Jann Wenner Removed From Rock Hall Board of Directors

[1382hitsville]

Had to share this:

"In the interview with the Times’ David Marchese, Wenner was asked about the exclusion of people of color or female artists.

“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 [Mitchell] was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll,” Wenner said. “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."


For the full article:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...ts-1234826701/

[jobeterob]

Many people saw this bias for years although we didn’t appreciate the depth of his ignorance.

[motony]

until Mary Wells & the Marvelettes are both in there, the RRHOF is NOTHING to me.

[jboy88]

He’s probably one of the people who have kept them and many other black artists out of the HOF!

[bob_olhsson]

I was one of a group of people who began collecting things for the RRHOF with the understanding that it was going to be built in San Francisco. When Wenner auctioned off all of our efforts to the highest bidder, I was not exactly pleased.

[Motown Eddie]

Yeah; heard about this Racist & Sexist P.O.S. over the weekend. Good thing he was removed from the Rock Hall's Board of Directors for his comments.

[sansradio]

Joni Mitchell is nothing short of a philosopher! And as for the non-apology, tokenistic response, screw him. What a misogynistic, racist-ass douche-nozzle Wenner is and has always been.

[woodward]

Nelson George made his thoughts well known last evening on the Joy Reid segment at the end of the show. This was the first time I have ever seen any media coverage of Nelson. He make a relatively strong critique of the situation. There are news stories published about his comments if you search Google.

[Roberta75]

What a racist and mysoginistic POS. Good luck promoting your book Jann. Hopefully you just killed all profits you had hoped to make. These bigoted old out of touch white men think they are untouchable. Thank the good Lord they are not.

[bradsupremes]

I was one of a group of people who began collecting things for the RRHOF with the understanding that it was going to be built in San Francisco. When Wenner auctioned off all of our efforts to the highest bidder, I was not exactly pleased.

San Francisco was in the mix of cities being considered, but it was never a final candidate or agreed upon that was where it would be. Philadelphia, Memphis, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit and Cleveland were the serious contenders. Cleveland got the most public and artist support in terms of votes and signatures and ultimately put up the money for it.

[SatansBlues]

Has Dylan, Springsteen, Mick or Bono commented on his remarks? i would love to know their thoughts on this situation.

[Optimal Saint]

Good article
============

In 2020, I was a guest on the Who Cares About the Rock Hall? podcast, discussing why one of my favourite bands, Labelle, should be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were certainly deserving: they sang socially conscious songs from a Black woman’s perspective, espoused a philosophy that reflected the intersectional politics of Black feminists such as the Combahee River Collective, and sported a space-age look now celebrated as an expression of Black futurism.

The problem was that I didn’t know how to articulate Labelle’s significance in terms that made sense for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Labelle only had one big hit, Lady Marmalade, an ode to a Creole sex worker; the group’s most direct influence has been multiple covers of Lady Marmalade that have almost no connection with the group’s radical politics and style. I just didn’t see how I would be able to translate the group’s importance to the type of people who vote for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, meaning the mostly white men who historically have voted to induct artists who are white men, partly because of the way they’ve influenced other white men.

I thought about this podcast moment again when I read the comments of Rolling Stone magazine founder and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame co-founder Jann Wenner, in the New York Times. In his forthcoming book The Masters, Wenner compiles his interviews with seven rock musicians, all white men, “philosophers of rock,” as Wenner calls them. But Black musicians, he said, “just didn’t articulate at that level” and Joni Mitchell also “didn’t, in my mind, meet that test”. The likes of Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend expressed, he said, “deep things about a particular generation, a particular spirit and a particular attitude about rock’n’roll. Not that the others weren’t, but these were the ones that could really articulate it.”

He later apologised, saying “I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words”, ones that “don’t reflect my appreciation and admiration for myriad totemic, world-changing artists”. But his earlier comments linger, confirming as they do the unspoken biases I have experienced in the world of music criticism since entering the field as a Black gay man in the 90s.

When Wenner created Rolling Stone in 1967, it reflected the sentiments he spoke of in the New York Times. As Joe Hagan writes in Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine: “It was a men’s magazine, though women read it; it was a white magazine, though African Americans were fetishised in it.” White men were the focus; women and Black people were secondary thoughts and objects of fascination rather than subjects in their own right.

Some were critical of the magazine’s perspective almost from the very beginning. Feminist rock critic Ellen Willis, who viewed Rolling Stone as apolitical and “viciously anti-woman,” wrote in a 1970 letter: “When a bunch of snotty, upper-middle class white males start telling me that politics isn’t where it’s at, that is simply an attempt to defend their privileges.” Jazz great Miles Davis once said he liked Rolling Stone, “but the last time I saw it, they had all white guys in it.”..............

It’s an open secret the music industry is sexist and racist – Jann Wenner just let it slip | Music | The Guardian

[jobeterob]

In its first few years, the RRHOF inducted those that needed to be there and it seemed inclusive and the inductees seemed obvious - those with massive hit catalogues and huge influence - Beatles, Beach Boys, Supremes, Temptations, Aretha, etc.

There was nothing wrong with inducting less well known writers, early influences, pioneers, builders.

But after something like 10 years, these influences that Wenner exhibited recently started creeping in and the RRHOF became increasingly criticized and ultimately irrelevant. They started inducting a bunch of people whose induction was met with a lot of people saying “Who’s that? What did they sing?” And the bias veered toward the white male rock band. If you are going to induct people that are fairly obscure to the public, they should be inducting somewhat lesser known groups like the Marvelettes and singers like Lesley Gore and Mary Wells.

But maybe the RRHOF should have confined itself to the top tier of artists that touched the general public - and left it at that.

The Grammys have made the same kind of error and they too are less and less important and relevant. They have gone from a very few awards that overlooked many artists in the 60’s and 70’s to now awarding everything such that people now say “They got a Grammy for what???”

Both entities need a major overhaul.

[Boogiedown]

Ah yes, they're starting to eat their own. Down goes Rolling Stone. Can The NY Times be far behind.

[Motown Eddie]

And the fallout continues in this piece from the Best Classic Band's site:

The fallout continues for Jann Wenner, who disgraced himself in an interview that was intended to help promote his new book with the horribly ironic title The Masters. Two days after he had essentially been canceled by Rolling Stone, the magazine that he co-founded in 1967 and led to its once-mighty influence as the arbiter of cool music, his book publisher has apparently cancelled all of his upcoming promotional events. As the backlash continued from Wenner’s sexist and racist remarks about black and female artists in his interview with the New York Times, Rolling Stone released a statement in a post on the social media network formally known as Twitter [[and now calling itself “X”), that Wenner’s “recent statements… do not represent the values and practices of today’s Rolling Stone.” The magazine distanced itself from its longtime chief, noting in its Sept. 18, 2023, post that he “has not been directly involved in our operations since 2019,” adding, “At Rolling Stone‘s core is the understanding that music above all can bring us together, not divide us.”

Full piece can be read here-
Jann Wenner Fallout Continues as Book Publisher Cancels Promotional Events | Best Classic Bands

[midnightman]

Maybe with Wenner gone, we can finally get Mary and the Marvelettes in, they're long overdue.

[carlo]

Maybe with Wenner gone, we can finally get Mary and the Marvelettes in, they're long overdue.

Long overdue! Same with Tom Jones. I just finished reading his autobiography and didn't realize he's not in the Rock Hall. He definitely deserves to be in there...more so than the rap artists they've been inducting lately.

[midnightman]

Long overdue! Same with Tom Jones. I just finished reading his autobiography and didn't realize he's not in the Rock Hall. He definitely deserves to be in there...more so than the rap artists they've been inducting lately.

Yeah a lot of '60s acts have been skipped over. Hopefully Little Steven can get the thing back on the ball with inducting those acts [[Tom included lol).