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PEOPLE & ARTSSaturday 6 May 2017
Jann S. Wenner reflects on Rolling Stone at 50
HILLEL ITALIE phone interview as he an-
AP National Writer ticipated an anniversary ex-
NEW YORK (AP) — Fifty hibition at the Rock and Roll
years after he launched an Hall of Fame and Museum
underground newspaper in Cleveland, an institution
that changed music jour- that Wenner helped found
nalism and a great deal in the 1980s. The three-floor
more, Jann S. Wenner finds “Rolling Stone/50 years” ex-
Rolling Stone being show- hibit opens Friday and runs
cased in a once-unthink- through late November.
able forum: a museum. There might not have
“At least it’s a museum I been a Rock Hall or mu-
own,” Wenner said with a seum without Rolling Stone,
laugh during a recent tele- which as much as any-
This undated image released by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame shows an installation featuring pho-
tography from Rolling Stone magazine, part of an anniversary exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
Associated Press
body moved rock and stan. Many of the photo- of the stars.”
the lifestyle around it from graphs are indelible to at Rolling Stone wasn’t the first
the fringes to the main- least one generation: Meryl serious rock music publica-
stream. Rolling Stone not Streep in greasepaint, tug- tion: Crawdaddy, led by
only chronicled music, poli- ging at her cheek; Bette Swarthmore College stu-
tics and culture, but it also Midler in a bed of roses; the dent Paul Williams, began
helped change it, whether men and women of Fleet- in 1966. But none have a
through Wenner’s revelato- wood Mac laid out on a comparable legacy. By the
ry 1970 interview with John single mattress; and most 1970s, Rolling Stone was so
Lennon, the photography painfully, a naked Lennon much a part of the music
of Annie Leibovitz or the clinging to a fully clothed business and its cover such
“gonzo” reporting of Hunter Yoko Ono, a Leibovitz por- a symbol of success that it
S. Thompson. Among those trait taken just hours before inspired Dr. Hook’s hit sin-
getting early starts at Roll- Lennon was shot dead in gle “The Cover of ‘Rolling
ing Stone were Leibovitz, 1980. Stone.’” Rolling Stone be-
Thompson, the music crit- Wenner was only 21 when come so synonymous with
ics Greil Marcus and Lester he and his friend and men- hip, alternative journalism
Bangs, screenwriter Joe Esz- tor Ralph J. Gleason start- that several movies have
terhas and filmmaker Cam- ed Rolling Stone from a featured Rolling Stone re-
eron Crowe. San Francisco warehouse porters, including the 1981
The common thread in 1967, the first issue dat- release “Rich and Famous”
among the best Rolling ing from November of that and, from 2015, “The End
Stone contributors has year. Youth tycoons are of the Tour,” starring Jesse
been “extraordinary tal- common now, but 50 years Eisenberg as a Rolling Stone
ent,” Wenner says, along ago it was rare for some- reporter and Jason Segel
with a “sense of purpose” one Wenner’s age to be as David Foster Wallace.
and a distinctive way of running any business, at Crowe made a whole film
“seeing our times.” least one that hoped to about his days with the
The exhibit and accompa- make money. magazine: “Almost Fa-
nying coffee-table book His hope then was to mous.”
capture some of the high- bring attention to the mu- Rolling Stone continues to
lights: Thompson’s scath- sic he loved and how it make news — some un-
ing coverage of the 1972 was changing the culture, wanted (its discredited re-
presidential campaign, the changes he believed were port on an alleged rape
serialization of Tom Wolfe’s ignored or belittled by the at the University of Virginia)
“The Bonfire of the Vani- mainstream media. and some in the tradition
ties” and Michael Hast- “The Beatles and Stones Wenner prefers to uphold,
ings’ scandalously candid and Dylan are all working like the political coverage
2010 profile of Gen. Stanley at the same time and all of Matt Taibbi, perhaps
McChrystal, leading to his (are) bouncing off each best known for likening
departure as commander other,” he says, calling it an Goldman Sachs to a “vam-
of U.S. troops in Afghani- “extraordinary alignment pire squid.”q
