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In response to
"c&p? no pay -- nm"
by
Beaker 🍻
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Sorry. Took me a while to get to my desktop. Here you go.
Posted by
Mop🧹 (aka rburriel)
Sep 16 '23, 18:44
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Jann Wenner Removed From Rock Hall Board After Times Interview
The Rolling Stone co-founder’s exit comes a day after The New York Times published an interview in which he made widely criticized
comments.
By Ben Sisario
Sept. 16, 2023 Updated 7:48 p.m. ET
Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, has been removed from the board of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,
which he also helped found, one day after an interview with him was published in The New York Times in which he made comments that
were widely criticized as sexist and racist.
The foundation — which inducts artists into the hall of fame and was the organization behind the creation of its affiliated museum in
Cleveland — made the announcement in a brief statement released Saturday.
“Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” the statement said. Joel
Peresman, the president and chief executive of the foundation, declined to comment further when reached by phone.
But the dismissal of Mr. Wenner comes after an interview with The Times, published Friday and timed to the publication of his new book,
called “The Masters,” which collects his decades of interviews with rock legends like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce
Springsteen and Bono — all of them white and male.
In the interview, David Marchese of The Times asked Mr. Wenner, 77, why the book included no women or people of color.
Regarding women, Mr. Wenner said, “Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,” and remarked that Joni
Mitchell “was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”
His answer about artists of color was less direct. “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?” he said. “I suppose when
you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t
articulate at that level.”
Mr. Wenner’s comments drew an immediate reaction, with his quotes mocked on social media and past criticisms unearthed of Rolling
Stone’s coverage of female artists under Mr. Wenner. Joe Hagan, who in 2017 wrote a harshly critical biography of Mr. Wenner, “Sticky
Fingers,” cited a comment by the feminist critic Ellen Willis, who in 1970 called the magazine “viciously anti-woman.”
Mr. Wenner did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday evening.
Mr. Wenner founded Rolling Stone in 1967 with the music critic Ralph J. Gleason and made it the pre-eminent music magazine of its time,
with deep coverage of rock music as well as politics and current events. Much of it was written by stars of the “new journalism” movement
of the 1960s and ’70s like Hunter S. Thompson. Mr. Gleason died in 1975.
Mr. Wenner sold the magazine over a series of transactions completed in 2020, and he officially left it in 2019. Last year, he published a
memoir, “Like a Rolling Stone.”
Mr. Wenner was also part of a group of music and media executives that founded the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983, and
inducted its first class in 1986; its affiliated museum, in Cleveland, opened in 1995. Mr. Wenner himself was inducted in 2004 as a
nonperformer.
The Rock Hall has been criticized for the relative few women and minority artists who have been inducted over the years. According to
one scholar, by 2019 just 7.7 percent of the individuals in the hall were women. But some critics have applauded recent changes, and the
newest class of inductees includes Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow and Missy Elliott, along with George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the
Machine and the Spinners.
Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario
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