Of the 185,000 words in this hefty volume, it sometimes feels like half are the names of famous friends. The most irritating aspect of the book is Wenner’s shameless name-dropping. Nonetheless, these were underpinned by a desperation for attention and a desire for power. That Wenner had a deep love of rock music and a passion for progressive politics is evident from his book. Wenner was not nearly as eager to push Rolling Stone into politics as he now claims and had always been quick to run out on protests whenever it looked like the police might show up. “His relationship to radical politics had always been a cautious one,” Hagan writes. Others have disagreed, suggesting that Wenner was interested in fame, power, and money, and only moved into politics when it became profitable to do so.
#PERSON JUMPING LINE DRAWING FREE#
Before Rolling Stone, he was active in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, and from his first days as a publisher, he used his magazine to further progressive causes guided by noble liberal beliefs. Throughout his book, he claims that his political views were the prime motivator of almost all his actions. Wenner, of course, frames his motivations quite differently. Robert Anson, in Gone Crazy and Back: The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation, said much the same: “Wenner had started Rolling Stone simply so he could meet his gods.” Thompson, “was that he was the ultimate groupie, that he had started Rolling Stone as a way for him to meet the Beatles.” In Sticky Fingers, Joe Hagan agrees, calling him a “fanboy” and “starfucker,” whose adulation managed to embarrass John Lennon. “The rap against Wenner,” William McKeen writes in Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Right out of the gate, it is clear that Wenner is not just a music fan but fascinated by rock stars and stardom. The Beatles were a last flourish of innocence and joy before the war in Vietnam came home. At first, Wenner is enthralled by The Beatles, about whom he has this to say: We didn’t realize it then, but they alleviated the heaviness and cynicism of a society that had killed its beautiful young president and had peeled back the mask on its racism.
This troublesome but precocious kid is soon seduced by rock music and his future unfolds before him. In sixth grade, he decided he would be a great publisher and editor, and set off on his journey, publishing his own minor newspapers. He was a “problem child,” he tells us a rebel so difficult that his parents packed him off to boarding school. This is, after all, a rock ’n’ roll memoir-the sort that elevates its already lionised hero, allowing him to exaggerate his accomplishments, boast about his bad behaviour, strike back at his critics, and stroke his own unwieldy ego. We are about to embark, it seems, on an introspective journey, but soon we are back in Wenner’s childhood and the bragging begins. Wenner briefly admits some regrets and teases a sense of bitterness as he passes the reins to his son, Gus (short for the rather apt Augustus). A guided walk through the detritus of a dying empire alludes to its former glories, like exploring the streets of Rome, guided by Julius Caesar himself. He is brash but reflective as he looks back on the impressive legacy of his publication. The book begins promisingly in mid-2019 with an ageing Wenner in the offices of Rolling Stone bidding farewell to the magazine he co-founded more than a half-century before. Enraged that three separate biographers had portrayed him as a cruel, greedy, and shallow shyster, Wenner has set out to show the world that he is, in fact, a decent human being with his memoir, Like a Rolling Stone (September, 2022). Unfortunately, each portrayed him as such a loathsome creature that he had two of them shut down and unsuccessfully attempted to stop the publication of the third, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine (2017). Over the past two decades, media magnate Jann Wenner has commissioned three authorized biographies. A review of Like a Rolling Stone by Jann Wenner, 592 pages, Little, Brown (September 2022)
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