Back when it was sexy

Jann Wenner's office
October 1975

Right. So that's me on the left and my buddy Howard on the right, telling the entire nation (courtesy of The Today Show) what we had discovered about the conversion of missing, kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst into Tanya, underground guerrilla warrior for the outlaw Symbionese Liberation Army.

This "army" pulled off stunts like trying to rob a hardware store (failure) and several banks (successful, sort of). While they got cash they also panicked at one of the bank robberies and killed a mother and her unborn child. They also assassination a progressive black superintendent of schools for some obscure reason no one could divine.

They wreaked havoc around California until the LAPD cornered them in a hideout and blasted them all to smithereens -- with the exception of three who were not home at the time. (They were trying to rob the hardware store.)

These three (Patty Hearst, Bill & Emily Harris) began an odyssey across the nation aided by a small group of supporters led by a sports activist, Jack Scott. It took the FBI over 19 months after the original kidnapping to track the fugitives down, and when they did, they were living right here in tiny San Francisco.

Our story broke a few days after their arrests; thus we held the attention of the nation, for a while.

I'm reminded of all this because I am rummaging through artifacts for the organizers of RSX (Ex-Rolling Stone staffers from the SF era, '67-'77) to use in the show they intend to put on for the seventy-five or so of us who show up later this month.

It may often be this way in life, but at this early pinnacle moment for Howard and me, we both felt miserable. We didn't want to be the story, but we were turned into the story by the national media. Lies were published; death threats were issued, as were subpoenas and the unleashed fury of the politically correct "left."

In order to get us to spill the beans, the NBC correspondent had fed us Eggs Benedict and champagne in his hotel before we went over to the Rolling Stone office on Third Street.

That's how it was done in those days. Suddenly we were "famous," in the sense that Andy Warhol understood so well. Just a couple more cans of tomato soup.

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