How Jann Wenner hit the sweet spot with his iconic magazine
The co-founder of the legendary magazine reflects on five decades of music and social change.
Just 21 when he co-founded Rolling Stone with a few friends, magazine magnate Jann Wenner remained at its helm for the next five decades, revolutionising not just music journalism but also the way politics and social issues were covered. He says he’s proud of a legacy that includes “discovering, promoting and proselytising for great talent” and “hopefully making a consequential con-tribution to progress toward human justice.” His book, Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir, is out now.
Why did you launch Rolling Stone?
I was a rock and roll fan but not a very good guitar player. I just got consumed by music and the messages we were getting from it, and I wanted to learn more about it and be a part of what the Lovin’ Spoonful called “the magic that can set you free”.
Did the name come from the proverb, from the Bob Dylan song or from the Rolling Stones?
All of the above, but principally the Dylan song. It was the hippy psychedelic era, when groups had names like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, so we kicked through a bunch of names like that – the Electric Tomato and the Electric Newspaper – but none sounded quite right. Then finally Rolling Stone came up. It was a phrase and a song that defined the times. Ralph Gleason, my co-founding partner, wrote an essay for the American Scholar called “Like a Rolling Stone”, in which he laid out the philosophical underpinning of the magazine and all the themes we were going to explore. Our premise was that rock and roll was important. It carried very serious social and political messages. The music was a kind of tribal telegraph, a glue that held a generation together.
How did you assemble editors and writers?
It was me and Ralph and whoever would work for free. The other editor was a Newsweek bureau chief but worked for us part-time at midnight because he was a friend of mine. And I got a college buddy, Jonathan Cott, and ( music critic) Jon Landau to join us, but it was just volunteers for most of the first year.
At that point what was your ambition ?
Just to do something very serious about rock and roll. We had no business plan. I was 21. I had no idea whatsoever about magazine distribution or advertising sales or financial management or planning or forecasting or marketing – zero. But you learn on the job. We found a distributor in San Francisco who sold mainly yachting and boat magazines, and he sent 40,000 copies of our first issue out to cities around the country, and we got, like, 33,000 of them back. But the magazine got into a few people’s hands, and we started getting letters from readers who wanted more. There were enough to say: “OK, I’ll keep going.”
How did you choose which musicians and bands to feature?
We just covered what we liked. The implication of your questions is that there was some kind of methodology or premeditated intent that went into all of this. The reality was that it was done completely on the fly, spontaneous, catch-as-catch-can, serendipity, random acts of chance and luck. That was the way Rolling Stone was made.
There were some early growing pains – editorial differences of opinion – where you had to step in and say: “This is the direction I want this magazine to go.” Tell me about that.
Again, it was all intuitive. I had my instincts about what the magazine should stand for and what it should cover. When I brought in other people with some professional experience to help, who by this time were getting paid but not a lot – maybe like $75 or $100 a week – they had different opinions, passionately expressed. Everyone was young and working for a purpose ... and so if they disagreed with me, they would leave. But I felt very strongly about my vision.
Your memoir describes a lot of drug use at the magazine in those early years. How did you function personally and as an organisation?
It was mostly off the premises – except on late-night deadlines – and it wasn’t daily. It was just the recreation of the time, and it didn’t really bother anyone or interfere with anything. I mean, a lot of time was wasted in having fun, but being happy infused both what we did and our message, which was not a hedonistic “have fun” but a life-should-be-happy and your-work-should-make-you-feel-gratified-and-fulfilled “have fun”. If you’re good at something and can do it well, and what you’re putting out is helpful to people and society, then you should enjoy yourself.
You identified and worked with some of the great late-20th-century writers – Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and others. How did you spot them?
I read Hunter’s book about the Hells Angels and thought he was terrific, so I looked him up and invited him to write for us, and right from the beginning he was producing amazingly precise and funny stuff. As for Tom Wolfe – again, I was a fan of his writing in the New York Herald Tribune and New York, so I got him to write for us. And both went on to produce their best work at Rolling Stone because I offered them the kind of home they wanted – the topics, the freedom, the editing that really nurtured them.
But these are big creative egos, right? How did you get them excited and focused and, when necessary, rein them in?
First off, in my experience, the best talent is often the easiest to work with. That’s certainly true of writers. They’re disciplined. They have a vision and know what they want to do. What you need to do is steer them in a direction where they’re naturally inclined. I could see what would spark their passion and what they could bring their insight to. And then I just encouraged them. I didn’t tell them how to do anything. I let them do their own work. Of course, there was monitoring and a little nudging but no big, abrupt moves beyond the assignment – just insight, sympathy, tolerance, humour, inspiration, passion and patience.
Parallels between writers and musicians?
I think so. Probably one of my best gifts was being able to understand creative talent: how it behaves, how to bring the most out of it, how to manage it. That applies to the artists we covered and the people who worked for us.
You were chummy with many of the big musicians and record-label heads. Was that a conflict of interest?
You make decisions according to your journalist and publisher instincts and your sense of news. We never shrank from that, and nobody expected anything different. Our value to artists and to the readers was that we had integrity. Those were the ground rules we established with everybody, including people who became close friends. But these were artists making music. They weren’t producing shoddy cars or digging up coal.
As Rolling Stone grew and expanded internationally, how did you sustain its entrepreneurial rock culture and make sure that it didn’t become corporate or bureaucratic?
It stayed a smallish business; I think we had 400 or so people at our peak. And I was quite clearly always in charge. I owned the joint. I said what was going to happen and made quick decisions. There was also a harmony of common purpose among the staff – not just the editors but also the business people. So we had relatively little politics and bureaucracy. Of course, you still have to enlist people’s enthusiasm, lobby for what you want, convince people to go along with it and be persuasive as well as commanding.
Were you good at spotting managerial talent ?
We had some really wonderful, hardworking people on the business side for a long time, but I just wasn’t interested in rapid expansion. I was never looking for somebody to run it instead of me. I was always looking for people to manage it on my behalf. So I guess I kept it within the limits of what I could tolerate.
Did your leadership style change over time?
I grew up. I got a little less mercurial, more thoughtful. I learned that once you start yelling at people, you’ve already lost your argument. I was still very tough, but I always tried to inspire people to do a good job. And if they did that, I didn’t care what days or hours they were working or how they went about it. Just do your best and enjoy yourself. And if they weren’t doing their best, I would let them go.
How did you handle the shift to digital media?
Like everybody else in publishing, I didn’t understand what the impact would be. We were deliberately late to the game because I was waiting for others to figure it out. And in that period big media companies lost fortunes trying to be internet players, because they didn’t quite get it. It demanded its own timing and had its own rules. You couldn’t just put your print stuff online. And then the digital companies came in and just stole all the editorial content, repackaged it, put it on their websites, gave it out free to readers and then sold those readers to their advertisers, who went along and abandoned print. The publishers didn’t get money. The writers didn’t get money. Apple, Google and Facebook just sucked the blood out of publishing like vampires. They all took content from newspapers and magazines and didn’t compensate them for it.
Let’s talk about non-musical content. From the beginning, Rolling Stone made a point of covering politics and the environment. Why?
My parents were both active Democrats, so I grew up with politics, and it became a passion. And, as I said, the whole initial concept of Rolling Stone was that music was a voice for social and political change. We were a generation that grew up with the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and within that was this love of the natural world and living cleanly and safely in it and not exploiting it. We also started on the US West Coast, which was home to a lot of conservation societies, including the Sierra Club. So it became apparent that raising awareness was part of our cause and responsibility, too.
You’ve been candid about your personal life – in particular, about coming out publicly as a gay man in middle age. How did that decision play out in your professional life? Did you tell your colleagues? And did things change once you could be a more authentic person at work?
I didn’t tell my colleagues directly. It kind of got around on the gossip mill, and it was in the local newspapers. But it didn’t change anything about the business, my relationships, my leadership. Not a thing. Isn’t that interesting?
Do you wish you’d done it earlier?
No, because I had a very happy marriage and three kids, and that life, during the first 25 years of Rolling Stone, was great. I wouldn’t change it at all. But then I fell in love unexpectedly and went with that and had three more kids.
Was it hard to balance work and family?
With the first set of kids, I worked a lot. We travelled and did other things together, but at that stage the main passion was Rolling Stone. With the second set, I was older and working less and put more time and effort into it. But they’re all great, all very close to me, from ages 37 to 14.
One of your sons now leads Rolling Stone.
He came to work for me right after he graduated from college, and I didn’t expect that he would take over, but we worked together closely for four or five years, so he learned what the magazine was about, and it became clear that he had the talent and the aptitude to run it. When we sold the magazine, he did the deal and retained a piece of it, and the new owner made him CEO. He has seen and is still seeing Rolling Stone through all the difficulties of the internet age and the digital revolution and continues to put out a good magazine. It’s successful, making money, thriving. He never did anything nepotistic. He just worked his way up. I think the biggest issue was getting me to leave. At first I thought that even though he was running things, I would still be in charge. But he had his own ideas, and he politely eased me out. I finally said, “Look, Gus, what do you want me to do here? Tell me the truth.” His answer was “Well, actually, nothing.” And that was essential. After 50 years it’s hard to let go of something you built yourself. It’s your baby, and you have a deep attachment to it. But it’s like your kids. When they grow up, you have to let them go.
How are you handling retirement?
It’s pretty good. I wrote the book, which gave me something to do for a couple of years. I had 50 years of appointment books and 50 years of the magazine, so there were rich sources of research. And for every minute of writing, you spend about four or five minutes taking yourself back to a different time and place, re-creating it in your mind so you can observe how you were feeling and pick out the best details from the scene.
Alison Beard is an executive editor at the Harvard Business Review
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