Book Preview: Jann Wenner’s Rock & Roll Memoir

The founder and longtime editor of Rolling Stone magazine shares stories about Mick, Bono, Bruce and other legends


Bono, Jann, Mick and Bruce at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert, 2009 / Mark Seliger

Excerpts > [www.aarp.org]

--


Annie Liebovitz

[www.littlebrown.com]

There was a similar documentary a couple years back.

Yes, and in this doc a few years back (was it a film or a book, can't remember) JW did not come across as a someone you'd want as your enemy - or friend.
Maybe he feels the need to set the record straight.
Might be an interesting read, probably with some storys that might be a bit unsettling for some (I was shocked about the amount of drugs seemingly taken by so many, I remember the Michael Douglas - episode very well.) I was also shocked to read how some writers for Rolling Stone and other associates were treated by Wenner.

if you read Chet Flippo's book about the 75-81 years you'll notice Wenner and his rag constantly stabbed the band in the back.
Jagger even called him a "@#$%&".

I guess they made amends for the (wonderful) 1995 MJ interview led by Wenner.

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dcba
if you read Chet Flippo's book about the 75-81 years you'll notice Wenner and his rag constantly stabbed the band in the back.
Jagger even called him a "@#$%&".

I guess they made amends for the (wonderful) 1995 MJ interview led by Wenner.

So true

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TheGreek

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dcba
if you read Chet Flippo's book about the 75-81 years you'll notice Wenner and his rag constantly stabbed the band in the back.
Jagger even called him a "@#$%&".

I guess they made amends for the (wonderful) 1995 MJ interview led by Wenner.

So true

Yeah, I can't say I have a high opinion of Wenner as a journalist, but he is probably the only person in the world who could have convinced Jagger to talk about the past at length and on the record.

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dcba
if you read Chet Flippo's book about the 75-81 years you'll notice Wenner and his rag constantly stabbed the band in the back.
Jagger even called him a "@#$%&".

I guess they made amends for the (wonderful) 1995 MJ interview led by Wenner.

I remember how heated it got around Rolling Stone panning 'Some Girls', and then criticizing the tour. Rolling Stone had to go back and reassess the album after pressure from Jagger.

With Bob Dylan no longer bringing it all back home, Elvis Presley dead and the Beatles already harmlessly cloned in the wax-museum nostalgia of a Broadway musical, it's no wonder the Rolling Stones decided to make a serious record. Not particularly ambitious, mind you, but serious. These guys aren't dumb, and when the handwriting on the wall starts to smell like formaldehyde and that age-old claim, the greatest rock & roll band in the world," suddenly sounds less laudatory than laughable - well, if you want to survive the Seventies and enter the Eighties with something more than your bankbook and dignity intact, you'd better dredge up your leftover pride, bite the bullet and try like hell to sweat out some good music. Which is exactly what the Stones have done. Though time may not exactly be on their side, with Some Girls they've at least managed to stop the clock for a while.

This is no small accomplishment. It's not a big one either. Thus far, the critical line claims that Some Girls is the band's finest LP since its certified masterpiece, Exile on Main Street, and I'll buy that gladly. What I won't buy is that the two albums deserve to be mentioned in the same breath... Instead, Some Girls is like a marriage of convenience: when it works - which is often - it can be meaningful, memorable and quite moving, but it rarely sends the arrow straight through the heart... Because Jagger is such an excellent singer, he almost makes you believe everything he says, but it's that "almost" - which wouldn't matter at all if he weren't a Rolling Stone, i.e., the best - that keeps Some Girls from going right over the top. Too often, we're faced with a question that goes well beyond the usual some-tension-within-the-material-is-necessary argument and into the area of, why is this man lying when he's obviously pleased as punch with himself and is getting roomfuls of satisfaction? After all, if you don't believe that Jay Gatsby really loves Daisy in his divinely crazy way, what good is it?

- Paul Nelson, Rolling Stone, August 1978



I'm not pissed at you personally, I'm @#$%& pissed at Rolling Stone. I got real mad at this vicious shit that was printed. I've given all this great access. This is the end. No more interviews... I don't mind criticism, REAL criticism, but I don't expect this kind of bitchiness. I can smell it. It STINKS. Rolling Stone will always say, the Stones are great for four weeks and then knock us down. Set you up and then knock you down. That @#$%& of a boss of yours... I've known Rolling Stone a long time and gotten on with a few people. I don't trust many people, you know. I trusted Rolling Stone and they let me down... This is goodbye for Rolling Stone.

- Mick Jagger to Rolling Stone's Chet Flippo, 1978, after the review

[www.timeisonourside.com]

The LP review isn't exactly nice but it's not exactly awful, either. Although the context of some of it is over my head. Obviously Mick thought otherwise.

Perhaps there was some chumminess going on and when that gets to a settled place things happen. The Stones went from being on cruise control from IORR and BAB and two tours to this raging machine with SG and the tour and for whatever reason Jann decided to cut them off at their knees.

Perhaps taken a bit too personally? Obviously. By both. Because of this review, as I recall, which is extremely critical and brutal of their performances:

Onstage, as on record, the Rolling Stones (whatever they may have once been) are now just another good rock band, and it’s no fairer to dismiss them as boring old farts – despite the fact that their show is frequently very dull – than it is to claim that they are still the greatest. Stripped of their history, the Stones would not be judged a second-rate band, though it is easy to think that when you realize how much their performances have declined in the past few years. But they would be rated very average, on a level far below that of their peak tours.

[www.rollingstone.com]

Well, the Philadelphia show WAS awful. Not sure a good enough recording of the Palladium ever surfaced to get a feel how much better they were that night.

The '78 tour was a shambles. Only 14 gigs. Most in stadiums. The dreaded Festival Seating. Keith was in trouble in Canada, looked like death warmed over. Thank god the small venue Texas gig surfaced to show they were still great.

they were pretty good in memphis and lexington too

[bestclassicbands.com]

"The publisher describes a meeting with Dylan in the ’60s at a New York hotel. “Do you think you’ve played any role in the change of popular music in the last four years?”

Dylan’s replay was brief. “I hope not.”

The review was bitchy, but it wasn't far off the mark. Some Girls is a great album, but it's no EOMS...in fact it doesn't come close to the BIG 4.

But it is a great, 5 star mid-career album, and Jagger is an excellent singer. IMHO the singing and playing lift the material up higher than where it would be if someone else recorded these songs.

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treaclefingers
The review was bitchy, but it wasn't far off the mark. Some Girls is a great album, but it's no EOMS

Well what caused Jagger's furor was the double talk by Wenner.
Begging for an "all access" pass for Flippo on the 78 tour while a bit later okaying a negative review of the SG album by another RS journo. Coherence anyone?

You have to be a little dumb or twisted to let that happen, right?

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dcba

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treaclefingers
The review was bitchy, but it wasn't far off the mark. Some Girls is a great album, but it's no EOMS

Well what caused Jagger's furor was the double talk by Wenner.
Begging for an "all access" pass for Flippo on the 78 tour while a bit later okaying a negative review of the SG album by another RS journo. Coherence anyone?

You have to be a little dumb or twisted to let that happen, right?

OK, playing devil's advocacy here...just because you get an 'all access' pass shouldn't mean that you are now 'bought' by the band, and are obliged to giving glowing reviews. That ain't right.

On the other hand, I think the review itself was not the best and Jagger was probably right at accusing them for being bitchy.

But giving access to journalists shouldn't guarantee glowing reviews...that's 'fraudish'.

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treaclefingers

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dcba

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treaclefingers
The review was bitchy, but it wasn't far off the mark. Some Girls is a great album, but it's no EOMS

Well what caused Jagger's furor was the double talk by Wenner.
Begging for an "all access" pass for Flippo on the 78 tour while a bit later okaying a negative review of the SG album by another RS journo. Coherence anyone?

You have to be a little dumb or twisted to let that happen, right?

OK, playing devil's advocacy here...just because you get an 'all access' pass shouldn't mean that you are now 'bought' by the band, and are obliged to giving glowing reviews. That ain't right.

On the other hand, I think the review itself was not the best and Jagger was probably right at accusing them for being bitchy.

But giving access to journalists shouldn't guarantee glowing reviews...that's 'fraudish'.

Mick's stance might've been there's no need to be that way, just be less so.

Nevertheless, a very strange time for The Rolling Stones - and to be so upset over one magazine... very telling or just... bitchy?

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GasLightStreet

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treaclefingers

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dcba

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treaclefingers
The review was bitchy, but it wasn't far off the mark. Some Girls is a great album, but it's no EOMS

Well what caused Jagger's furor was the double talk by Wenner.
Begging for an "all access" pass for Flippo on the 78 tour while a bit later okaying a negative review of the SG album by another RS journo. Coherence anyone?

You have to be a little dumb or twisted to let that happen, right?

OK, playing devil's advocacy here...just because you get an 'all access' pass shouldn't mean that you are now 'bought' by the band, and are obliged to giving glowing reviews. That ain't right.

On the other hand, I think the review itself was not the best and Jagger was probably right at accusing them for being bitchy.

But giving access to journalists shouldn't guarantee glowing reviews...that's 'fraudish'.

Mick's stance might've been there's no need to be that way, just be less so.

Nevertheless, a very strange time for The Rolling Stones - and to be so upset over one magazine... very telling or just... bitchy?

Yeah, Mick was also being bitchy. Giving them the cold shoulder may have been better. Just 'ghost' them and do interviews with CREEM and Hit Parader. That would have gotten under Jan's skin.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2022-08-19 07:44 by treaclefingers.

Book excerpt: "Like a Rolling Stone" by Jann Wenner

September 2, 2022

In Jann Wenner's new memoir, "Like a Rolling Stone" (to be published September 13 by Little, Brown & Co.), the founder of Rolling Stone writes of the magazine's emergence as a celebration of the power and artistry of rock music – and also about a more personal celebration, when he is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.


Little Brown

I started out feeling blasé about my own induction into the Hall of Fame in 2004 but ended up with my head in the clouds. Prince, Traffic, George Harrison, ZZ Top, Bob Seger, and Jackson Browne were in my class, all of whom were close to Rolling Stone, in our world. Sharing the night with Jackson, whose songs and comradeship were such treasures for me, made it even richer. A week before the show, Ahmet told me that he had gotten Mick to come in from London to induct me.

We sat in a cluster of tables with Keith Richards and his daughters, and Mick's kids; Olivia Harrison was at the next table with her son, Dhani, his father's doppelgänger, and Yoko and Sean. It was a mess of Beatles and Rolling Stones and my kids, who all knew each other. I had Jane, Matt, the three boys, Don Henley, Tom and Sheila Wolfe, and Mick. It was a black-tie family picnic.

Prince opened the show with three blazing songs. Stevie Winwood, who I never realized was such a serious guitar player, did a ferocious solo on "Dear Mr. Fantasy" that was a full knockout. Seger had been off the road for many years, but the Waldorf ballroom felt like a juke joint when he ripped "Old Time Rock and Roll." Bruce spoke proudly about Jackson, his "meticulousness of craft, matched by deepness of soul." He also called him a "bona fide, rock and roll sex star," and admitted being jealous of his hair and the number of hot girls that came to see him play: "Jackson was drawing more women than an Indigo Girls concert."

Ahmet walked onstage with his cane, introducing my induction and giving a shout-out to Jane and Ralph Gleason. He spoke with gravitas. I tried to stay in the moment and take in the historical weight of Ahmet's speech. Then he said, "To further my remarks, Sir Mick Jagger." There he was, smiling wide with his tooth diamond sparkling, dressed in a black suit. I was able to relax into a groove of the pleasure, the treasure, the measure of this extraordinary moment. I wanted it to take me over. Mick made a gracious bow to Jane — "She was there at the beginning and she's here tonight" — who was beaming and blushing.

Mick looked down at Keith: "We remember the early days of the Stones in America, when the teen magazines asked really deep questions about what kind of girls you liked, blondes or brunettes, or Chinese food versus Italian food, what kind of socks.

"But this innocent triviality was swept away when in 1967 Rolling Stone changed all that by inventing the very long interview. Now you had to spend hours describing your views on everything from Vietnam to the Beatles, as well as, of course, your sexual preferences. Now intrepid Rolling Stone reporters hang out on tour with you and you must provide the drink, drugs, and even food to produce the interviews Jann demands ... "I must tell you that not so long ago, Jann decided he was going to do a very long interview with me and visit us on tour in small places where there wouldn't be interference. After a couple of interviews, he said, 'You know, I'm really getting into this. It's like I feel like I'm a cub reporter again.' I said, 'Yeah, Jann, you're a cub reporter with the Gulfstream G4 waiting at the airport.'

"Jann was one of the first music critics and editors that really understood how we as artists felt and could sympathize with our yearnings. Jann almost single-handedly pioneered the idea of popular music and of rock and roll in particular as a vibrant art form. It was Jann who elevated our music to a place where it enjoys the status of other musical forms.

"This is a wonderful, heartfelt occasion, and I will treasure the memory of it all the way to the airport."

I had prepared a speech, given it a lot of thought, and had much to say and many to thank. "To the two most elegant men in the room, Ahmet Ertegun and Mick Jagger, I am honored by you. Ahmet, you are a national treasure. You have done so much for me.

"Sir Mick Jagger [I made a bow], how cool it is to be inducted by you. You still have the world's greatest rock and roll band. I always set my compass to you, Mick, and guided Rolling Stone by how you conducted yourself as an artist and as a driving force, how you held it all together with such intelligence and integrity. It's been a pleasure to be your friend for all these years, and you coming here tonight means the world to me."

At the end of the proceedings Prince stepped out of the shadows into the all-star ensemble performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." His playing was transcendent. I remember standing there, my mouth open, tearing up, in dumbstruck awe. It can be seen today on an Imax screen at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The greatest performance in the history of the Hall of Fame was that night.

From "Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir" by Jann Wenner. Copyright © 2022 by Jann Wenner. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

[www.cbsnews.com]

John, Yoko, and Me

In an excerpt from his new memoir, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner reveals John Lennon’s history with the magazine and how he helped make it a success

By Jann S. Wenner
September 2, 2022

[www.rollingstone.com]

Interview with Anthony Mason, "CBS Sunday Morning" September 4:

You are right Jann; without you RollingStone Magazine is not good.
Rockandroll,
Mops

Mick wrote by himself all the songs on Side one of Some Girls except JMI. he also wrote solo Respectable and Shattered except for the riff.The other three songs were collaborations.It also is a top album. So you can understand why he was upset by a negative review. Especially after all the negative reviews of Black n Blue. Although I thought Wenner in 1975 reviewed the LA 1975 showsfor a Rolling Stone article and said the band was better than it ever had been at those showsexcept for some weak solos by Wood

Interview with Scott Simon of NPR:

Jann Wenner's new memoir chronicles his life as co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine

September 10, 2022

SIMON: Rolling Stone was founded in 1967 by Ralph J. Gleason and Jann Wenner. Ralph Gleason would die just a few years later though his name has stayed on the masthead. Jann Wenner would make Rolling Stone a cultural milestone for millions. He's written a big, fat candy box of a memoir that abounds with lots of one-word names like Bono, Yoko, Mick, Bruce, Dylan and Jackie O - his memoir, "Like A Rolling Stone." And Jann Wenner joins us now from Long Island. Thanks so much for being with us, Mr. Wenner.

JANN WENNER: I am looking forward to it.

SIMON: It's irresistible just to begin to throw out some names at you and get you to talk about people you've known, worked with, sometimes disagreed with. Let me begin with Bob Dylan.

WENNER: Well, everybody thinks he's very mysterious, withdrawn and a little bit cold. I've always found him to be extremely friendly, very funny. He's always an engaging conversationalist. I think he's terrific. And of course, I think he's the great poet of our times.

SIMON: Yeah. Mick Jagger.

WENNER: Terrific guy, the model of the rock star, somebody I met very early on before Rolling Stone's even 1 year old. We went into business together publishing Rolling Stone a couple of years later in England and remain great friends.

SIMON: I found it telling, though, in the development of the magazine as real journalism - the free concert at Altamont. Eighteen-year-old man named Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death. There were other injuries. The Rolling Stones were playing there. And your magazine was all over what happened including the implication that the Rolling Stones, the music group, were partly responsible for hiring the Hells Angels to be security - and I put that in quotes - for the concert.

WENNER: We realized it was anything but Woodstock West. This was, in fact, a rock 'n' roll tragedy. In covering it thoroughly and accurate and correctly, we had to blame a bunch of people. And among them would be the Rolling Stones and Mick. And the question was, well, you're great friends with Mick. What are we going to do? We going to pull our punches? Are we going to tell the truth and lay the blame where it goes? And I said, you know, there's not a question about it. We got to tell the truth. That's our mission. That's our job. And we won the National Magazine Award for the first time for doing that.

SIMON: He sent you a note that I found interesting. Do you remember it?

WENNER: I do, indeed. After we had gone to press, one of our reporters asked him to do an interview. He sent me a note saying, look, I can answer these questions, but I'm just in a place right now where we don't feel we can be accurately quoted by you. And so I decline to speak. I hope that someday our friendship will be able to resume again. Fair enough.

SIMON: Hunter S. Thompson - brilliant, but...

WENNER: Hunter was brilliant. He was difficult. Anybody who was with him always felt that they were coming to the edge of the fun zone, you know, with him, that you were going to have more excitement with this guy than you were going to have at any other point in your life. You know, this is as dangerous as it's going to get, as daring as it's going to get. But he's also the most charming, polite and generous individual you've ever met. And you're in awe of his talent. As difficult as he became, we never exchanged cross words. We call each other brain-dead idiots and swine rat heads and all that kind of stuff, but never a cross word.

SIMON: (Laughter). You and the magazine, at one point, moves from San Francisco to New York, and you talk about going into a morning meeting and just noticing that the staff had moved visibly from the make-love-not-war crowd to the make-money crowd. What did that mean? And how did you feel about it?

WENNER: Well, our decision to leave San Francisco and go to New York was really based on the desire to grow and build the company, build the circulation, the business also. And the talent in magazines was based in New York. You didn't get the same business side - advertising sales, distribution, all marketing. And the editorial talent was primarily in New York, too.

SIMON: Yeah. Did the Woodstock generation blow it? I mean, we're speaking now at a week in which anybody living in the western United States would feel like a lobster in the pot.

WENNER: Right. The issue of the climate is - we started on it at Rolling Stone in 1970. We've been relentlessly covering it ever since. The climate crisis is not caused by the failure of this generation. The climate crisis has been caused by the oligarchs running oil and the coal companies, who control the Republican Party and many other politicians. That is a huge problem, but we alone cannot solve it. But I would stand by this generation and what it's done to advance the cause of Black people, of women, of gays, of all kinds of underprivileged people who have been looking for a fair share of our society and our wealth.

SIMON: Let me ask you to look at the way people ingest - I'll put it that way - news and information these days. Do we have the attention span to take on long problems like the environment or, for that matter, Ukraine?

WENNER: I think we do. The public attention span had been shortened quite a bit by the information age technology that constantly is putting new stuff in front of you on an ongoing basis, 24 hours a day. It encourages this distraction. Yet, on the other hand, I feel that the American public, when focused on a problem or something, is very interested and very behind it. And even though the news media may not see it as the crisis of the moment - because you need a new crisis or a new headline to sell papers. To get clicks or whatever, they have to constantly be presenting this information. Is it great for society? I don't think so. But on the other hand, I don't think that's the issue. I think the issue is the honesty and the competence of the news that is presented. The American people are still good judges of information when it's fairly and objectively presented. When the free press does its job, the informed public is capable of making the correct decisions.

SIMON: Jann Wenner - his new memoir "Like A Rolling Stone" - thank you so much for being with us.

WENNER: Scott, thank you. Enjoyed it very much.

[www.npr.org]

Jann Wenner Wants to Reveal It All

The Rolling Stone founder talks about LSD, not reading the magazine anymore and how the Stones now look like “Lord of the Rings” characters onstage.


Jann Wenner at his home in Montauk, N.Y., in August. (Dana Scruggs for The New York Times)

By Maureen Dowd
September 10, 2022

[www.nytimes.com]

Rolling Stone Founder Jann Wenner Discusses Memoir, Sparring With Bob Dylan, Why He’s Not a Fan of New Music

"I would love for people to read this book and see how important the [rock 'n' roll] generation was," he says of his memoir, 'Like A Rolling Stone."

By Frank DiGiacomo
9/12/2022

[www.billboard.com]

Bruce Springsteen Takes Rolling Stone Founder Jann Wenner to Task for ‘Born to Run’ Slight

Michele Amabile Angermiller
September 14, 2022


Jann Wenner and Bruce Springsteen give a conversation on Wenner’s new memoir “Like a Rolling Stone” at 92NY on September 13, 2022 in New York City. (Taylor Hill/Getty Images)

[variety.com]

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bye bye johnny
"I would love for people to read this book and see how important the [rock 'n' roll] generation was,"

It's too late! It's dying and young people don't care one bit for the "legendary" 60's (sorry Jann).

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, September 14:

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dcba

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bye bye johnny
"I would love for people to read this book and see how important the [rock 'n' roll] generation was,"

It's too late! It's dying and young people don't care one bit for the "legendary" 60's (sorry Jann).

There's no way to pinpoint an exact shift in the axis of older vs younger music tastes being the biggest consumer of what but Kendrick Lamar comes to mind.

So does September 10, 1991 for that matter (or, basically, September-November 1991).

Although for older people new or newer music can seem mindless, the youth of people in their 20s and 30s right now seem to have a multi-tasking approach to music. And somehow the ability to remember it all, of which some sounds so similar.

My friend, who is 28, knows just about every damn thing she plays on her Apple Music feed and once in a while something comes on that I'm familiar with in terms of my own music interests or having at least known about it. But I've heard some pretty cool shit having calmed down my whateverness of music tastes being "better".

Relevance is now a moment, not a movement, with music. And really, relevance was never a thing for artists, with exception of those that chased trends, it's a mythical conception created by critics and fans. What's relevant musically? What, a snare drum? Or a sample of a snare drum? A melody?

It's so of the moment now more than ever before. A Beatles or Stones single back in the 1960s lasted a really long time compared to something out now.

A single these days? Whatever. Maybe a few hours.

From The Howard Stern Show, October 3: