The founder of Rolling Stone has been removed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame board after he said Black and women artists weren’t articulate enough to feature in his book https://t.co/YJGIDiVRiV
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 16, 2023
He seems to have been responsible for Ralph Steadman’s partnership with Hunter S. Thompson — not to mention introducing HST to a wider audience — and I’m sure there must have been some other good deeds in his long career. But Jann Wenner was never, IIRC, a sympathetic figure to the readers who made him a ‘celebrity’. (Anyone got a link to the Doonesbury duels between ‘Yawn’ and Duke?)
basically the only rule of book promotion is to get people to like you and/or find you interesting and wenner managed to do the polar opposite while self-immolating in record time
quite an achievementhttps://t.co/XNsQer78MT
— rat king ?? (@MikeIsaac) September 17, 2023
Stereogum has a link to the original NYTimes interview where Wenner let his mouth write checks his brain couldn’t cash:
… In the introduction to his book, Wenner writes that performers of color and women performers were not in his zeitgeist, which led to some questions from Marchese about why he chose the subjects he chose. “The selection was not a deliberate selection,” Wenner said. “It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”
When Marchese pushed back — “You’re telling me Joni Mitchell is not articulate enough on an intellectual level?” — Wenner responded:
It’s not that they’re not creative geniuses. It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.
Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? 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.…
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth…
“While I love him deeply, I do not agree with the comments he made and understand why they are so upsetting and hurtful,” said Gus Wenner, Rolling Stone’s CEO and Jann Wenner’s son, wrote in an email to staff, which was shared with The Washington Post. https://t.co/XbEllE4iKV
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 18, 2023
(Unpaywalled) gift link — lots of good info in this article:
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…
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.”…
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…
(H/t James Palmer’s twitter feed)
Remembering Sister Rosetta Tharpe, born on this day in 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Here she is performing “Didn’t It Rain” at a train depot in Manchester, England in 1964. pic.twitter.com/fNZbroj56S
— Dust-to-Digital (@dusttodigital) March 20, 2023
War for Ukraine Day 573: Presidents Zelenskyy & Biden Address the UN General Assembly
Jay
God,
my Mother would kick his ass up one side of the street and back if she were alive.
She would go to Tacoma, from Blairmore, a Coal Mining town in the Canadian Rockies, back in the late 30’s, 40’s and into the 50’s, with some girlfriends, to buy Dresses, and “Race Records” which were illegal in Canada at the time. She, I later learned, had a crate of 78’s stashed away.
She learned to not take her brother Carl, because at the time, his Canadian ID card said Miner, so they couldn’t buy alcohol.
Jay
BTW, for those that like cars, and Tony Jay’s comments, a vid you might enjoy from one of my favorite you tube cranks,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c60hID-w4Ig
10 most Evil Cars in the World.
Nukular Biskits
But i have it on the good authority of white (mostly) male conservatives that systemic and endemic racism doesn’t exist …
Baud
Had he stopped here and made it purely subjective it would have been ok. But like all people who think they’re special, he believed his subjective preferences were grounded in some type of objective reality about women and black artists.
Tony Jay
@Jay:
I’m greatly enjoying every verbose minute of this, and yes, I tremble upon the very precipice, knees watery and arms windmilling frantically in the wrong direction, of seeing exactly what you mean.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Hopped around it. Gonna be a good watch tomorrow.
Betty Cracker
Love that Sister Rosetta Tharpe video at the end — what a nice morning treat! And thank you for the timely nod to a musical pioneer who deserves far more recognition. Dudes like Wenner wrote the first draft of rock-and-roll history, but that doesn’t mean they get the final say.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
You ask too much of him. Wenner’s entire point is that ‘Rock’ is the volk music of the White Man, and while its purity of essence has, sadly, and to nobody’s benefit, been diluted on the margins by the commercially mandated presence of tokenist interlopers, he’s Jann fucking Wenner, and when he stands with legs akimbo in the centre of Cominsky Park, twirling his pearl-handled Fender six-shooters and shooting truth bullets high into the slate grey skies of Woke Conformity, he doesn’t care where they fall, because he’s just so Rock and fucking Roll.
p.a.
“Oh crazy uncle Jann, you are so right”!?!?!???? Nice crowd he hangs with.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
“Y’all culturally appropriated Rock from us after we culturally appropriated it from black people fair and square.”
Jay
@Baud:
It’s a racist, misogynist asshole answer to an asshole question.
The man has no ears. Tracy Chapman, Simply Red, Be Good Tanya’s, REM, Run DMC, Bob Marley, just to name a few of the thousands,…..
Jay
@Jay:
A Tribe Called Red,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj3U0z64_m4
Tanya Tayuck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LbWNiej8J8
Tony Jay
@Baud:
“Yeah, but it’s not like those Melanin-Americans understood what they had, is it? They were just banging away in ignorant bliss because they liked the way the boom-boom made them feel. It took real thinkers with, uh, superior cranial volume and an, uh, a philosophical heritage to turn the noise into a coherent musical form.”
“Like Def Leppard?”
“Like Def Leppard, yeah.”
“And women?”
“Women like men in tight jeans who’ll give them a slap and the clap. Rock gives them that, but they got greedy. They’re all “Me Too!” “Me Too!” and it was all downhill from… say, where you going, son? I ain’t finished yet.”
Baud
@Tony Jay:
What the hell is wrong with Def Leppard? You try playing drums with one arm.
Tony Jay
@Jay:
The bit where they compare and contrast Henry Ford’s purchase of the Dearborn Independent to use as a vehicle for his raving antisemitism and general hard-right fuckeristicality with Musky Lon’s Xitter faceplant is… pleasant.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
You think I should have used Metallica instead? You’re not alone there.
Baud
Looks like the inexperienced interns at CNN got a hold of the headline generator, because they out the blame where it belongs instead of with “Congress.”
EntroPi
Since it an OT…
like many here, I don’t have a normal sleep pattern to start with.
My alarm went off a bit ago, but I was in the middle of dream and kept trying to snooze it from that, where I was arguing with plumbing contractors, and telling them they couldn’t start because this alarm was going off.
In less than 2 hours, the real-life heating contractors are supposed to show up.
No stress, I guess?
for those who remember, I asked about guitars a while back. Within that week our radiators died for the 3rd time that winter. So, I called bullshit, fixed it myself every week (water levels/pressure) for the rest of the season, and have people here to replace 30+ year old hot water heating with the something tied into the AC system.
But this was about 10-15x my guitar budget.
Baud
@Baud:
Out = put.
EntroPi
I should add, this is probably because the wax seal on one of our toilets failed, right as we already have people showing up.
Not to piss on Tony Jay’s usual humor.
JR
Dems won a special election in PA last night. It wasn’t close and the idiot R candidate made some grunts about mail in ballots.
Matt McIrvin
And we were just talking about the time Christopher Hitchens wrote a whole column about why women are never funny (unless they are “hefty or d*key or Jewish”). Only when people objected to Hitchens’ column he doubled down and doubled down and only stopped when he died.
Baud
@JR:
👍
Tony Jay
@EntroPi:
My humour is very absorbent, and when full gives off a sharp grassy fragrance.
But all that sound well stressful. Fingers, toes and distended nipples crossed that the contractors get it dealt with so you can get some undisturbed sleep.
eversor
I didn’t know who Jann Wenner was before this. I’m sure I’ll forget all about him once this fiasco is over.
EntroPi
@Tony Jay: If nipples, however distended, are crossed, I’m pretty sure no one will sleep.
However, when the can is leaking, it is more odorific than soporific.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s never Identity politics when white dudes put down other demographics for some reason.
Kathleen
@Jay: Right. His heroes Jagger and Lennon were always front and center with their admiration and appreciation for Black music and Black musicians. Black music is the origin of rock and roll.
Kathleen
@Baud: Truth.
Jay
@Tony Jay:
loved the Apartheid Mellon flashes,
But I really liked the ripping out of Ford”s $5 a day bullshit.
11 months, that’s how long he could keep his workers, at wages, twice what everybody else was paying.
Because of the BS.
Betsy
Gah! I’m so sick of privileged men who get automatic affirmation all their lives without dealing with any pushback.
Men, as a class, not every individual, tend to be callow and untested because of the authentic credence “everyone” (sic) gives them. Always hire a woman or at least someone who has had to overcome obstacles.
Betsy
Kathleen
@Kathleen: In Standing In The Shadows of Motown one of the Funk Brothers said when they got off the plane in the UK during a European tour they heard applause and cheering and when they realized it was for them they were shocked. Black artists have always been more appreciated in UK than US IMHO. I wonder if Wenner and his kewel kid dismissal of them have anything to do with that.
Kathleen
@Baud: Hmmm. Wonder if I should buy a lottery ticket today. Or sprinkle holy water on the pixels.
Emmyelle
Even if nothing else good happens today, I still will go to bed knowing something incredible that I did not know when I woke up this morning, which is the existence and brilliance of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Thank you.
Tony Jay
@EntroPi:
Just count yourself
luckyslightly less unlucky that you don’t have one of those chatty Japanese toilets. In addition to the smell you’d have been bombarded with pleading seppuku haikus and unwanted dietary advice.Stay strong, you could be going through this in an English seaside town, where all the untreated sewage lining the beach is mutating the seagull population into car-sized carnivores with x-ray eyes and the ability to shit flocks of smaller hellgulls down your chimney.
Matt McIrvin
@Betsy: the best thing about Hitchens’ column was the way it was filled with incredibly unfunny jokes of the type William F. Buckley would have regarded as knee-slappers.
Betty Cracker
Speaking of “philosopher(s) of rock ’n’ roll,” has Wenner ever heard of Patti Smith? JFC, what a bonehead.
Tony Jay
@Jay:
I was astonished that Musk’s own Tesla wasn’t on that list somewhere. It’s a piece of shit deathtrap that has been overvalued to such a ludicrous degree that Elon fucking Musk, a man so sweatily out-of-his-depth he could drown in a rabbit’s tear, has been made so paper-rich he can make life measurably worse for literally hundreds of millions of actual people and get away with it.
EntroPi
@Tony Jay:
Before we were informed by this 100+ year old house that it was on the verge of death, we acquired a very small apartment closer to the RI beaches.
Our dog is a big fan of trying to catch mutated seagulls.
When we aren’t allowed to bring her on the beach, she walks on her back legs next to the sea wall in Narragansett to make sure they don’t get away.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: I used to give that essay to my students as a way to spot logical fallacies.
To be fair, I think he meant it as a kind of parody / humor piece. But it doesn’t really work as one.
Chris Johnson
@Kathleen: Same with the early techno pioneers from Detroit. At home they were underground, but traveling to the UK and Europe they were absolute celebrities and treated as such.
I think some of this Wenner business is that the guy simply insists that you have to ‘think’ within an intensely white male framework or it doesn’t count. Anything that whiffs of a different culture or perspective, he’s out, he writes you off.
I have an estranged brother I’m not prepared to talk to anymore, who like me is a computer programmer for a living. I do audio DSP work and he codes for an accounting firm of some prominence. He went to school for it and I dropped out. At one point he was trying to work out how I did anything (and I’d put out a functioning game that he had abandoned, unable to work out where I was trying to go with it, and then been very surprised when I got the thing functioning) and he said ‘it’s like you don’t think’.
Wenner is like that. Seems like he’s honestly surprised when women or black people accomplish anything. They didn’t do it from within the white male framework he’s used to inhabiting, and he’s so unable to see anything else that it’s like their work emerges from a mysterious void, or by accident.
Jeffg166
I never through anyone in rock and roll was a genius. It was pop culture. Some of it I still like. Most of it I never listen to.
Kathleen
@Chris Johnson: Very thoughtful perspective. Thank you!
Kathleen
For those who want to know more about Rosetta Tharpe, this article is outstanding resource:
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/sister-rosetta-tharpe-rocknroll-pioneer/
ETA: There is also a play about her which was performed at Cincinnati Playhouse In The Park a few years ago.
Tony Jay
@EntroPi:
That’s a good dog.
I mean, it’s clearly a defecting Chinese zoo worker in a retailored red bear costume just waiting for the best time to let you in on the secret, but still, very good dog.
eversor
@Tony Jay:
The catch with Tesla is it’s not just a car company. They have the largest charging network out there and it’s actually really good. They also sell batteries and solar panels. It’s a lot more than just the silly car.
There’s also the hope by a fair amount of people that autopilot cars just kill public transit. EVs are already draining money and people from public tranist. Hyperloop and The Boring Company are less vanity projects than products to help stall money into public tranist more than anything.
If you really want public transit dead, investing in EVs especially Tesla, and Elon’s Hyperloop and Boring Company are a pretty good idea.
Geminid
More Artsakh news: the france24 news site reported one hour ago that officials of the Artsakh Republic and Azerbaijan have agreed to a ceasefire mediated by Russia. It is to start at 1 pm local time. Azerbaijan had attacked the Armenia enclave yesterday morning and made rapid advances into the highland area with a population of 120,000.
Under the ceasefire terms, Armenian military forces are required to evacuate Artsakh and local defenders must lay down their arms.
This news will make for a tumultuous day in Armenia. Demonstrations in Yerevan yesterday already left 12 policemen and 18 demonstrators hospitalized. Many Armenians believe that Prime Minister Pashinyan abandoned Artsakh. It has been part of the Armenian heartland for many centuries, and its loss will be a bitter pill for Armenians world wide.
Armenia had secured Artsakh, and seven Azerbaijani districts surrounding it, during its 1993 war with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan won the seven districts back through a 44-day war in 2020, and Russian soldiers enforced the ceasefire. Azerbaijan complains that Armenia and Artsakh have not disarmed the enclave as required, and that it will be unsafe for its refugees to return to the districts around Artsakh unless it is “reintegrated” into Azerbaijan.
Lapassionara
“Just none of them were as articulate enough on an intellectual level.” What an empty, vapid, meaningless collection of words. What a dolt.
eversor
@Chris Johnson:
That’s more complex. I used to DJ and know some of the past and current big names.
Techno itself wasn’t the original product. The original product was European electronic music in the 70s and 80s. Detroit picked it up and copy pasted the same stuff and even the same instruments after. That moved over to Europe as well. Techno in the US also started to merge with stuff like House and spawned a bunch of sub genres and techno in Europe did the same. Now it’s all over the map.
But the original product wasn’t from Detroit or even America. It was straight ripped from Europe and then morphed. But that’s how music works.
The biggest names are still in Europe from the same countries that Detroit coppied.
To claim it’s an American product is absurd. The UK ripped Rock from the US, the US ripped Techno from Europe. None of this is a big deal though. It’s a compliment!
Kay
His son is the CEO?
Baud
@Kay:
He earned the position.
Baud
Looks like it’s intern day at CNN.
Princess
@Kay: Clearly he was the best white man for the job.
kalakal
Wenner has always had incredibly narrow tastes and has loved to dismiss anything outside it. If it’s not a particular subset of white, male rock circa 1965-1975 or its linear descendents he’s slagged it off for years. He really showed his ass over the years with the rock and roll hall of fame nominees. He’s always been a mysogynistic, racist bigot
Kay
@Princess:
The worst thing about nepotism is how it drags other people into horrible family business. The employees of Rolling Stone have their own horrible families. They don’t need to deal with his.
Tony G
I’m a Boomer too (though a decade younger than Wenner). To me “Rolling Stone” is like “Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang” — a once popular publication that’s been irrelevant for decades. I bought a few copies in the seventies. Aside from his dumb comments — who really cares what this guy has to say?
H.E.Wolf
@JR:Dems won a special election in PA last night.
New state rep is a young, pro-choice, progressive Black woman. District 21, in Allegheny County in SW Pennsylvania, includes Pittsburgh.
https://www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2023-09-19/democrats-retain-narrow-control-of-pa-house-after-lindsay-powell-wins-special-election-in-district-21#
“[Lindsay] Powell is a former Congressional staffer who also served as an aide to former Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. More recently, she’s served as the director of workforce strategy for the nonprofit InnovatePGH. She campaigned on a pledge to continue the work of the district’s former representative, progressive three-term Democrat Sara Innamorato.”
When folks say “vote at the local level” for eventual systemic change, this is a good example. Mayoral aide to State rep = in the pipeline to higher office in-state, or US House/Senate, or appointed office (civil service; presidential Cabinet) at the national level.
ETA: Thank you to JR for highlighting this news!
MisterDancer
So, it’s funny that Wenner’s and Rolling Stone’s finger on the scales of music comes up, right now.
First, it’s critical to note that MTV used to not play Black artists, early on, in a crude mirror of how Wenner stopped RS from presenting similar artists. Keep that in mind for the following:
I’ve been watching performances from the VMAs, and got introduced to The Warning. They are 3 sisters from Mexico who play hard rock, they came to some fame a decade ago with a cover of Enter Sandman, and never stopped making music, moving from covers to their own songs and work.
It’s good stuff. It’s the kind of stuff that MTV isn’t known for, and frankly hasn’t really been on the radio in a while. That’s great, and they have, from what I can find, worked hard to get to this point!
But I read comments about their work — and not just YouTube comments — and…yeah. Nowadays, since dismissing young talent is gauche, people claim they are “saving rock and roll” and “the only good thing from the VMAs.”
It should be noted that these VMAs had a lot of Black and Brown talent, from Shakira to the host, Nicki Minaj. And the far-and-away award winner was Taylor Swift, who although White, is also very much embracing an emotional kind of pop in her work.
It feels a lot like these kinds of comments are only praising The Warning because they reflect a desire to put women artists back into a box, to put music back into the nostalgic safety of…well, my youth. And there’s little room for Black and Brown artists in that youth. Even Women artists have to fit that mold — sure as hell isn’t room for a Trans artist like Kim Petras in that space.
So yeah, I do worry about stuff like this. I think Wenner might be a yawner, but his sentiments aren’t solo. He did shape the industry AND our culture, and his bigotry helped setup a wave of effects that drowned out a lot of great music for decades, y’all.
It’s something to consider, in all of this — how much did this “only White Men can make Real Music” shit break not just music, but the slow path to cultural equality?
Baud
@Kay:
Agreed. That’s why I think it was a mistake for Joe Biden to appoint Hunter to such a high level White House position, which I assume he must have done given all the media attention Hunter is getting.
Kay
@kalakal:
It’s just amusing how stodgy and conventional these “rebels” are turning out to be.
He can join Van Morrison and Eric Clapton in the cranky old man club.
Kay
@Baud:
They love the Billy Carter story. Another well worn rut for our incredibly boring political media.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
MisterDancer
To sum up my long-assed comment, Wenner’s work helped cement the music industry into only focusing on White Male artists. I mean, you can draw a line from early Rolling Stone avoiding Black artists, to MTV barely recognizing Black artists for it’s early years, even with the success of Thriller.
That kind of bias is utterly invisible to many consumers, but had a massive impact on what music we listed to, and who got record deals.
Kay
@Baud:
Hunter’s gross, though, IMO. Ugh. The NFT’s and foray into selling his “art” and writing a book. “Look at me! Look at me!”
I’m glad Joe loves him. I don’t have much use for him. I still don’t think he should be the subject of a political prosecution, however, which he obviously is because the prosecutor is a big coward who was bullied by Republicans.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
The Thin Black Duke
@kalakal: In a roundabout way, Wenner was responsible for Spin magazine’s early success, because they would showcase the musical genres (hip hop, punk, reggae) that RS would ignore.
Kay
@MisterDancer:
Agree. Gatekeepers are hugely influential. People had to get past this jerk. They stand in the way.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, he hasn’t earned public respect. But I hope he gets off on the criminal charges.
MisterDancer
Thanks for this news. This is a region I know mostly from my historical research in passing, so news of what’s occurring in the modern day is stuff I tend to miss.
JML
Jann Wenner hasn’t been a relevant force in music or media in 20 years, so I’m not really all that surprised that the aging twit, ensconced in his safe and well-manicured life as a professional rich person, said something ludicrous, racist, sexist, and basically insane. He mattered in the 60’s & 70’s when Rolling Stone was a publication that was really important, with great writing, reviews, and a POV that was uncommon in US media. It maintained relevancy through the 90’s through a lot of it’s political writing and during the last great era for magazines, and began a rapid decline (as most of them did) with the rise of the internet. The last semi-interesting thing Wenner was part of was the founding of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
He’s a yahoo who is lost in his own head dreaming of his own glory days when rock music was the most important musical force in the US and he could hang out with his musical heroes. A sad narcissist who has completely lost the plot. Trudeau was ahead of the curve calling him “Yawn” back in the 70’s and 80’s, but he’s definitely there now.
Gin & Tonic
@Geminid: Sounds more like a surrender than a cease-fire.
different-church-lady
The idea that Joni Mitchell would be not articulate is stupidity beyond human comprehension.
hueyplong
Rolling Stone to me was always a publication trying to get me to listen to music I liked less than what I was already hearing.
Geminid
@MisterDancer: I managed to read a lot of histoty but still remain fairly ignorant about most foreign countries. The Ukraine war has led to an interest in the larger region though.
Artsakh has gotten a lot of attention recently, in the US and especially in Europe. That is a very good thing, because Azerbaijan’s treatment of the 120,000 Armenians remaining within its boundaries will be subject to close scrutiny.
Tony G
@Kay: That’s right. Although I love my own adult sons deeply, I can only imagine the stress if (in some alternate universe) they were to end up working for me!
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: It is a surrender. There is a ceasefire planned though.
Tony G
@JML: That sounds about right. I’m a (somewhat younger) Boomer and the last time I purchased a copy of “Rolling Stone” was around 1979.
Betty Cracker
@MisterDancer: Exactly right, and the pattern is repeated across everything in our culture, including politics, journalism, etc. As Kay said, gatekeepers stand in the way. We saw their enormously consequential handiwork in the 2016 election.
Maxim
So Wenner’s biographer says he’s another narcissist. I have a pie-in-the-sky fantasy that we might some day stop rewarding such people and their behavior. In the meanwhile, good riddance.
Tony Jay
@MisterDancer:
Yep, all of that’s true. From the anti-Jazz* racism mentioned in Jay’s hilarious car clip up-page through segregated music venues to the MTV musical blacklisting of black music up until Thriller kicked the bloody doors in, and a million examples I’m missing out, White Power gatekeeping has been a social ill right up there with its more overt brothers from the same toothless, racist mother.
BUT
Consider the speed and unanimity with which the entire musical world has responded to Wenner’s regurgitating of the Protocols of the Elders of Prion Disease. Swift, decisive and absolutely unambiguous (as far as I’ve seen) in rejecting not just his words but the whole ethos behind them. That shit just doesn’t fly anymore, and it hasn’t for a long time. Sure, there’ll be racist POS trying to keep ‘their’ artform pure on the down low, but the fact that it has to be on the down low is a sign of how far culture and the music industry has moved on from the time when people like Wenner could kill careers with a snide comment.
As with every other industry, it’s all about the money; what makes it and what loses it, and despite (or maybe because of) the fact that the Hard Right are busy turning every single angle of modern life into a Kulturkampf battlefield where sides have to be picked, there’s fewer and fewer places where bigotry can hide without getting its time under the arclights. Pushback against the opinions Wenner verbalises here pushes the whole industry in the right direction, to where even fuckers who hold those opinions don’t dare act on them or even be suspected of wanting to act on them through strategic inaction, because that might lose money for the people who decide if they have a job or not.
tl:dr – Yeah, but this helps make it better.
* though I truly and absolutely fucking hate Jazz. I do, I do, I do. Bite me.
eversor
@hueyplong:
As a child of the 80s Rolling Stone always came off like every other old person who kept yelling about how great everything was in the 60s and 70s and everything after sucked. Unless it was directly based on things from that era. It’s an OK Boomer publication.
LiminalOwl
@zhena gogolia: Serious question: what gave you the impression it was parody? It seemed to me consistent with other writing of his.
(I do think Hitchens’ hit piece on Mother Teresa had some useful info buried in all the nastiness.)
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The Hunter business is infuriating on every level. He’s the victim of an actual political witch hunt but also the fool who handed his father’s enemies ammunition by writing a confessional book that no one asked for.
Also, is anyone confident Repubs won’t find further evidence of wrongdoing (by HB, not POTUS) as they dig through his businesses? I’m not. Its gross but not illegal to peddle influence, so I hope that’s all he did.
Joe Biden seems like a great dad. He deserved better.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Kathleen: It’s weird how the story of origins of rock and roll got mis-told over time. I’ve been listening to Andrew Hickey’s excellent A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs podcast. The story I had drilled into me growing up is that Rock grew out of Mississippi Delta Blues from Robert Johnson to the Rolling Stones to all the other stuff. But as Hickey makes clear, Rock didn’t come from Delta Blues primarily, it came from Rhythm and Blues music. You can see it in the Beatles early cover albums – they didn’t cover any delta blues but did cover a lot of R&B tunes. There was a small delta blues movement in London that the Stones were a part of, and Clapton too, that that became THE Rock and Roll story and I’m guessing guys like Wenner augmented that take. They also served as the gatekeepers that kicked R&B and Soul out of Rock and into different genres altogether. Wilson Pickett, Sam Cook, Otis Redding, etc. were all considered Rock and Roll artists in their day but were written out of Rock sometime in the mid to late ’60s when blues guitar based rock played by white guys was deemed to be the true rock and roll and everything else went from being mainstream rock to something else – R&B – which had completely different charts. They basically unofficially took a desegregated art form back to the race records era. Wenner, I have no doubt, had a major roll in that happening.
It explains why Jimmi Hendrix (who was admittedly great) is the one black guy most white rock and roll fans idolize. The podcast episode on him is fascinating. He was making a living on the Chitlin’ Circuit backing up other artists but all the black front men thought his playing was too flashy. He was a great guitarist, but in the context of the Chitlin’ Circuit he wasn’t so great that he was essential – there were plenty of other guitarists nearly or just as good on that circuit so he was fire-able and got fired.
So then he left for the UK and he hit there just as guitar hero rock was taking off – Clapton is God was a common trope. Guys like Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Paige, etc. were becoming superstars due to their guitar licks. Then Hendrix showed up and blew them all out of the water. That got him into the Rock and Roll cannon proper. He basically became the black guy who played what the white gatekeepers like Wenner thought was real rock and roll. Not to take anything away from his artistry, he was a great guitarist and artist full stop. But all the guys on the Chitlin’ Circuit were relegated to R&B even though they were arguably just as good as Hendrix, probably better than Clapton etc. and never got the same Rock and Roll notoriety.
SW
It was always crystal clear to anyone who was involved in the counter-culture at the time and enjoyed the magazine that Wenner was and likely is an asshole.
Maxim
@Tony Jay:
We all have our flaws.
JML
@Tony G: I had a subscription for a while in the 90’s and it was worth reading. The photography was stellar, the writing was good and varied (if occasionally maddening), the reviews were interesting and the access was excellent. But even then they were losing relevance: struggling to cover the rise of hip-hop and rap, being to trends in pop, and increasingly obsessed with rock acts from the 60’s & 70’s and treating legacy acts as if they were more important than current ones. (and even in terms of rock history, they were very white and male)
Ivan X
@Chris Johnson: I find that an inherently human trait is to fail to recognize that different people are different and have different ways of understanding, seeing, and doing things. The default state is to assume that because you are you, others must also be like you.
PaulWartenberg
OH MY GOD I REMEMBER WHICH ONES YOU’RE REFERING TO.
It was during Duke’s tenure as American Somoa’s governor where RS removes his name from the masthead, and in a rage he goes storming back to the publisher’s office where Wenner humiliates Duke by putting him on the team exclusively assigned to cover Cher.
I am searching GoComics.com’s archive for the exact dates. BRB.
(one minute and 38 seconds later)
I FOUND THE STARTING DATE. September 8th 1975!!! Here’s the link!
Tony Jay
@Maxim:
Mine Are fabulousness, effortless elegance under pressure and lashings of modesty. Oh, and I don’t like Jazz. Terrible racket.
StringOnAStick
@Tony Jay: You hate jazz? Wow man, I used to respect you!😉
I have a high level woodwind artist as a neighbor, as in has recorded at Skywalker Sound and has been first chair in significant symphonies. He’s told me the same thing and when I quizzed him about it he said “because I don’t believe in it”. I had to work it out that he’s a big believer in performing what’s written on the sheet music, not indulging in improvisation. I get it, and musical tastes vary; I’m a jazz lover and performer and everyone is allowed their opinions!
Tony Jay
@StringOnAStick:
Respect? Respect?!? Have you not been paying attention? 🤪
Honestly, I don’t know what it is, exactly that I don’t like about it, but I do not. I blame Clint Eastwood and early exposure to the crazy syncopated rhythms of 70s Sesame Street. Made me feel all weirded out like those half dozen times I tried and failed to watch ‘Tommy’.
I’m just not cool.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I think he’s just got the hots for his subjects.
Paul in KY
@Emmyelle: She was more badass than 90% of who’s in the Rock Hall.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I hate jazz too. My other genres that I really don’t care for are: ‘Bro Country’ (Like Toby Keith/Jason Aldean) and ‘East Coast Hip Hop’ (Too much talking for me).
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: Well said, thank you!
Paul in KY
@PaulWartenberg: Thank you for that link!
Kathleen
@MisterDancer: Though I’m sure thread is dead, I have to thank you for expressing my thoughts much more eloquently than I could have. For some reason I’ve been pondering my weariness with white men being the only heroes of rock and roll who deserve worship and obsession. I grew up in 50’s and 60’s and that energy settled into my bones without me realizing it. The movie Barbie delivered a quick yet brutal parody of that mind set.
Kathleen
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Thank you for your insight. The older I get the more I appreciate Jimi Hendrix, who also played with Buddy Miles, who does a mix of blues, Southern Rock (Allman Brothers), Funk & R&B (though he’s from Chicago he seemed much more popular on the West Coast). Tina Turner aspired to be a rock and roll star that could fill stadiums and arenas like the Stones. After she left Ike no record company was interested in her and the idea that a Black woman in her 40’s could become a full fledged rock star was laughable. But with the help of a manager who saw in her what no one else saw she made it happen. I wonder if Wenner thought she was articulate enough about rock; she had been quoted as saying she didn’t want anything to do with blues because it reminded her of her past and she preferred rock and roll because it was upbeat and fun.
billcinsd
@Betty Cracker: Gatekeepers were also what kept the fascists at bay
Alison Rose
@Jay: REM? Am I lacking info about them?
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: Was a band pretty big in late 80s & early to mid 90s. Think Jann liked them.
H-Bob
@SW: An Al Campanis for our times !
Alison Rose
@Paul in KY: Dude, come on. I’m aware of REM. I was born in 1980, not 2010. But Jay seemed to be including them as an example of non-white/non-male musicians. As far as I know, REM was all white dudes. So I was wondering if maybe one of them was biracial and I wasn’t aware.
Anne Laurie
Dead thread, but Thank you. My first thought about Wenner’s dismissal of women & Black artists was Yeah, he doesn’t find them f*ckable…
PaulWartenberg
One last thing to mention: My twin brother is HUGE into rock music and its history, and is a paying member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (he goes to the induction ceremonies and concerts whenever he can). He’s noted over the years how Wenner would interfere and block certain performers and bands from even being considered for the induction votes, and that it’s only been in the past few years (post-COVID) that more women and Blacks have been included on the ballots.
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: Was sorta tongue-in-cheek. Should have put the sarcasm tag in there :-)