Jann Wenner not happy with new "tawdry" biography

Yes. He did interviews (Dylan & Lennon ~'69-'70), record reviews and articles. Also the occasional editorial. I only know until the mid-70s which is when I stopped reading RS.

 

The introduction is written by all 3 Monkees (who, you all know, are his biggest fans).

 

????

So you don't want people to be honest? Paul answered honestly and you think he shouldn't have? I'm not following why you feel he was trying to get something out of this.

 

I read the excerpt in Vanity Fair on the plane the other day.Will buy the book
immediately upon release.

 

I'm looking at <Used Magazines and Back Issues for sale at USEDmagazines.com > and it looks like it might be a good place to get rid of my several years of late '60s - early '70s Rolling Stones... except that the site is so poorly designed and broken that I'm not sure I trust it. Some pages on the site are missing, it doesn't appear to be secure for money transactions, and it generally looks like a site designed by an amateur in 2004.

 

I believe it was designed prior to 2oo4 so it was actually of it's head time. They probably haven't changed it because they're doing fine with what they got. As for money transactions, when I used them 10-12 years ago they mailed me a check. The company has been around for many years and they are legit from my experience.

 

Same here. I used to read it semi-regular in the 70's. Like any magazine it had its good contributors and not so good. Its days had passed by the 80's imo. It would have been better had it folded in the late 70's. Wenner could then re-emerge with something more schtick and honest like: Hip Old Men Magazine.

 

Well he did later start Men’s Journal and also bought US.

 

Why would anyone be surprised that Wenner is a calculating manipulator willing to put friendships with the famous at risk for profit?
It's bidness.
I was a teenage subscriber to Rolling Stone after picking up a copy when hanging with my college-aged brother in Seattle.
As a 9th grader I felt very cool to be the only one getting it at my school.
I cancelled in disgust after they had Donny Osmond on the cover.
Being young and hyper-opinionated about artists & music it seemed like a betrayal of what they supposedly stood for. Silly me.
By then about the only music reviewer I still liked was Cameron Crowe who was\is my age.
It seemed like everyone at RS except Crowe hated Zeppelin, plus he wrote excellent articles about Neil Young.
In the early 70's, McCartney was portrayed as decidedly inferior to Lennon with the implication that it was he who broke up the Beatles which pissed me off as well.

 

I read it from 1971-1980. I stopped when I moved to a city where I could get Sounds, NME and Melody Maker on a weekly basis.

 

I still thumb through it in the bookstore and enjoy some of the interviews. I'm a little less liberal than it's politics (I still am unsettled by the cover story ok the Boston Marathon bomber) and the whole campus rape story really bothered me as well.

That, and the whole deal with Jann's explicit bias against McCartney - to the degree it affected "objective" album reviews - and his screw job with John over the Lennon Remembers book really give me a poor opinion of him.

That said, the history of the magazine and the man that created it is still interesting to me so I'll be adding this to my Amazon wish list. The magazine is what it is, not what it was - but I still have to admit it was something pretty amazing.

 

No, I think people should be honest.
But I think you can also pass on some questions. Discretion is the word.

I'm not real knowledgeable about post Beatles break-ups, but there was drama and to pinpoint it at any particular time would be it's own discussion of the particulars which I just know vague bits of.

But even that is judging it, to phrase it better, it's none of my business, but I think McCartney could have done better and I'd tell him that.
You don't pick on the widow, you won.
That's my take.

PS: I think some of my opinion was influenced by the story of Jagger and Wenner above.
As Mick intoned If our agendas cross paths so be it. U use me and I use u....different world for sure.

 

Guess we won't be getting the (on-line) Rolling Stone article. "10 Things We Learned from the Jann Wenner Bio."

 

I'm not Jann's biggest fan, but it looks like the author enjoyed throwing his subject under the bus, in a way that would make Albert Goldman proud. Not cool. He ain't getting my money.

 

Interesting perspective.

 

Buncha Monkees fans who are mad because they think Wenner won't let the band in the Rock Hall!

 

“I gave Joe time and access in the hope he would write a nuanced portrait about my life and the culture Rolling Stone chronicled...instead he produced something deeply flawed and tawdry"

I have no knowledge of (or interest) in Jann Wenner's life, but any "portrait" of the culture RS chronicled would need to show it as "deeply flawed and tawdry".

 

I'd assume the reason for that would be how ripe for parody politics is at the moment plus Alec Baldwin's continuing involvement is a further selling/advertising point as I'd assume he's a bigger name star than any of the regular cast members are. So I would assume (if true - I haven't actually seen any TV commercial in several years let alone any SNL commercials so I wouldn't know) that once a certain person loses his political position either 7 years from now, 3 years from now (or not inconceivably at pretty much any time in the nearer future prior to that, the way things have been going) the TV commercials advertising SNL political skits will end.

What it comes down to is SNL is advertising what they believe they have to offer that is the most interesting to the largest segment of the population at the moment and will get the most eyes on the screen at showtime (essentially what amounts to skits based on real life reality TV) and once that (the real life reality TV) ends and there's nothing that interesting/funny (and at times scary) going on politically to parody, those political SNL ads will end. SNL/NBC isnt being political in spending ad revenue on political skits. Rather they're spending ad revenue to get a maximum return on that investment - aka increased viewership. If you actually believe NBC/SNL is more interested in any specific political agenda than they are about simply maximizing profits in any way they can (be it left, right or center) well you couldn't be more wrong.

 

The author, Joe Hagan, identifies Goldman's John Lennon book as a favourite:

https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/jann-wenner-biography.php

 

That explains a few things. Quote:

"A book that everybody hates was Albert Goldman’s The Lives of John Lennon. When it came out, it was considered this scurrilous book, and everybody hated it. Yoko Ono said she almost killed herself when she read it. Rolling Stone attacked it. But it is a ripping good yarn. If you read that book, you may not like it, and you may find there were some things wrong with it, but he interviewed 1,000 people. I defy anybody to read the first chapter of that book and not think it’s amazing."​

In other words, screw 'em, let's trump the unbiased facts with "a good yarn"! (a.k.a. crowd-baiting sensationalism). Definitely a bio for the current times.

 

You’re not far wrong, I suspect. The HOF almost certainly must play a large part in the Wenner hatred.

 

I think it was fatigue with the whole

"Macca hates Yoko" narrative. He wasn't picking on her, just saying that he loved John enough that when Yoko came to him, he was there and helped.

To say he won is to ignore the fact that he was "this close" to working with his partner and former best friend once again but instead chose to make two other people happy instead of himself.

By all accounts, the two were never closer during the Lost Weekend and became tentative again after the reconciliation. He didn't win as much fall on his sword.

 

With Jann in particular, it's two-fold. It's not just about this forum and Rolling Stone magazine. Steve Miller's outlook even after being inducted last year included the industry like you suggest but this also...

Steve Miller: This Whole Industry F--kin' Sucks

This whole industry f---ing sucks and this little get-together you guys have here is like a private boys' club and it's a bunch of jacka--es and jerks and f---ing gangsters and crooks who've f---ing stolen everything from a f---ing artist. Telling the artist to come out here and tap dance.
I came out here for my fans. I came out for the people who take it seriously. And if the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame wants to be taken seriously, they need to put their books out in the public. They need to f---ing become transparent. They need to stop lying. They need to stop all the bull---t and they need to clean it up and they need to expand it. They need to include a lot more people. And the most important thing is the f---ing board of this organization really needs to enlarge their gene pool. I think you understand.

 

don't want to offend but could not have happened to a nicer guy

 

Unquestionably. People here equate Wenner with the Rock Hall so strongly that this clearly colors many opinions of him.

I'm sure he had plenty of detractors before people started to whine about HOF "omissions" but that topic amplified anti-Wenner sentiment...