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As editor of rock'n'roll codex Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner has
led by example for over 50 years. Joe Hagan's explosive
biography of the publishing titan is an addictive tale of sex,
drugs and John Lennon's wrath

In 1995, Jann Wenner, the founding editor of Rolling Stone
magazine, left his wife for a man. To those outside his orbit
(and many within), it was a shock. As the Wall Street Journal
reporter Patrick Reilly recalled, "There was nothing gay about
him. When the news came out, it was like, really? Of all the
people in media who might be gay, Jann Wenner?" It was yet
another contradiction to add to the list of Wenner dichotomies.
He was a confidante and a gossipmonger, a groupie and a svengali
and, of course, he ran Rolling Stone, a chronicle of sex, drugs
and rock'n'roll, counterculture and youth revolution, as an
aggressively capitalist operation. Wenner's mother chose his
name after Janus, the Roman god with two faces.

A new biography, Sticky Fingers (Canongate, £20) by Joe Hagan,
attempts to unpuzzle the publishing titan who, at 71, has helmed
the iconic magazine for half a century. Drawing on more than 100
hours of conversation with Wenner, combined with access to his
personal archive and 235 interviews with those who populate his
world, Hagan treats his subject with the same reportorial scope
and literary ambition as the New Journalism championed in the
column inches of Rolling Stone. Anecdotes unspool unflinchingly,
page after page – the manuscript of which, Hagan notes, Wenner
was not permitted to see prior to publication. It makes for a
thumpingly good read. Well, unless you're Jann Wenner. Having
seen the finished product, Wenner has tried to distance himself
from the book. He released a statement last week: "I gave Joe
time and access in the hope he would write a nuanced portrait
about my life," Wenner said. "Instead, he produced something
deeply flawed and tawdry, rather than substantial."

It's an unfair assessment: the book is nuanced, and while it is
doubtless tawdry – this is rock'n'roll, after all – it is
nothing if not substantial. At its core is a story about the
birth and triumph of American celebrity culture, positioning
Wenner, with his fame-making magazines (which came to include
Men's Journal and Us Weekly), as one of its principal
architects. But the subplot is about sexuality. Hagan's
narrative portrays the early Wenner as an incorrigible social
climber, keenly aware of his gay impulses while committing to a
heterosexual identity for the normalcy and mobility it afforded.
While enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, in the
mid-Sixties, Wenner resolved this dissonance by treating
straight relationships with ironic detachment. He slept with
various women, writes Hagan, but framed these encounters as
social conquests. One of Wenner's roommates recounted how Wenner
"slept with the daughter of a UN diplomat and used the sheet
from their tryst as a tablecloth for a dinner party the next
night, strategically placing her plate over a stain and giggling
during the meal". Wenner denies the tale. This is typical of the
book – conflicting versions of events are often presented
without adjudication.

That's not to say the biography doesn't draw conclusions. Some
of the best insights concern Wenner’s enigmatic relationship
with Jane, the urbane, attractive “nice Jewish girl” to whom
Wenner was married for almost 30 years. This wasn't an ironic
relationship – he loved her – yet he was able to square it with
his homosexual urges thanks to a tacit arrangement. "She gave
him implicit permission to enjoy extracurricular sex, as long as
he kept it well hidden," Hagan writes. "When she did get wind of
it, Jane forgave him." Their mutual desires for money and status
were best served by being in partnership.

As a power couple, they commanded a lavish lifestyle. In the
Seventies, their San Francisco house on California Street was
lined with French 18th-century mirrors, and stuffed with artwork
(Warhols, German lithographs, a Claes Oldenburg sculpture). They
had a colour-projection TV with a four-by-six-foot screen; the
upstairs bathroom contained chaise longues, a Japanese steam
room and a Rauschenberg print. A decade later they would buy a
$4.2 million New York duplex, build a manor house in the
Hamptons and acquire a Gulfstream II. Wenner dubbed this jet the
"Capitalist Fool".

There was similar excess at Rolling Stone itself. In 1977,
Wenner hosted a staff retreat in the Hamptons. Hagan recounts
how Wenner “tried leading a series of presentations from his
different departments – until John Belushi came bounding in and
declared, ‘Oh bullshit!’ and performed an impromptu version of
his samurai skit from SNL." When Wenner introduced his business
team, "the editorial staff groaned and were led screaming to the
swimming pool by the art director for Outside [magazine], a
large lesbian who had stripped naked. A blizzard of coke
snorting ensued, Belushi slept with a Rolling Stone photo
editor, and limos were sent back to Manhattan to raid the petty
cash drawer and scrounge up more."

A blizzard of coke snorting ensued and John Belushi slept with a
Rolling Stone photo editor
Such was Wenner's desire for the good life, he was willing to
compromise his most important friendships. In 1970, he was
spending time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, luxuriating in
their celebrity and convincing Lennon to give Rolling Stone a
landmark interview. After printing it in 1971, Wenner received
an offer of $40,000 to turn it into a book. The musician was
firmly against the idea, but Wenner chose the money and
published regardless. The pair never spoke again.

So why did he risk his fortune for a Calvin Klein model and
designer named Matt Nye? The decision to leave his wife and come
out of the closet is one area where the biography feels
underpowered. Wenner puts it down to Jane's depression and
addictions, which left him feeling miserable – but why Nye
rather than any previous lover? And why then?

It was certainly a major risk, given that Jane had shares in
Rolling Stone and the magazine meant everything to him. Among
Hagan's most telling passages is a reconstruction of the Hearst
media empire's 2006 offer to buy a stake in Wenner's operation
with an option to own. At the time, it was valued at $1.1
billion. There was one condition: Wenner would have to
relinquish control of the business. "Jann Wenner could be a
billionaire or he could be Mr Rolling Stone," writes Hagan, "but
he could not be both."

He didn't sell and two years later, the economy collapsed,
leaving Wenner Media on its knees and shackled to a $300 million
debt. But Wenner still had Rolling Stone, the passport to all he
could wish to be. Editing the magazine had never been an end in
itself: it was always about mixing with the stars as much as
reporting on them. His 60th birthday was attended by Michael
Douglas, Al Gore, Larry David and a plethora of other boldfaced
names. Robin Williams gave a bawdy speech and Bruce Springsteen
sang a song that he wrote for the occasion:

I got to know the man a little bit, by and by,
I've never seen so much innocence and cynicism walk side by side.
I never guessed a man whose magazine once changed my life,
Would one day want to have a threesome with my wife.

Jann Wenner, reportedly, was in heaven.

Sticky Fingers: The Life And Times Of Jann Wenner And Rolling
Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan is out now. This article first
appeared in the November 2017 issue of GQ magazine

GQ, another faggot magazine.

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/sticky-fingers-jann-wenner- rolling-stone-joe-hagan

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