the day and hit the clubs at night, with Madonna and Michael Jackson supplying the score. I was in my 20s and didn’t have time for marathon sessions spent studying an album’s lyrics till I knew every word, and New York radio did an awful job of showcasing artists like Springsteen.
In my 30s, I married a guy from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who’d been exposed to disco while I was dancing in the dark. We enjoyed a lot of music together, led by Lucinda Williams, but he didn’t share my enthusiasm for Springsteen or stadium concerts. So I watched as Bruce came and went, tour after tour. Despite the fact that I was working at Entertainment Weekly, where the music critics would share his latest tunes with me, I lost that part of myself.
Then, in my 40s, we adopted our son; just before his fifth birthday, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. By then, my employer TV Guide had laid me off and all my energy went into being a special-needs mom — an advocate who would fight for the right diagnosis, schooling and therapy. I had no time for Bruce or much of anything else, for that matter, let alone knowing which new album had been released or when he would be touring.
Endings and Beginnings
The last time I’d seen Bruce before Barclays, at Madison Square Garden, my marriage was already on the rocks, but that didn’t prevent me from buying us tickets. We had seen him once before, during happier times, and I wanted to escape my problems with a few hours devoted to singing at the top of my lungs.
But a few years later, I could no longer deny that the marriage was over. Now I’m in my 50s, separated, with my son away at boarding school, and trying to grab hold of the things once again that made me “me.” That has included rekindling long-neglected friendships and rejoining the Bruce brigade.
So there I was that Saturday night at Barclays Center with the rest of the fanatical crowd, which consisted of everyone from bearded hipsters to middle-aged types like me, some bringing their kids along for the ride.
Turns out Bruce is wearing 66 much better than I am 56; while the icon performed in boots for three-and-a-half hours straight, I wore running shoes to baby my creaky knees. But what Bruce and I do share is a lot more life experience. We’ve both become parents, both lost people close to us, both been through the heartache of love gone wrong.
A Rush of Memories
Of course there were the songs that had the rowdy crowd up on its feet for most of the concert, many of which were performed in ’78, The Ties That Bind, Cadillac Ranch and Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) among them. But it was the slower, sadder songs that touched me in a way they couldn’t have 38 years earlier. When Springsteen said The River is about time flowing by, I nearly cried.
Now that my industry has imploded and I’m trying to figure out how to remake my career, Bruce singing “lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy” cut me like a knife. Meanwhile, Fade Away, which spoke to the death of a relationship, and Hungry Heart, about our craving for love and companionship, touched on my loneliness after the end of a 20-years-plus marriage.
Yet something about the band’s high-octane performance, the adrenaline rush of the crowd, and my bellowing “Bruuuuce!” helped me defy the years. And for that, I’m forever in The Boss’ debt.


38 Years of Fandom: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen

Beth Arky

Do you remember what you watched on TV on Monday, May 16, 1983?
If I were to start singing
People say I’m the life of the party
Because I tell a joke or two . . .
Would that spark any memories?
How about if I asked if you to recall The Temptations waging a “Battle of the Bands” with The Four Tops? Witnessing reunions of The Supremes and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles?
How about the very first time Michael Jackson — yes, the Michael Jackson — ever performed his signature move, the Moonwalk?
(MORE: The 15 Songs That Defined the Boomer Generation)
All of this and more took place on Monday, May 16, 1983 as NBC broadcast Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever to commemorate the 25 anniversary of the greatest record label.
The Best of Motown
Unseen on television for decades, PBS is bringing the legendary concert to a PBS station near you. An updated version of Motown 25: Yesterday – Today – Forever, will premiere on most public television stations at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday, Feb. 28 (check your local listings), then will repeat immediately following. TJ Lubinsky, executive producer and co-host of public television’s My Music series has also created a 7-CD set of original Motown hits, classic album tracks, and rarities to accompany the airing of this extraordinary TV special that won a George Foster Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for Best Variety Program.
To say that this program is a must-see is putting it mildly. This is the music of our generation, the songs sung by the legendary artists we grew up with.
 
My Guy — Mary WellsHeat Wave — Martha and The VandellasI Want You Back — The Jackson 5You Really Got a Hold on Me — The MiraclesUptight — Stevie WonderGet Ready — The TemptationsI Can’t Help Myself — The Four TopsMarvin Gaye doing an epic version of What’s Going On (He would be murdered less than a year later.)Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, replete with the opening pose with the fedora, black sequin jacket and glove, to the moonwalk routine in the song's bridgeAnd, yes, The Tracks of My Tears which featured a duet by Smokey Robinson and Linda Ronstadt(MORE: 15 More Songs That Defined the Boomer Generation)
​Music Nostalgia 
Trust me, memories will keep flooding back to you because music is where memory lives and our young adult years are tied so intrinsically to these songs and those times. For the past 10 years, my colleague Craig Werner and I have been cataloguing the music-based memories of Vietnam veterans for our soon-to-be-published book We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War. Hundreds of veterans have affirmed the staying, and healing, power of songs like My Girl, Nowhere to Run, What’s Going On, Tracks of My Tears and many, many more. The music sustained us as soldiers/veterans and connected us as a generation.
For me, the nostalgia goes even deeper. I was lucky enough to be elected co-chairman of the social committee at tiny Bethany College in Bethany, W.Va. in early 1967. That would result in, among other things, my having my hands on the hips of a pink-suited Junior Walker of Shotgun fame (he’s in the Motown 25 show) as he led a locomotion line through the audience when he played at my small college.
But the most amazing thing was that my co-chair, Ken Miller, and I had won the first-ever campus-wide election for social chairman in large part because our campaign pledge to the students of Bethany College was that "we'd bring Smokey and The Miracles to campus" if we were elected.
Smokey and The Miracles
Well, elected we were and thanks to Kenny's contacts in nearby Pittsburgh, Pa., we booked Smokey and The Miracles to appear at Bethany’s Rhine Field House on a gloomy March Sunday in 1967. In addition, we had to drive from Bethany to the hotel in Pittsburgh where The Miracles were staying, bring them (Smokey, Pete Moore, Bobby Rogers and Ronnie White) to Bethany, do the Sunday night concert, and then drive them back to Pittsburgh.
While I don't remember much about the ride to or from the concert, I do remember the lilt of Smokey's voice when we met him in the lobby of the Omni William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh and how he took his gloves off to shake hands. His hand was soft and warm.
"Hi, I'm Smokey," he said in his sweet voice.
And we were off!
Given how long ago 1967 is and the fact that I was "working" during the concert that night, I don't remember much about their set except they sang all their biggest hits and even premiered The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage that night.
(MORE: 10 Boomer-Era Singers for a Millennial's Playlist)
But what I do remember most vividly was what happened after the concert. The guys’ (Smokey’s then wife Claudette Rogers-Robinson wasn't with them) "dressing room" was the boys' locker room in the Bethany College gym, and Kenny and I waited for them on the bleachers after they changed and the crowd had cleared out. I watched as they walked slowly, single-file, toward us from the locker room across the gym floor that just minutes ago had been filled with almost a thousand adoring fans. A basketball backboard and hoop was stationed behind and above the bleachers where we were sitting. I noticed Pete and Bobby looking up at the hoop as they headed in our direction.
By the time they reached us, Pete shyly said, "Man, I would love to play some ball right now. I haven't shot any hoops for a long time."
I thought Pete was joking but then I saw that Bobby and Ronnie were nodding their heads. I turned toward Kenny and Smokey to see what they thought. Smokey waved at us.
"Go ahead and knock yourself out," he laughed. "I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter."
And he sat. And so did Kenny who wasn't much of a basketballer. But I was a player and was thrilled by the prospect, regardless of what time it was. I raced to the locker room and came back with a new Wilson basketball. We quickly collapsed the bleachers (moving Smokey and Kenny) and squared off — Pete and me against Ronnie and Bobby.
Our dress shoes sounded funny and out of place on the hardwood floor and we slipped and slid a little too much. But our inner city playground basketball genes eventually took over and the next thing I knew we were all down to our T-shirts, sweating, dribbling, shooting, hustling and talking trash.
We played to 7 by ones and split two games. Bobby was taller than the three of us and was killing us on the boards, tipping in missed shots and grabbing rebounds. As we geared up for the rubber match, Smokey's voice, not as lilting and sweet as before, rumbled across the gym.
"Game over! We gotta get back!"
We slung our shirts and jackets over our shoulders and began to head out. I looked behind me to see Bobby Rogers waving at me to throw him the basketball.
"You gotta make your last shot," he smiled at me as he caught the pass and banked in a short jumper.
Bobby and Ronnie are now dead. As are Mary Wells and almost all of The Four Tops and The Temptations. And Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson.
But you can see them this Saturday on PBS as the way we want to remember them. Smiling. Singing. Entertaining.
All of them making their last shot.


The Best of Motown, 25 Years Later

Doug Bradley

In 1991, Michael J. Fox, then 30, received a diagnosis of an unusually early-onset case of Parkinson's disease. The beloved, bankable star of the NBC sitcom Family Ties and the Back to the Future films kept the neurodegenerative disorder a secret from the public for almost seven years, even while shooting several seasons of the ABC series Spin City. When Fox revealed that he had the condition, his millions of fans did not want him to go away.
He never really has. Despite what every Parkinson's patient and caregiver would recognize as the condition's tics and freeze-ups, as well as the up-and-down cycles of its medication, Fox has taken on recurring roles and made guest appearances on shows like The Good Wife, Scrubs and Boston Legal.
 
But his primary focus has been his charity, the 13-year-old Michael J. Fox Foundation. No commonplace Hollywood vanity project, the organization has raised more than $350 million for research into Parkinson's diagnosis, symptoms and treatment.
Parkinson's affects nerve cells in the brain controlling muscle movement. Specifically, it kills or inhibits the functioning of neurons that produce the chemical dopamine, which sends signals coordinating how the body moves. Such symptoms as trembling limbs and stiff, slow movements and speech gradually worsen as the disease progresses.
(MORE: Holly Robinson Peete's Most Challenging Role: Sandwich Generation Caregiver)
Just last week, Fox's foundation awarded a $1.35 million grant to finance clinical testing of a drug to treat constipation in Parkinson's patients, a fairly common symptom. Later this year, it will launch a 600-patient study to discover how two recently identified genetic mutations affect the condition's progress, a project reflecting new interest in how such biomarkers may lead to new means of not only predicting who will have the disease, but possibly how to cure it.
And now the de facto face of the nation's 1 million-plus Parkinson's patients will seek to change the way Americans view the condition as he returns to prime time in the new NBC sitcom The Michael J. Fox Show perhaps the most-anticipated new show of the fall season.
"I wasn't doing a lot of work," Fox joked during an appearance this spring on The Late Show With David Letterman, "and I just thought, 'As long as I play a guy who has Parkinson's, I can do anything.'"
Fox plays a familiar character: a star, in this case popular New York City TV newsman Mike Henry, who comes out of retirement and goes back on air despite having Parkinson's. In the premiere, we learn that Fox's character has been driving his wife and three children crazy since he began staying home full time. In a bid to boost his former station's ratings and save his family's collective sanity, his old boss colludes with his wife to persuade him to go back to work.
The funniest bit involves his protests over the station's plan to promote his return through schmaltzy promos showing him in slow motion backed by inspiring music. Other gags rely heavily on the Parkinson's symptoms Fox exhibits, such as when he accidentally dials 911 while trying to place a call to his wife because his meds have not kicked in or when he says that a bumpy van ride feels perfectly smooth to him.
It's a somewhat fine line. As Britain's The Independent put it in its review, The Michael J. Fox Show "wants to have its cake and eat it, to both laugh at Fox's experience – and to lionize it."
(MORE: The Osmond Family's Greatest Act: Winning the Daily Battle Against MS)
Fox recognizes the challenge, but believes that Americans can handle seeing a wider range of characters on TV, and that laughing about disability can be done well, especially if patients are in on the joke. "A lot of times when you have a disability, the one thing you deal with is rejection of your experience or fear other people have about it," Fox has said. "But there's nothing horrifying about it. There is no gothic nastiness. The reality of Parkinson's is that sometimes it's frustrating and sometimes it's funny. I need to look at it that way and other people need to look at it that way.
"We're not making fun of Parkinson's," he has said of the new show. "We're examining a life that has Parkinson's and just how one guy deals with it."
It remains to be seen whether America will be eager to watch a former child star manage Parkinson's every Thursday at 9:30 p.m. (The series premieres on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 9 p.m. but will eventually move to 9:30.)
Fox has said the show will draw on real situations from his own family life. But the network was confident enough in the premise to order a full season before the pilot was even filmed, a highly unusual decision.
 
Early reviews are mixed but generally positive. Variety calls it "a pretty thin concoction, built heavily around the appeal of its leading man," while New York magazine says it has "chilled-out confidence" and "multivalent comic richness," anchored by "Fox’s still formidable comic chops."
"The fact that he does, in fact, have Parkinson's gives him license to demystify the condition, even treat it as a source of shtick," New York reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz wrote. "He's not just using it, he's owning it."
Fox supported that idea in a new Rolling Stone cover interview in which he claimed his condition actually makes him a more confident actor. "I had a certain fluidity to my movements and rhythm of speech and a physicality that I had depended on," he said. "It served me really well, but when that was taken away, I found that there was other stuff that I could use. That hesitation, that Parkinsonian affect, is an opportunity to just pause in a moment and collect as a character and respond to what's happening and just gave me this kind of gravitas. It really gave me a new view of things."
(MORE: The Emmys We'd Award: TV's Best Caregivers, 2013)
Fox also hopes that his return to a higher public profile will boost awareness, financing and the march to a cure. Researchers lament stalled progress on new approaches for managing symptoms – most patients continue to rely on levodopa, which was a breakthrough 35 years ago. To be sure, the drug has improved. Patients on levodopa no longer career as much between "on" and "off" periods but the drug's ability to manage symptoms consistently still begins to waver as the disease advances.
It happens that Fox's return to the small screen comes at a time when other celebrities have disclosed that they are living with Parkinson's as well. Linda Ronstadt, 67, the Grammy-winning pop, rock, folk and standards singer, recently revealed that she had the disorder and could no longer sing. She last performed in 2009 and, as she told AARP magazine, she was baffled about the source of her troubles until she received her diagnosis several months ago, likely seven or eight years after her symptoms began. Across the Atlantic, perennially popular Scottish actor and comic Billy Connolly, 70, recently revealed that he, too, was living with Parkinson's, putting a new spotlight on the disease in his country.
"It's part of the human experience," Fox says. "You can't cower from it, you can't hide from it. You have to accept it, incorporate it into your life. If you have a loving, full life, it'll just be part of it, just one of the colors of the palette."


Michael J. Fox's Return to TV Puts Parkinson's in Prime Time

Gary Drevitch

If you grew up in the '60s or '70s, odds are you were a Rolling Stone reader. You also likely knew about Jann Wenner, the brash wunderkind who founded the magazine in San Francisco at 21 in 1967, The Summer of Love.
Jann in his office, 1992Now, Wenner is 76 — born in the first year of the baby boom — and he's out with a rollicking, frank 576-page, bestselling memoir, "Like a Rolling Stone." (When I interviewed him by Zoom in his New York City apartment, Wenner told me the first draft was more than twice the final length.)
I found Wenner thoughtful, funny, self-effacing, revealing about his celebrity friends (from Jagger to Jackie O) and candid about his drug use and cocaine in the Rolling Stone office.
"The legacy part, honestly, I'm not interested in that. Legacy schmegacy." 
Aging, as well as a fall and a recent string of surgeries (heart, femur, spine) that led to a brief coma have made Wenner more mellow and reflective.
Wenner — who changed his name from Jan to Jann at 15 to be cooler — grew up in the San Francisco suburb of San Rafael with his entrepreneur parents, Sim and Edward, and two sisters. He dropped out of Berkeley and soon started Rolling Stone with rock music critic Ralph Gleason.
Wenner later created Outside, Men's Journal and Family Life magazines, bought Us magazine and co-founded The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He sold his company in 2017; his son Gus is now Rolling Stone's CEO.
Wenner's personal life has been unconventional. He was married to Jane Schindelheim for 28 years and the couple had three children. During the marriage, in 1995, Wenner began a serious relationship with the fashion designer Matt Nye, who he later married; the couple have three children.
Highlights from our conversation:
Next Avenue: How's your health? I know you've had a few tough years.
Jann Wenner: My health right now is terrific. I think primarily because I'm just kind of happy overall and I'm enjoying not working. A lot of tension is drained out of my life, which is delightful.
You wrote that your health problems were your fault. Why did you say that?
Look, health problems are very related to age and I'm 76, so there's that. But the exacerbation of them is related to the fact that I had diabetes and that I smoked for 40 years. [Wenner coughed periodically during the interview.]
You're walking with a cane?
Mainly out of safety. I can walk without the cane, but I think we all know as we get older that falls are to be avoided.
Why did you want to write your memoir and why now?
Once I recovered from my heart attack and various injuries and sold Rolling Stone, I had all this time on my hands. And it was a project that I knew had to be done. I thought to myself this story of building Rolling Stone and my own story were nicely combined to be a story of our times in our generation.
The book is also a way of leaving your legacy, right?
The legacy part, honestly, I'm not interested in that. Legacy schmegacy.
Jann in 1960Some people called you an enfant terrible at Rolling Stone, but I think that described you as a child. What were you like as a kid?
I was the brightest kid in the class and ready to start trouble and couldn't contain myself.
That paid off, though.
After a lot of patience on other people's parts.
One thing I didn't know until I read your book was that you're Jewish. Has that affected your life and who you are today?
I think not in an outward sense, not being a practicing Jew. I was raised in Marin County, California, and went to boarding school and those were not very terribly Jewish environments. I am certain that there's a genetic and intellectual part of that identity that's very strong.
You describe your mother as a different kind of mom and wrote that somewhere along the line you realized you didn't like being around her. You called her a mixed blessing.
My mother was very strong and funny and independent and an individual that really stood out. She was kind of a role model for [my sisters and me]. Then as we got to be adults, and she kind of abandoned our family and went off on her own, sometimes she'd be very selfish. Sometimes she was very loving, too.
And your dad?
My dad was a more conventional guy who did everything he could to hold the kids together. He was a great guy who took a lot of joy in all the craziness that he had in his kids.
There's a poignant part of the book when your father was on his deathbed, you were in your early 40s and thought about telling him you were gay, but didn't. Why not?
Well, I thought: Why should I introduce it on his last moments on earth? That would be extraordinarily selfish.
"I don't know that it would have thrived in that more high-pressure environment of New York. I don't think we'd have been as close to the artists and as authentic as we were." 
Do you think your parents knew when you were a kid that you were gay?
I think so, yeah.
You never came out publicly the way some celebrities have. Why?
To me, it's a private matter. It became inevitable given the New York media environment that people were going to write about it. But I wanted to discourage it. I mean, just let me have my personal life.
When you started Rolling Stone, you borrowed $7,500 from your family and parents of your soon-to-be wife. What was that like?
I don't think anybody really thought it was going to succeed that much, but they were willing to just take a gamble.
You began Rolling Stone in San Francisco, where you were, not New York City, where most magazines were. Why?
We were so much of the San Francisco scene. And I didn't know anything about the magazine business; I didn't know it was located in New York.
I don't know that it would've thrived in that more high-pressure environment of New York. I don't think we'd have been as close to the artists and as authentic as we were.
Eventually, you and the magazine moved to New York. You wrote that you failed to anticipate how New York would change the magazine and you. How did it change Rolling Stone?
We became more of a national voice in a national publication than you would otherwise have in an area like San Francisco.
How did moving to New York change you?
Well, success goes to your head, and you get involved in a swirl of distractions, which is lots and lots of fun. And then you get lionized, then people start thinking you're pretty hot s*** and then you start thinking you're pretty hot s***. Then, you come too close to the sun.
Jann and Jackie KennedyYou write about Rolling Stone's Capri Lounge, the darkroom where some staffers dabbled and dealt in drugs, especially cocaine. Do you regret allowing cocaine in the office?
Well, I don't regret it in that something horrible was done. I mean, cocaine was just in the air everywhere in those years. It dominated the music scene.
I don't think the use of cocaine was productive. There was a lot of wasted time and money on it. Did it make anything good happen? Not particularly.
I bet a lot of Next Avenue readers in their 60s were some of your earliest readers. How has Rolling Stone been a touchstone for boomers?
The baby boom was the largest single age cohort in American history … As soon as this generation gets to come of age, it starts to confront a lot of realities about America that are really discomforting … We're in a war in Vietnam for f***'s sake.
So, naturally we respond to Dylan and the other sounds of rock trying to express this frustration, the hypocrisy of the society and what the reality is ...
Rock and roll became what we called 'the glue that held the generation together.' And for that reason, Rolling Stone became one of those touchstones.
Rolling Stone has published many fantastic articles. Any you're especially proud of?
There's so many of 'em, it's hard to say. But I thought Hunter's [Hunter S. Thompson] coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign was brilliant. And I thought Tom Wolfe's 'The Right Stuff' and 'Bonfire of the Vanities' are also great.
How did you get Tom Wolfe to write 'Bonfire of the Vanities' in installments in Rolling Stone?
Well, I was a fan of Tom Wolfe's before I started Rolling Stone. So, it was always on my mind that I wanted to have Tom write for us … I just set about finding him and started courting him …
"Rock and roll became what we called 'the glue that held the generation together.' And for that reason, Rolling Stone became one of those touchstones."
We both had this big fascination with American culture and the edges of it and the oddities of it. And I think he liked being a little bit a part of our daring, rebellious, challenging spirit.
Was the idea to publish 'Bonfire' his idea or your idea?
The idea for the subject was my idea: New York City.
The idea of doing it in installments was totally his idea based on how novels were published in the late 19th century in England — in installments every week in newspapers.
A journalist I know told me he thought your greatest contribution to the culture was creating a platform for talented people who didn't fit into the establishment of journalism like Hunter S. Thompson and photographer Annie Leibovitz. What do you think?
I think that's true … We were the desired home of all the new talent that was coming up much the way The New Yorker had been a couple of decades before.
Were you concerned your friendship with rock stars would create a conflict of interest for Rolling Stone?
No, because I understood the potential for it, and it wasn't really a problem.
When Altamont happened [the 1969 music festival where a concertgoer was murdered during The Rolling Stones' performance], the question was how we were going to handle it vis-a-vis my friendship with Mick.
I made the decision we would go journalistically with what we saw as the truth. And while Mick got angry about that at that time, we resumed our friendship, without another word about it, later on.
Honestly, no friend of mine ever asked me for a favor, to alter something or give extra stars to [the reviews of] their records.
Meryl Streep's 1981 Rolling Stone coverYou don't write much in the book about women in rock you've known. Why?
Well, there's not that many women in rock, especially then. Who were the women in rock then? Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Grace Slick comes along later, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks much later.
The point is that rock and roll bands were guy bands. They were like motorcycle gangs or guitar cowboys. It was not a woman's field.
But I also felt you didn't have friendships with women in rock the way you did with the guys.
Well, I did have a decent relationship with Stevie Nicks. Janis was very short-lived; she was an alcoholic and an angry person. Bonnie, I had a good relationship with over the years. And Linda lived in LA.
I was close to people who are my mates.
You wrote that Rupert Murdoch asked if you would sell Rolling Stone to him, but you didn't. Then in the late '70s, you turned down another offer to sell Rolling Stone for 12 million dollars. Do you wish you had taken these?
Oh, I'm so glad I didn't. Because I was having so much fun and I had a long ways still to go.
You eventually sold Rolling Stone to Penske Media in 2017, 50 years after starting it. Was it that the time was right or were you forced into doing it?
All those things. I had always thought after 50 years, I'm going to bow out. And my son was ready to take it over. I also had the health scare, so I just didn't want to do it anymore.
And the internet was closing in, reducing our profit margins so much that we were just in a shrinking business. It was time to go. It had to be in the hands of a larger company that could afford the costs of it.
Did you expect that Gus would one day take over the magazine?
I thought he was going to be too young to do it by the time I had been there 50 years. But he came in right after college and showed such an aptitude, that after a year, I started to say, 'All right, let's proceed as if you are going to take this over and start learning the business.'
Do you see a lot of yourself in him?
Oh yeah. [Laughs.] He's full of energy and drive and belief in himself and charming and a great salesman and sharp. But he's a much more disciplined, methodical guy than I am.
"Mick's an extremely smart, very charismatic individual who has to be pretty guarded as a person to keep a sense of privacy." 
You wrote that when he took over, you wanted to continue having a relationship with 'your baby,' and wondered if you could be the uncle or the grandpa or the brother-in-law. But you ended up being 'the ex-wife.' What happened?
Just exactly that. They didn't want me around anymore. They wanted to do it themselves and they were right. Who wants this old guy around all the time? He's a pain in the ass.
You're very upfront in the book about using cocaine, LSD, pot and heroin. And that you had peyote chocolates with your oldest sons and Matt in 2008. What's your view about drugs today?
I think that pot is obviously harmless and the moves lately to legalize and decriminalize it are absolutely way overdue. I encourage its use.
I think psychedelics are going to be proved extraordinarily useful and productive for mankind. I think they have the potential to rescue the country and civilization.
Heroin is heroin; it's addictive. Obviously, you're not going to live your life very well with that.
Do you consider yourself retired these days?
Well, I hate that word 'retired,' but I don't know what's better to say.
I have a couple of lunches a week with old friends and it's great. I've got three teenagers in my house, so that keeps me very young. And I've got the three older kids.
I definitely still feel like that [Bob Dylan] song: 'Forever Young.'
What gives you meaning and purpose now?
I'm finding a lot of meaning and purpose just in personal happiness and family. And these are things that I put aside to some degree during that very intense period running the business.
I assume you've given up motorcycle riding and bicycle racing.  Have you found anything to replace them?
Well, with one bum leg, I don't want to risk a fall, so that eliminates everything [physically] except weight training and a stationary bike at home and stuff like that.
Some people take up painting or a musical instrument.
Painting sounds good.
I'm enjoying reading and listening to music; I'd like to do something a little more active than that, too; I'm going to go see the LA Philharmonic tonight at Carnegie Hall doing Mahler's First Symphony. I'm loving that kind of music.
Finally, what is your advice on aging?
Watch your health as much as you possibly can. Live every day. Spend time with friends. And for God's sake, be happy.
Jann Wenner's Famous Friends 
Next Avenue: I want to ask about a few rock stars and celebrities you've been friendly with. Tell me about Mick Jagger.
Mick's an extremely smart, very charismatic individual who has to be pretty guarded as a person to keep a sense of privacy. He's smart, funny and fun to hang out with. He's been a dear, good friend and a pleasure to watch perform. An impressive character overall.
Bob Dylan?
Funny, sharp, really intelligent, a very deep guy who keeps to himself. But if he likes you, you're in like Flynn. Bob likes to play games, and so sometimes it's game playing — just having fun.
John Lennon?
John was more on all the time. He was very witty, obviously extremely intelligent, passionate about music and also had a deep kind of mean streak because he was pissed at a lot of things that had happened to him. But overall, an extraordinary person to be around.
My sense from the book was that you didn't stay friends.
After we did the 'Lennon Remembers' interview in Rolling Stone, I published a book from it. He didn't want me to, so he was pissed off. After about five years, we buried the hatchet and he started to call the interview 'Lennon Regrets.'
In 1970, you went to see the new movie, 'Let It Be' in an empty theater with John, Yoko Ono and your wife Jane. What was that like?
Totally strange. That 'Let It Be' movie really portrayed the imminent breakup of The Beatles. When it was over, it was such a sad moment. We all left the theater and went out on the sidewalk and hugged each other and cried.
You also write about your friendships with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and JFK Jr. What were they like?
Jackie was just the most wonderfully iridescent personality; funny and thoughtful and personable.
And John was just a good kid I always kept my eyes on.


Rocking Back with Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner

Richard Eisenberg

When I met Linda Back McKay through the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, I was new to writing, and she had several books published. Yet she asked about my manuscript. Suggested we do a reading together. Connected me with her publisher. Many times in many ways she guided me through the years. She didn't have to take the time to mentor me, but she did.
Flo Dietz (left) with Louise Scherbyn in riding leathers, July 1942.We celebrated her wins, too, like when she got the book contract of her dreams­­. It'd been too long since I'd ridden my Honda CG125 down unpaved roads around our farm, but Linda continued riding – and writing — about motorcycles. Given the chance to work with the personal photos of the woman who founded the first stand-alone women-only motorcycle association, she said yes.
She always said yes, she told her students. "You always say yes?" they'd ask. "Yes," she'd say.
Saying Yes 
Turned out the founder of the Women's International Motorcycle Association (WIMA) also encouraged her followers to say yes — to motorcycle riding. And the thrill of independence.
And in the fall of 2019, from her hospice bed, my friend handed over her whole manuscript.
No other woman in Rochester rode solo when Louise Scherbyn first wheeled her Scout onto the gravel of Maiden Lane during the Depression. Took two years to convince three other women to get their licenses, too. Friendships in their motorcycle auxiliary proved tight-knit and long-lasting.
When someone encourages you to try hard things and you find you can do it, you want help them in turn.
So when Linda found out she had brain cancer, I did what felt right. She needed guidance developing Scherbyn's narrative, something she'd never needed before. And in the fall of 2019, from her hospice bed, my friend handed over her whole manuscript.
It was clear this story about women breaking barriers was bigger than either of us. I promised to see it through.
We didn't know a pandemic would get in our way.
That spring I sorted out what we had and what we needed, scrolling through hundreds of black and whites from Scherbyn's extensive collection — a benefit of working at Kodak. Priceless pics of women in mackinaws and, later, in LeatherTogs. How they clustered around Scherbyn at rallies and picnics. Such impish smiles.
Sorting Through Photos  
Many photos we'd had to pull; the women's names and meeting places weren't identified, as the publisher required. Without matching up why and where these motorcycling pioneers had traveled, we didn't have a story.
Louise Scherbyn (in dark cap) with young admirers at a hill climb at Keck’s farm, Egypt, NY, August 1936.Neither museum housing Scherbyn's cycles and papers held the answers. Linda had gone looking between treatments. On the way to Waterloo, she'd met up with a woman who'd recognized her mother in a photo Linda posted on Facebook. 
The mom had been one of the kids looking up to Scherbyn at a rally. Scherbyn had once belonged to the same motorcycle club auxiliary as the older women in the family, so the daughter brought Linda to the Newark clubhouse. A 1939 photo of Scherbyn hung on the wall. A new archive to explore — only Linda hadn't the strength to stay.
I found the contact info inside her stack of papers. But what could this collection contain that two museums had not?
The contact couldn't say; the mom was sick. As she recovered, I researched what I could. And kept returning to Scherbyn's pictures of rallies and races and picnics and parties. To photos taken during WWII of women posing by motorcycles parked aside a road unfurling into distant hills.
Such a trip taken during fuel rationing must have meant something.
Back at home, I transcribed nearly two thousand pages. Put decades of documents in chronological order.
The mom didn't know why. And she was in and out of the hospital. Yet the daughter was willing to ask her my other questions. It seemed a way for the two to share something they loved.
When Mom gets better, we'll all talk, the daughter promised.
Except the mom unexpectedly passed away.
Thankfully, the daughter remained in touch. Once travel restrictions lifted, she invited me to visit, honoring the connection her mother shared with Scherbyn, then Linda.
Not until I walked in the door did I understand everything she'd pulled together: Crowding the dining room and living room were stacks and stacks of green and blue and brown totes, all lugged out of storage. 
Totes Full of Memories 
She'd recruited a sister and cousin to help sift through thousands of pages of meeting minutes, club registrations, rally sign-ups, raffle tickets, race records, uniform orders, and travel documents as well as flyers and equipment catalogs and manufacturers' magazines. 
Linda Back McKayThe motorcycle club her grandfather had founded was one of the oldest in the country, and they'd kept all receipts, down to the grocery list for the 1942 Turkey Run. And the grandmother and aunts and mom had each held an office in the women's auxiliary. They'd been pen pals with Scherbyn. A wire bin was set out for letters they'd exchanged.
That weekend we drove out to where these women rode and rallied. Where they picnicked, watching nationally ranked riders attempt Keck's hill. The daughter pointed out natural springs where club members stopped for water.
My head was spinning. I'd learned Scherbyn had ridden west for a new national women's auxiliary, then traveled east to reconnoiter manufacturing sites as the first female editor of a national motorcycle magazine. Given the family stories and albums shared, I could identify the women in Scherbyn's photos. Flesh out personalities. I could do this.
We sat at the dining table, reviewing the last stacks of papers, when the daughter cautioned I shouldn't identify the club. Or its location. Or name any members. All the details needed for a book.
I would have protested but saw how her face creased with worry. Hadn't I counseled students through this before? Concerns often arise over how a stranger might depict loved ones on the page.
Considering these women drove hundreds of miles to gather at the fairgrounds, testing how many laps they could go on a tank of gas and how many balloons they could bust on the track proved more their speed.
I had to show how I intended to tell their truth. I had to do this for Linda. For Scherbyn. For myself.
Back at home, I transcribed nearly two thousand pages. Put decades of documents in chronological order. In the archive was indeed everything, including registrations for the All Girls Shows, Scherbyn's brainchild that the grandmother took over. Hall of Fame inductee Dot Robinson even rode in from Detroit since Scherbyn then served as a Motor Maids' officer.
But the gold we found sparkled in letters from housewives and teachers and auto assembly workers and beauticians, all sharing a love of riding and the desire to compete — not in sack races or wheelbarrow races, as the AMA suggested. Considering these women drove hundreds of miles to gather at the fairgrounds, testing how many laps they could go on a tank of gas and how many balloons they could bust on the track proved more their speed.
'This One Is for the Ladies' 
Within the hundreds of pages compiled, I highlighted what to consider including. I sent those pages back and shared news articles found about the club, many written by an aunt or the grandfather. The aunt had bested men when testing skills honed by the war's blackout restrictions, like driving with a bag over her head. (Please don't try this at home.) And the mom had stepped into a leadership role, helping Scherbyn through her lowest point. Which led to Scherbyn founding WIMA.  
The family well knew the grandfather's accomplishments. The Curtiss Museum kept his effects on display for years. Turned out the women of the family also played an essential role in motorcycling history.
Photos captured how it began, discovering the joy they shared. You can see it in the smile of a ten-year-old riding on her big sister's shoulders at Scherbyn's first All Girls Show.
"I wasn't sure this would happen, with Covid and all," Linda's widower said when the books landed on his doorstep.
Me either.
Yet the effort surely is worth it, to honor those we've cared about and lost. Who made our joy possible.
The sentiment echoing through the daughter's go-ahead: "This one," she said, "is for the ladies."


Riding off With a Legacy

Kate St. Vincent Vogl

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