War of words
UNITED STATES: When the writer had finished his 547-page history of
Rolling Stone magazine and its founder Jann Wenner, he sent his subject a copy with a note. ‘‘I hope you like it,’’ he wrote. ‘‘It’s a true story.’’
Joe Hagan had spent four years on the project, recorded about 100 hours of conversation with Wenner, and interviewed 250 other people including Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
He had assembled a portrait of the sex and drugs that lay behind the decades of rock’n’roll interviews and he had done it on deadline so that Sticky Fingers: The life and times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone
magazine could be published today, in time for the 50th anniversary of the first edition on November 9.
The book tells of Wenner guzzling vodka and cocaine at work and leaving parcels of drugs as bonuses for favoured staff.
It claims that Annie Leibovitz, his staff photographer, slept with many of her subjects, both male and female – ’’if you had Mick Jagger coming on to you or something, you just . . . whatever,’’ she told Hagan. It delves into Wenner’s complicated sex life (he was married for 27 years before coming out as a gay man) and his friendships and feuds with some of the biggest stars of his time.
There was just one problem: Wenner, 71, did not like the book.
‘‘I gave Joe time and access in the hope he would write a nuanced portrait about my life and the culture Rolling Stone chronicled,’’ he said. He had hoped Hagan would ‘‘provide a record for future generations’’ of the social, political and cultural changes that the magazine chronicled. ‘‘Instead, he produced something deeply flawed and tawdry.’’
The two men have not spoken since June. Hagan, 46, whose scheduled promotional appearances alongside Wenner at a Manhattan cultural centre and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Ohio have been cancelled, said he was not surprised.
‘‘I knew all along that the book was going to be difficult for him because he’s not a very reflective person. But if I’d just written the book that Jann dreamt of, it would’ve been a terrible book.’’
Wenner had aborted two previous attempts at an authorised biography. He met Hagan, then a staff writer at New York magazine, in the New York state town where they both live. They bonded over their children and at lunch Wenner pitched the idea of the biography to Hagan.
‘‘Jann wanted the big, serious book, and here was somebody who he decided he could trust,’’ said John Landau, a former Rolling Stone employee and the long-time manager of Bruce Springsteen, who has been a friend of Wenner for 50 years.
‘‘I think the final product is simply not as fair to Jann as it could’ve been.’’
Wenner was a 21-year-old Berkeley dropout when he cofounded Rolling Stone in a San Francisco loft in 1967. It became one of the most influential magazines of its day.
‘‘At one time,’’ Hagan writes, picking up a copy of Rolling Stone
‘‘was like holding a piece of hot shrapnel from the cultural explosion of the 1960s while it still glowed with feeling and meaning’’.
Those days are long gone. The magazine has been battered by a new era and the fallout from an article about a rape allegation.
Wenner, who had a triple heart bypass this year, has announced his company will sell its stake in the magazine that was his life’s work.
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