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angee

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Sighunt

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FrogSugar
Crap magazine... They spent way too much time talking about politics, and that content was pure garbage, there are so many better magazines out there that are deserving of attention.

RIP Rolling Stone

To clarify something,I partially agree with your assessment. I would certainly agree that Rolling Stone is not near the quality of its early years. I was an avid reader of it in the later 1960s and early to mid 1970's and I felt that the quality was cutting edge for this type of magazine compared to other standard publications at the time. Also, the other topics they covered besides music (eg politics) were very insightful and informative. I was able to gain perspectives from this magazine that I didn't get elsewhere. Just my two cents...

I agree, Sighunt. I recall the series that covered the Patty Hearst case, from the original abduction onward. No one else was doing that.

There's no comparison. It was a completely different publication then. For a generation that is slowly fading. I think MOJO is the only decent music magazine now. And they made no secret of their political leanings, which matched most of their audience.

He started the magazine so he could meet Dylan, Lennon, and Jagger. And it was great for a long time. I didn't mind the politics, and they broke the Patty Hearst story and gave me Hunter S. Thompson. But it changed in the 1980s, and Wenner is an arrogant prick, IMHO.

Was/is a self-absorbed jerk

[bestclassicbands.com]

Did I mention he also essentially stole the Hall of Fame from others?

Did someone actually read the book?

Out of context, it is hard to understand the interviewer's point "[you claim] that performers of color and women performers are just not in your zeitgeist" and the author's rebate "I was referring to Black performers, not to the female performers".

As I understand it, all the author meant to say is that in the hey days of RS mag, the rock and roll scene (meaning the scene covered by the mag) was no longer "made" by the black artists who defined the genre in the 50s (Chuck, Little Richards etc). Which, for many reasons and with notably exceptions, is true.

With regard to women, again, out of context it is very hard to understand what the author means with "philosopher of rock ’n’ roll". In general I find it hard to imagine Hegel singing Starfocker, but that is another discussion.

C



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-19 12:37 by liddas.

[www.washingtonpost.com]


The rapid downfall of Jann Wenner was years in the making
In the latest blow, Wenner’s son Gus, now Rolling Stone’s CEO, denounced the magazine founder’s comments as ‘upsetting and hurtful’

By Paul Farhi and Will Sommer
September 18, 2023 at 5:42 p.m. EDT

Jann Wenner spent 55 years building his legacy as a media entrepreneur, godfather of New Journalism and tastemaker for the baby boomer generation.

It took a single interview for him to throw a good deal of it away.

Just days after Wenner was quoted in a New York Times interview describing female and Black artists as insufficiently “articulate” to make his list of rock’s greatest figures, the co-founder of Rolling Stone has been denounced by not one but two of the institutions he helped create.

On Saturday, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which Wenner helped form in 1983, forced him off its governing board. But the deeper cut may have come from the leadership of Rolling Stone, where his own son took steps to distance himself from the 77-year-old Wenner’s sentiments.

“While I love him deeply, I do not agree with the comments he made and understand why they are so upsetting and hurtful,” Gus Wenner, the magazine’s chief executive, wrote Sunday in an email to staff, which was shared with The Washington Post. “I want to be clear, his statements as reported do not represent my beliefs, or the values, practices, and mission of Rolling Stone.”

In the Times interview, published Friday, Jann Wenner seemed to dismiss female and Black artists, musing that they were not among the great “philosophers of rock” and reserving that platitude for the seven White male artists he interviewed in a new book.

In comments that drew slightly less attention, Wenner also asserted that an infamous 2014 Rolling Stone article — which was retracted after it was determined that the purported college gang rape at the center of the story never happened — was otherwise factually “bulletproof,” despite a multimillion-dollar defamation judgment against it.

Among the least surprised by the comments — for which Wenner later said he apologized “wholeheartedly” — was biographer Joe Hagan, author of 2017’s acclaimed “Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine.”

“The thing about Jann, the thing that made him successful but also is his Achilles’ heel, is that he’s a narcissist who lacks self-awareness,” said Hagan, a writer for Vanity Fair, in an interview. “This is how he talks inside the bubble he lives in. He receives a lot of affirmation for it, and he thinks it’s okay.”

Hagan compared Wenner’s mind-set, if not his politics, to Donald Trump’s, another 77-year-old baby boomer known to speak without much regard for accuracy or self-reflection.

Wenner no longer runs Rolling Stone, which was acquired by Penske Media Corporation in a series of transactions between 2017 and 2019.
Yet the reaction to Wenner’s comments crystallized criticisms that have periodically swirled around him and the magazine for decades. Rolling Stone long promoted rock’s male superstars — and personal Wenner favorites — such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger over newer artists and genres such as grunge, metal, R&B and hip-hop.

Bono and U2, for example, appeared on Rolling Stone’s cover 24 times between 1985 and 2018, or once every 16½ months, though not at all since Wenner stepped down as editorial director in 2019. Critics suggested the reason was twofold: Wenner favored his friends and knew who sold magazines.

The notion that Rolling Stone tended to give more favorable reviews to artists whose record companies bought ads in the magazine was highlighted in 1996, when Wenner spiked a negative review of the latest Hootie & the Blowfish album and subbed in a more favorable one. A reporter for the New York Observer asked Jim DeRogatis, the writer of the spiked review, whether Wenner was a fan of the band.

DeRogatis responded that Wenner “is a fan of any band that sells 8 million records.”

Wenner fired him the day the comment was published.

During its 1970s heyday, the magazine developed a “boys’ club” reputation, with just one female writer on its masthead — Robin Green, who stayed only three years before becoming a TV writer and later wrote a memoir of her time there, titled “The Only Girl.” Rock critic Ellen Willis refused to write for Rolling Stone, telling Wenner’s co-founding editor that the magazine “habitually refers to women as chicks and treats us as chicks.”

There’s no denying Wenner’s achievements as a businessman and a media visionary. After dropping out of the University of California at Berkeley, he started Rolling Stone in 1967 alongside his mentor, San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph Gleason, with a $7,500 loan from his in-laws. The magazine struggled until Wenner landed an interview in 1970 with one of his idols, John Lennon — one of Rolling Stone’s first cover subjects — that helped propel Rolling Stone to national prominence, and eventually to prosperity. Wenner shaped its coverage of music, politics and popular culture, investing it with a youthful zeal and counterculture attitude. His timing was spectacular: Rolling Stone hit its stride just as its boomer audience was settling into careers and consumerism.

The magazine’s feature reporting helped spark a stylish and subjective subgenre known as New Journalism: the drug-addled ramblings of “gonzo” journalist Hunter S. Thompson; the political reporting of Timothy Crouse (“The Boys on the Bus”); and later the acerbic travelogues of P.J. O’Rourke. Wenner launched the career of filmmaker Cameron Crowe (whose “Almost Famous” fictionalized his stint as a teenage rock journalist); encouraged Tom Wolfe’s transformation to best-selling novelist by serializing his debut effort, “The Bonfire of the Vanities”; and gave a young photographer named Annie Leibovitz her start shooting celebrities.

At his entrepreneurial peak in the 1990s, Wenner was the master of a mini-magazine empire consisting of Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal and Us Weekly.

But Hagan said Wenner’s comment about Rolling Stone’s 2014 story about the University of Virginia was particularly telling. “His ego won’t let him believe that he’s done anything wrong,” he said.

“A Rape on Campus” was easily one of the most notorious journalistic faceplants of the past quarter-century. The central event in the story — a young woman’s description of a horrific sexual assault by seven men at a fraternity on campus — turned out to be unsupported by any evidence. As revealed shortly after the article’s publication, writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely and her editors at Rolling Stone never contacted any of the fraternity brothers accused by a woman identified only as “Jackie.” The magazine’s journalists also never interviewed a group of friends the article described as indifferent to Jackie’s distress immediately after she told them about the alleged assault.

A post-mortem review by a Columbia journalism school panel in 2015 authorized by Wenner and Rolling Stone concluded that the magazine published the story despite the lack of corroboration for Jackie’s account.

“The Rolling Stone article was far from ‘bulletproof,’” Sheila Coronel, who led the Columbia investigation, told The Post this week. “As our investigation found, the story suffered from failures in reporting, editing, editorial supervision, and fact-checking. The error could have been avoided at various points of the process, including at the point when the author failed to fully get the side of the fraternity where the alleged assault was supposed to have taken place.”

An associate U-Va. dean, Nicole Eramo, sued the magazine and Erdely, claiming the article “falsely attributed” statements to her, such as that she had called the university “the rape school.” Eramo won a $3 million jury verdict, but later settled for an undisclosed amount after Rolling Stone moved to appeal. The magazine also settled lawsuits from fraternity members.

Despite the rebuke over his comments, Wenner’s legacy is secure, said Samir Husni, the founder of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi.
“Rolling Stone is much bigger and more important than Jann Wenner,” Husni said on Monday, comparing the publication to Ms. magazine and Playboy for its cultural impact. “No one outside of media circles know who Jann Wenner is. But they know what Rolling Stone is.”

[bestclassicbands.com]

Wenner is old, he does not understand the PC rules of the game nowadays.

Instead of speaking his heart and becoming an instant pariah when asked why the book didn’t feature any women, he should have lied and replied : "oh vol.2 will be entirely made with women and Black artists."

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dcba
Wenner is old, he does not understand the PC rules of the game nowadays.

Instead of speaking his heart and becoming an instant pariah when asked why the book didn’t feature any women, he should have lied and replied : "oh vol.2 will be entirely made with women and Black artists."

Nah. The guy sucks. No excuses.

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dcba
Wenner is old, he does not understand the PC rules of the game nowadays.

Instead of speaking his heart and becoming an instant pariah when asked why the book didn’t feature any women, he should have lied and replied : "oh vol.2 will be entirely made with women and Black artists."

no what he should have done is not call into question whether women and black people are articulate or capable of being intellectual

but your your right it is a good thing that he spoke from his heart and revealed who he really is and what awful things he really believes about his fellow human beings

wish more people who share his beliefs would speak from there hearts so we would all know who to shun

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24FPS
Now this will taint his legacy.

It'll get him cancelled now but it'll have zero impact on his legacy lol.

His legacy will be sullied. Maybe if he's lucky they'll just say he lost his mind when he got old. He is 77. If he was misquoted, misunderstood, maybe, but what he said was really stupid. Is Bono all that deep? Joni Mitchell certainly spoke to my life and the times she lived through. Jimi Hendrix had an incredible mind that most overlooked because of his other worldly guitar playing. Such rubbish to dismiss females and blacks.

He didn’t say he dismissed them because they were female of black. He personally didn’t see those artists like that. He didn’t see a lot of white artists like that either. His opinion but wring think in todays silly world.
If he write a book that was dominated by female and black artists he would be a hero to many of the same people now bashing him.

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gotdablouse
Very odd turn of events, if he'd just said that he'd selected the artists he likes best I hope it would have been ok ?!

Exactly - he should have said "After publishing my autobiography, Hatchett approached me about writing a book on a topic of my choosing. I decided a fun project would be to focus on highlighting a handful of artists who express themselves in a way that particularly resonates with me and the way I personally view the conjunction of rock and society. These 5 reflect that best for me and that's what the book is about--not a claim to objectivity or completeness, or an imprimatur of what or who is 'the best'."

-swiss



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-27 12:28 by swiss.

Sickening, anyway you look at it. Only a while ago, just before all that wokeshit hit the fan, I published a book consisting of a dozen in-depth interviews I had conducted over the years: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Graham Nash, David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer. That's right, not a single black or female artist amongst them. What's worse, I didn't even feel the need to apologize for these glaring omissions. Shame on me. Now it looks like I couldn't get away with that today. While it must be said that Jann Wenner's needlessly apologetic stammering did not exactly help his cause of free speech in a climate of ideological brainwashing and cancel culture, let's remind ourselves that free speech is a truly wonderful concept. Like analogue recording and vinyl records. And just like true sound it will prevail. Well, hopefully.

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mkbbcmr
Sickening, anyway you look at it. Only a while ago, just before all that wokeshit hit the fan, I published a book consisting of a dozen in-depth interviews I had conducted over the years: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Graham Nash, David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer. That's right, not a single black or female artist amongst them. What's worse, I didn't even feel the need to apologize for these glaring omissions. Shame on me. Now it looks like I couldn't get away with that today. While it must be said that Jann Wenner's needlessly apologetic stammering did not exactly help his cause of free speech in a climate of ideological brainwashing and cancel culture, let's remind ourselves that free speech is a truly wonderful concept. Like analogue recording and vinyl records. And just like true sound it will prevail. Well, hopefully.

Black and female musicians “didn’t articulate at the level” of the white musicians featured in his new book of interviews…

If you don’t have a problem with that statement, I don’t know what to tell you.

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mkbbcmr
let's remind ourselves that free speech is a truly wonderful concept. Like analogue recording and vinyl records. And just like true sound it will prevail. Well, hopefully.

Indeed. Let's also remind ourselves that free speech includes the reactions to those utterings

If that is his opinion based on his experience, you can confront him with your own worldview and criticise him all you want. But penalising and cancelling him for voicing his opinions, however wrong and prejudiced they seem to be, is sick and deplorable. I don't even know the guy very well, met him only a couple of times but I know he's definitely not a racist. Far from it. Decades of reading Rolling Stone made that abundantly clear. He's also not a very clever advocate for himself, to put it mildly. It seems that "The Masters", the book in question, is now on hold and may not even get published any time soon. Pity.

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DandelionPowderman


Indeed. Let's also remind ourselves that free speech includes the reactions to those utterings

Oh, absolutely. It is my belief that all voices have a right to be heard. If you don't agree, then debate it; challenge it; and create a broader discussion. Cancel culture is real, and it really shouldn't be.

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Big Al

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DandelionPowderman


Indeed. Let's also remind ourselves that free speech includes the reactions to those utterings

Oh, absolutely. It is my belief that all voices have a right to be heard. If you don't agree, then debate it; challenge it; and create a broader discussion. Cancel culture is real, and it really shouldn't be.

Exactly.

Ideally, kindness and acceptance are goals of decent humans, not pushing the boundaries of decency just because it's their right. Motives make a difference. Can you say what you want? Of course, but there are repercussions.

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mkbbcmr

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Big Al

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DandelionPowderman


Indeed. Let's also remind ourselves that free speech includes the reactions to those utterings

Oh, absolutely. It is my belief that all voices have a right to be heard. If you don't agree, then debate it; challenge it; and create a broader discussion. Cancel culture is real, and it really shouldn't be.

Exactly.

The cancel culture crowd is so real and so profoundly absurd that once they run out of targets, they turn and start eating their own. Wenner is a prime example.
A hero of many for decades yet, in an instant, now deemed a pariah for eternity.

No one is safe when history repeats itself.

Racism and sexism have always been wrong, it's not a new concept to decent people.

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Kurt

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mkbbcmr

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Big Al

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DandelionPowderman


Indeed. Let's also remind ourselves that free speech includes the reactions to those utterings

Oh, absolutely. It is my belief that all voices have a right to be heard. If you don't agree, then debate it; challenge it; and create a broader discussion. Cancel culture is real, and it really shouldn't be.

Exactly.

The cancel culture crowd is so real and so profoundly absurd that once they run out of targets, they turn and start eating their own. Wenner is a prime example.
A hero of many for decades yet, in an instant, now deemed a pariah for eternity.

No one is safe when history repeats itself.

Eternity? That's a bit dramatic. Morgan Wallen is back. Cancellations aren't as permanent as some would like you to believe.

It's always the same with the "anti-woke" crowd. They don't have a problem with Wenner excluding women or people of color. They don't have a problem with him making nasty comments about them. You might say that Wenner himself is guilty of cancelling a considerable amount of artists. But you won't hear them about that.
But when some people protest this. When people don't like it. When people put some distance between themselves and a guy who makes nasty statements, all of a sudden they draw the "freedom of speech" card (although Wenner still has full liberty to say whatever he want), and start whining about "woke" and "cancelling" and whatnot. Boohoo, cry me river.

There was a time one could not sing "spend the night together" on t.v. This is possible now. In fact, people can say more now than ever before. But it works both ways: people can say nasty stuff and other people can say what they think about that. And some people can learn their lesson and try say less horrible stuff. Terrible, isn't it?

Okay, my two cents.

The old school rock culture, as it once was for Jenn, and to most people at the time, was a pretty white male dominated game. The biggest stars, the leaders of the pack, you know, all the most worshipped and followed names, were mostly white dudes. A kind of contingent historical fact. I mean, if one wants to pick up seven biggest and most influental Western Philosophers (you know, the real ones), those most likely will all be male and pretty white (Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, etc.).


But our Wenner goes idiotic and moron when trying to explain his chosen lot by a criterion like "intellectual" or "articulate" or 'being philosopher' or whatever pretentous, corny crap. I guess that is a result of once taking all that way too seriously - yeah, he himself - his magazine - had a hand in creating that illusion. Now it sounds not only bloody dated but like kiss-assing his idols asses, but failing miserably there (I could see someone like Dylan or Jagger laughing their asses off when hearing absurd stuff like that). C'mon, Jenn - why don't you just take your head out of your ass, and if you want to hear something spot on both intellectually and articulately, here is one of your philosophers stating all that matters in one sentence:

I Know It's Only Rock'n'Roll But I Like It.

Now, you missed the insight of that one, Jenn. Right?

So our Jenn, so full of his own hypocracy, ends up sounding nothing but a racist and misogynist. @#$%& hell, someone like Patti Smith would eat alive someone like Mick Jagger (who no doubt is among the smartest of the bunch) if being intellectual or articulate is the criterion.

It is also a sort of ironic that a dude that has made his living and career out of words happens to be so bloody awful with his choice of words.

Embarrassing all the way.

- Doxa



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-27 21:06 by Doxa.

@ matxill

So you reckon all the over-sensitive snowflakes and self-pitying crybabies are spokespersons for the "anti-woke" crowd?

Seriously?

That's absurd.

Really looking forward to Bill Maher returning soon btw, now that the writers strike is drawing to a close. About time, too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-27 21:25 by mkbbcmr.

Wasn't sure I wanted to wade into this, but here I am. Many moons ago Rolling Stone magazine (yeah, news print folded over days and then slick pages) was a constant for me. Even Joni mentioned Rolling Stone in one of her songs. Then, it wasn't. I'd grab a copy off of the newsstand occasionally if it had something that seemed interesting, but it no longer seemed relevant to music (or the counterculture) as it once did. This sure dates me...as I am sure it does many others here.

Coming across Mister Wenner's comments regarding his latest book, I went, WTF? How could you be so f'ing dumb? I've read this and that since his remarks,among them the premise of Wenner starting Rolling Stone as a way to get close to rock and music leaders. That's cool. Many of us desired the same at some point.

What I don't get is Wenner dismissing women and people of color (oh my, I just used possibly a forbidden term) in being music leaders and shapers. His overlooking them as part of the music scene over time from the early days of rock'n'roll, jazz, blues, etc., is amazing. That he would see them as tokens if added to his book tells us more about him as a guy of wealth and privilege now than he imagines, one among many. As a Ricky Scaggs song goes, Wenner seems to have forgotten, Don't Get Above Your Raising. He should just now return to the shadows.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-28 12:51 by matxil.

I don't know why Jann ommitted Chuck Berry. Chuck influenced all the rockers that made the cover of Rolling Stone mag. Chuck was very intelligent and articulate.
Chuck is The Man as far as Rock and roll is concerned.

Rockandroll,
Mops

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rollmops
I don't know why Jann ommitted Chuck Berry. Chuck influenced all the rockers that made the cover of Rolling Stone mag. Chuck was very intelligent and articulate.
Chuck is The Man as far as Rock and roll is concerned.

Rockandroll,
Mops

One guess...