Jann Wenner Out at Rock Hall of Fame Foundation Board of Directors – Billboard

Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone and a co-founder and former chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in New York, is not serving on the muse’s Board of Directors, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation confirms to Billboard.

“Jann Wenner has been removed from the Board of Directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” the muse says in assertion launched on Saturday (Sept. 16).

Billboard reached out to John Sykes, present chairman of the muse, and president and CEO Joel Peresman for additional remark.

The transfer comes immediately following an interview printed by the New York Times Friday, through which Wenner, 77, addressed criticism of the scope of protection in his new e-book The Masters, printed via Little, Brown and Company.

In The Masters Wenner seems again at a group of his interviews carried out in his years at Rolling Stone — all with white males, together with Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend.

The e-book noticeably doesn’t function any interviews with folks of coloration or feminine musicians. Wenner notes in his introduction that neither are in his “zeitgeist.”

“When I was referring to the zeitgeist, I was referring to Black performers, not to the female performers, OK? Just to get that accurate,” Wenner instructed the NYT‘s David Marchese. “The selection was not a deliberate selection. It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

Wenner clarified: “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 was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. 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.”

He added that his choice was “intuitive” and famous, “You know, just for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism. Which, I get it. I had a chance to do that. Maybe I’m old-fashioned and I don’t give a [expletive] or whatever. I wish in retrospect I could have interviewed Marvin Gaye. Maybe he’d have been the guy. Maybe Otis Redding, had he lived, would have been the guy.”

Wenner, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer in 2004, was one of the founders of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983. The founding group supposed to have fun rock ‘n’ roll and honor its icons; the muse started inducting musicians in 1986. Wenner served as chairman from 2006 via 2020, with Sykes filling the position upon Wenner’s retirement.

He left Rolling Stone in 2019 when the publication was acquired by Penske Media Corporation, which can be Billboard‘s mother or father firm.