Wenner’s Misguided Masters

REVIEWS
Aryaman A. Thareja
Nov. 30th, 2o23

Media mogul Jann Wenner does not shy away from controversy. The Founder of the Rolling Stone, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (whose board he was recently booted off) and Men’s Journal Magazine dropped out of Berkeley effusing rebellious Teen Spirit, to work at muckraker mag Ramparts in the stormy sixties, under the tutelage of long-time mentor, pioneering jazz/rock critic (and, later, co-founder) Ralph Gleason. The subsequent half-century saw him literally Rockin’ (in) the Free World, employing some of the greats of rock, pop and cultural journalism, including the legendary and the infamous Greil Marcus and Hunter S. Thompson (whose biography he co-wrote in 2007).

Time’s been kind to Mr. Wenner, establishing him as a cultural custodian and shrewd businessman. But he hasn’t come all this way scot-free, the blood stains of business embossed in the numerous controversies he frequently finds himself (or gets himself) embrangled in. His influence in the world of Hollywood, heroin and hegemons is unparalleled, his reach extending to Presidents Obama and Clinton, Coldplay’s front-man Chris Martin, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Former VP Al Gore among countless others.

The mag itself was born at a transitory stage in the cultural understanding of Rock and Roll. Rock wasn’t designed for the mainstream. It ran parallel but underground, a riptide of counter-culture, cutting against the grain of the norm. Naturally then, it is predisposed to polemics, to prohibition, to puritanical repudiations and moral panic. The Rolling Stone sought to elevate the genre to the domain of the intellectual, the creative, the extraordinary, the mystical – into ‘art’.

Far from fame, fortune and frenzied festivity, the trek to the top was, at times, treacherous. Once Rolling Stone contributor and critical novelist Tom Wolfe described him as “pretty much immune to guilt.” His father called him a “pain in the ass”, his mother “the worst child she had ever met.” Some call him a narcissist and sycophant, others label him dishonest or cruel. Joe Hagan, the author of Mr. Wenner’s biography Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, went through 500 boxes of notes, correspondence, recordings and other material that Wenner had been saving from an early age in anticipation of his own success. No biography could live up to the one written in Wenner’s imagination; The rage that followed the biography’s publication paints a spite-pattered picture of this disillusionment.

His latest book, The Masters: Conversations with Dylan, Lennon, Jagger, Townshend, Garcia, Bono, and Springsteen, promptly propelled him back into the spotlight, and for all the wrong reasons. The book itself is a collection of colloquies; bright, shiny trophies that adorn the walls inside Wenner’s mind. On the surface, it’s harmless. These are old interviews. They’ve been published before, read by thousands, edited carefully. What could possibly go wrong? True to style, they’ve even been altered and proofread by their respective interviewees, and approved before final print. The only additions are introductory remarks and a set of commentaries before each interview. This is where the problem arises.

In the introduction he explains, “That there are no Black musicians in this collection is reflective of the prejudices and practices of the times. As a white middle-class kid in the Fifties and Sixties, and as a more aware college student, I didn’t hear such songs as Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1964) as part of my zeitgeist.” Arguably, it is truthful to admit that certain musicians are out of our sphere of understanding, of the realm of our discovery. But there’s two reasons that argument could not apply here. The first, that as the founder of the Rolling Stone, you would undoubtedly come into contact with musicians, artists, creatives from around the world, you’d have to listen, to analyse, to think. You’d have to read what the magazine you started said precisely on those out of your “zeitgeist” (Sam Cooke’s album ‘Portrait of a Legend’ is ranked 307/500 on RS’s 500 greatest albums of all time). Second, when talking about something as foundational and fundamental as the defining traits of a genre as broad as Rock & Roll, making a deliberate choice not to include Black musicians, is blatantly contradictory.

In an interview with the New York Times, he doesn’t back down. “Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.” He remarks, “Of Black artists…. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.” It seems unlikely that a writer with a past as illustrious as Wenner would make such callous remarks. Some freudian slips can be revelatory. Some facts are revelatory too; For years, there was only one female contributing editor (Robin Green) at the magazine. Jim DeRogatis, a former Rolling Stones writer, was fired in 1996 after publishing a negative review about genre-bending 90s band Hootie and the Blowfish. DeRogatis, in response to being asked if Wenner was a fan of the band, suggestively jibes “No, I think he’s just a fan of bands which sell eight and a half million million copies.” And I think he’s right. The review was pulled before being published. Masters seems to follow the pattern of Wenner publicising work he did with those he was friendly with – not those that fit the label.

There are other instances of delicate discrimination. At another point in the foreword, he explains, “Rock embraced the open sexuality of the Black rhythm. The body found expression and freedom, the ecstasy and abandon of the tribal and the primal as well as the slow dance, with its invitation to intimacy.” Troubling racist tropes leave a bitter taste when you flip through the remaining pages, especially when fiercely defended. Especially when some of these interviews (Townshend in ‘68, Dylan in ‘69, Lennon in ‘70) took place a sock-hop away from the Civil Rights Movement.

The perils of cancel culture lie in its one-sided narratives. To express a pinch of Sympathy For The Devil, I believe his latest statements were particularly ill-chosen, dishonest and ironically, not well articulated. Wenner would perhaps receive criticism for admitting to choosing this batch for their obvious closeness and friendship. Unfamiliarity always pushes one toward discomfort. He himself admits that his book “was not meant to represent the whole of music and its diverse and important originators” but rather to “reflect the high points” of his career. The book affirms that position.

The criticism cannot be invalidated that easily; Wenner’s position is a symbolic one. It speaks to the lengths that radio stations, recording studios, national press, government officials, religious leaders, and white parents sought to prevent the pervasiveness (and alleged perversion) of Rock, a genre that brought down barriers, especially racial. Even more so, it speaks to their success. Wenner’s decision to delineate Rock, deliberately enshrining white musicians as stewards of the genre, while simultaneously and willfully eradicating the influence, identities and music of Black musicians (who helped define and invent it), is not just discrimination. It echoes the sentiments of the de facto regulators of music consumption.

The Stones have a complicated relationship with and to Black Music. Jack Hamilton, author of Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination, asks the question: “How did rock-and-roll music—a genre rooted in black traditions, and many of whose earliest stars were black—come to be understood as the natural province of whites?” One of the interviews in Wenner’s Masters is with magnetic maestro Mick Jagger, the frontman of The Rolling Stones, and the androgynous symbol of Rock’s rebelliousness and liberation. Wenner (and many more) call the Stones the “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.” Obvious adulation aside, Wenner asks Jagger to define Rock and Roll (227). He’s proud of the genre’s evident blues influence, amongst philosophical sprinklings of “energy, anger, angst” and other youthful dalliances that yield Rock that adolescent “languor.” Hamilton points out that for most of their careers, they “never set out to be a rock-and-roll band at all.” They revered their R&B contemporaries, they broadcasted the blues across Britain, openly acknowledging their inspirations, heroes, idols as Black musicians.

“This transition—from the Rolling Stones being heard as a white band authenticated by their reverence for and fluency within black music, to the Rolling Stones simply being heard as a new sort of authentic themselves—is among the most significant turns in the history of rock.”

Wenner (and his co-founder Ralph Gleason), are enamoured with what the Rolling Stones became, not with what (and who) got them there. The Rolling Stone published an oral history of segregation at Rock concerts in the Jim Crow era. It recalls that “the Beatles refused to play segregated venues on their 1965 U.S. tour” – five full years before Wenner’s interview with Lennon. Despite the clear acknowledgment that Rock rejects racial discrimination, and even further, the blatant fact that Rock originated with Black musicians, the genre has become synonymous with primarily white musicians. As tempting as it may be, Wenner is not the only guilty party. Pulitzer prize winning critic Margo Jefferson declares historical plundering, black-and-white (white-from-black). Deliberate or not, it sustained the narrative that first, there was a difference in black Rock and white Rock and second, that white rock was better. Margo Jefferson felt it before Jimi Hendrix died, and perhaps Jann Wenner felt the same thing differently in 1967, when the Rolling Stone was fresh off the press.

By 1979, classic “Rock” was already white. Now, it was disco’s turn for subjugation. Disco Demolition Night (1979), the mass public burning of Disco records and subsequent riot by thousands of white Rock fans at a MLB game, is often viewed as homophobic, anti-black, and sexist. Disco was seen as “product of homosexuals, blacks and Latins”, and it becomes clear that the barrier-bending salvation, the liberation from labels, (to quote Wenner) “the rebellious spirit, social commentary…undaunted sexuality” was all now at risk of extinction. Disco, like Rock, was (yet again) challenging the American identity. Seemingly, the pendulum had swung too far out, and it was now brazenly making its way back. Events like these shifted the sonority of rock, making it milder, more digestible for a mass (white-male) audience. The records brought to Disco Demolition Night affirm this specific zeitgeist, a deliberate upset to the balance on which Rock (and Disco) lay.

The volume is Wenner’s vanity project. A final hurrah, a midnight indulgence, a divisive attempt to reclaim centre stage and leave behind a legacy. The book is filled with mastery, the Lennon interview filled with candid remarks, closely following the break-up of the Beatles. The Dylan interview captures the humorous evasiveness of this monumental figure. However, the legacy of Rock today is troubled. Hanif Abduraqib writes about a Springsteen concert he attended in 2016, observing that the only other black people at the show were performing labour in some capacity. Margo Jefferson wrote in 1972, “The night Jimi [Hendrix] died I dreamed this was the latest step in a plot being designed to eliminate blacks from rock music so that it may be recorded in history as a creation of whites.” It is fortunate that Wenner’s latest comments colour this legacy to more accurately reflect the deep prejudices that lay behind the glistening facades of the magazine, and the genre as a whole.

[This review was written as part of a class I took at Cornell]