Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner was given a closing likelihood to elucidate himself to the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame Basis on Saturday (Sept. 16) throughout an emergency convention name earlier than he was voted off the group’s board of administrators. However as an alternative of quelling outrage at feedback he made concerning feminine and black artists in a New York Occasions interview that ran Friday Friday, the 77-year-old media icon angered longtime allies on the board along with his “dangerous apology,” sources inform Billboard.
Within the New York Occasions piece, Wenner stated ladies and Black artists didn’t “articulate” on a excessive sufficient stage in his interviews with them to be included in his new ebook The Masters — a ebook consisting of his interviews with the likes of Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Pete Townshend throughout his time at Rolling Stone. An emergency assembly was known as with the board’s high-profile music business executives dialing in, together with Youtube world head of music Lyor Cohen, music supervisor and government Irving Azoff and former chairman and CEO of Common Music Group and Sony Music Leisure Doug Morris, as Wenner made a “self-serving” and poorly articulated try to elucidate himself, in response to a supply.
Underwhelmed by Wenner’s Mea culpa, board members like Rob Mild, managing accomplice and head of the music at Artistic Artists Company, lambasted Wenner’s conduct and finally a vote was held. Each board member on the decision voted to finish Wenner’s tenure with one exception — music supervisor Jon Landau, who forged the one no vote. (Landau was previously a music critic, who wrote in Rolling Stone’s inaugural difficulty and for years following.) After just a few fast remarks, the assembly was adjourned, and a press launch was shortly drafted to announce the choice. Landau and Mild didn’t reply to request for remark.
“Jann Wenner has been faraway from the Board of Administrators of the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame Basis,” learn the press launch. No extra info was given.
Wenner’s controversial statements to The New York Occasions have been made when requested why the ebook doesn’t characteristic any interviews with folks of shade or feminine musicians. Wenner notes in his introduction that neither are in his “zeitgeist.”
“After I was referring to the zeitgeist, I used to be referring to Black performers, to not the feminine performers, OK? Simply to get that correct,” Wenner advised the Occasions’ David Marchese. “The folks needed to meet a pair standards, but it surely was simply form of my private curiosity and love of them. Insofar as the ladies, simply none of them have been as articulate sufficient on this mental stage.”
Talking on Black artists, Wenner stated “You recognize, Stevie Surprise, genius, proper? I suppose if you use a phrase as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is utilizing that phrase. Perhaps Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I imply, they simply didn’t articulate at that stage.”
Wenner helped discovered the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame in 1983 with Atlantic Information founder and chairman Ahmet Ertegun, in addition to file executives Seymour Stein, Bob Krasnow and Noreen Woods, and attorneys Allen Grubman and Suzan Evans.
He was was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame as a non-performer in 2004 and served as chairman from 2006 via 2020. Wenner left Rolling Stone in 2019 when the publication was acquired by Penske Media Company, which now additionally owns Billboard.
