Two weeks ago, Rolling Stone founder and media magnate Jan Wenner ignited a maelstrom of controversy over his new book, The Masters: Conversations with Dylan, Lennon, Jagger, Townshend, Garcia, Bono, and Springsteen. In an interview with the New York Times, Wenner has taken to task over including seven white guys to represent what he felt were his best subjects in over 50 years of running the famed publication. Jenner, in an Olympian level gesture of inserting foot into mouth, has this to say:
“They [black and female artists] were not in my zeitgeist…they didn’t articulate enough on this intellectual level.”
The next day, Wenner’s publicist killed himself….ok, no he didn’t, but it did set off a powderkeg of a PR disaster, one that resulted in Wennber being removed from the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame foundation, an institution he founded. It also forced many to reevaluate Rolling Stone as a cultural bastion, as many have only now have realized how dismissive and exploitative it has been in its representation of minority and women artists.
Growing up, I wanted to work at Rolling Stone magazine more than anything in the world; I saw Almost Famous when I was 15 and it remains my favorite movie of all time. It perfectly captured the world I wished I had lived in and set me on a journey that, much like the movie’s protagonist, removed a lot of the mystique and romanticism and instead revealed the ugly underbelly of my once-dream career.
Being 15, I only knew Rolling Stone as the go-to music magazine. I was raised on classic rock and was excited to see guys like Springsteen and the Stones still gracing the cover while MTV and VH1 were in the process of phasing out older artists (and later music in general). I liked that kids my age still had access to the thoughts and ideas of music’s elders. As a boy, going through puberty, I thought little of the exploitative nature of the Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson covers; in fact a poster of the Simpson cover hung in my room for years.
It wasn’t until my late 20s’ that I began reading up on Jann Wenner and what an arrogant, self-serving, hypocritical star-fucking twat he really is. He claims the magazine was founded an answer to the status quo. and maybe that was true for about 5-10 years; eventually, rising damp set in and Wenner become the exact same suit-wearing, gala-throwing, yacht-galavanting empty figurehead he thought he was railing against. He cozied up to Jagger, Springstee, Bono and numerous other megastars and perhaps put a dent in their iconoclastic authenticity by seducing them with praise and glamour.
The benefit of hindsight and the modern cultural lens both show just how flawed Rolling Stone has always been as a publication, even in the post-Wenner days. The exploitation of women, the ignorance of minority artists, etc. It’s all out there and reveals a very ugly truth.
I can still separate Rolling Stone’s writing from Wenner; I still love what guys like Hunter S. Thompson and Cameron Crowe had to offer. But the overall institution as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame represent the watering down of rock and roll as a form of rebellion, and one that has too often airbrushed its proper history at the expense of personal glory.
Good riddance.
Nasti Thoughts 