The Masters | Bad times for the rock boy club

Last month, the co-founder of the venerable magazine Rolling Stone Jann Wenner sparked controversy by defending in an interview with New York Times his choice not to include in his new book, The Masters (“the masters”), about rock and roll legends, only white men.

He claimed, regarding female singer-songwriters, “that none of them expressed themselves in a sufficiently intellectually structured way”, and that black musicians, Stevie Wonder in particular, did not “express themselves in a level” by Pete Townshend or Mick Jagger.

“It’s not that they’re not creative geniuses. It’s not that they aren’t eloquent either. But try having an in-depth conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin, he said. You know, Joni [Mitchell] was not a rock and roll philosopher. In my opinion, she did not meet this criterion. Neither by her work nor by the other interviews she has given. The people I interviewed were rock philosophers. »

Wenner, 77 years old, could very well have been content to assert that his book is interested in artists with whom he is close or with whom he shares certain affinities, even a philosophy. In this case, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bono, Jerry Garcia, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger.

Wenner preferred to declare that, conversely, no living black woman or man was intellectually up to the standards of eloquence that he himself arbitrarily established. Which is similar to the definitions of racism and misogyny.

Faced with the outcry, Wenner ended up apologizing, but the damage was done. He was removed from the board of directors of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, of which he served as president until 2020.

The former editor of Men’s Journalanother magazine that he founded, knew very well what he was doing by answering questions from New York Times. “As a matter of public relations, maybe I should have included a black artist and a woman artist, not up to that historical standard, just to avoid criticism,” he said in an interview. I had the opportunity to do it. Maybe I’m old fashioned and don’t care. »

Perhaps also Jann Wenner is blinded by his privileges to the point of taking his prejudices for reality. Perhaps he takes his privileges so much for granted that he imagines he is protected by some form of immunity. Perhaps for him, only political correctness can justify – what heresy! – that a black woman or man finds himself on intellectual equality with a white man.

Perhaps he did not understand that the impunity of boys club is no longer total, that the arrogance and stupidity of his remarks, which he confuses with resistance to right thinking, is no longer as socially acceptable as in the last century. I’d be curious to know how much he doesn’t care if his reputation is tarnished by his nonsense…

What seems obvious, however, is that the new management of the magazine Rolling Stone is far from caring. Monday, in a vast public relations operation and an unprecedented backpedaling undertaking, the magazine that Wenner co-founded in 1967 at the age of 21 – and which he no longer directs since 2019 – wished to distance itself, en bloc, from his comments controversial. And for good reason. Not only the credibility of the magazine, but its future is at stake.

Since the periodical’s founding, the “rock heroes” it has featured have been mostly white men, its current editor, Noah Shachtman, acknowledges in an editorial. “For decades, Rolling Stone clung to the beliefs and cultural blinders of his early baby boomer days, he writes. […] The misogyny and racism of the time of its founding lasted a long time. »

Shachtman is not the only one to attempt to demonstrate that Rolling Stone today makes a clean slate of the past. Journalists from the magazine also wrote on Monday that they were “not surprised” by Jann Wenner’s statements, as the former editor embodies the excesses of the boys club while perpetuating the false idea that the foundations of rock only belong to white men like him.

“I see the excessive coverage of Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and Harry Styles, and I tell myself that more could be done to highlight black artists with the same fervor,” writes Ernest Owens, who describes himself as a journalist black, queer and millennial.

The question arises: would we talk as much about Taylor Swift if she were black, rather than a young blonde woman with blue eyes, the archetype of what is attractive in the West, in a media world dominated by white men?

“If black lives matter, then black culture must also matter,” argues the Black Rock Coalition, in a text from Rolling Stone which condemns the comments of Jann Wenner and recalls that the African-American contribution to rock is not limited to Jimi Hendrix.

You wouldn’t suspect it by skimming the magazine’s famous cover pages since its beginnings. The artists who have been celebrated there have most often been in the image of Stillwater, the fictional group from the film Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe, a contributor to the magazine since adolescence. « Wanna see my smiling face on the cover of the Rolling Stone », sang Ray Sawyer 50 years ago. Her wish was granted the following month, unlike that of many women and minority artists.

Today, Rolling Stone, which lost much of its luster and relevance long before Wenner’s escapades, is trying to make up for lost time, by making more space for hip-hop, hiring journalists of color and publishing articles like this recent “List of the 50 best Latin American rock albums”. It’s Olivia Rodrigo who is on the cover of its most recent edition.

Is it too little, too late? Can we correct a historical error with a mea culpa, when the shameful truth of the philosophy of its rock magazine – to return to the “philosophers of rock” – comes to light? Can we save a house from ruin by repainting its facade, when its foundation is crumbling and termites have weakened its frame for decades?

Failing to care, perhaps also Rolling Stone is fundamentally too “old fashioned” to adapt to the times. He at least has the merit of giving it a try.