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A man I once met in college mentioned in passing that he “didn’t read female novelists.” That wasn’t an insult, he explained, he’d just never come across anything that he found particularly interesting. He had either the absolute confidence or the absolute will to kill to say this at a reception at a women’s college, and I seem to remember us all staring at him, really confused. What could he possibly mean? Had he never read Octavia Butler? I was surprised at how many times I’ve heard this sentiment repeated over the years without embarrassment – and how grateful I was that it was mostly repeated by people who worked in insurance or pharmaceuticals or some other field in which they The decision to consume or not to consume had no impact on anyone but themselves.
Jann Wenner is a man whose tastes, preferences and artistic consumption certainly have an influence: he was the founder of Rolling Stone. And on Friday, the New York Times published an incredible interview with him.
The subject of the interview was Wenner’s new book, “The Masters,” which consists of in-depth conversations between Wenner and the musicians he considers giants in their fields, spanning several decades of Wenner’s tenure at Rolling Stone. Luminaries like Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Jerry Garcia.
The “masters” are all white men. Not a woman or person of color among them. That’s notable in itself, but the most startling part of the New York Times article occurred when the interviewer asked Wenner to explain why.
“Insofar as the women,” Wenner replied, “simply none of them were articulate enough on that intellectual level.”
The interviewer – David Marchese, who did a fantastic job – vigorously refused, but Wenner refused to budge. He was looking for musicians who were “philosophers of rock,” he explained, and women and black artists “simply couldn’t articulate themselves at that level.” What could he possibly mean? Had he never heard of Carole King? In hindsight, he surmised that he could have “found a black man and a female artist who didn’t meet that historical standard just to deflect that kind of criticism,” but he didn’t because I guess he refuses to define his own jeopardize standards.
It’s okay to like what you like. But if you’re Jann Wenner, a man who has been able to guide conversations about American popular culture for fifty years, how sad it is that all the musicians you consider most worthy just happen to be musicians are those who look like you?
Inarticulate on an intellectual level? Cheese and rice, my dude, you usually have to trudge through an incel forum to find that sentiment expressed so loudly. Although he admitted that female musicians could be “creative geniuses,” his main complaint seemed to be that they could not talk about their art in a way that he found engaging or intellectually stimulating: “Joni [Mitchell] was not a philosopher of rock’n’roll. In my opinion, she failed that test.”
It was truly disappointing to read Wenner revisiting the tired, damaging idea that including a black woman on a list celebrating excellence would only serve to appease woke masses, and not because she deserves to be there to be. Had he never heard of Tina Turner? It was truly astounding to read him explaining that female artists simply aren’t articulate. Patti Smith? Stevie Nicks?
And as a journalist, the most remarkable thing about all of this was the fact that it didn’t seem to occur to him that he might be the problem. Had he never heard of Taylor Swift? If he found brilliant answers from women boring, then perhaps he wasn’t asking the right questions. If he meant “articulate” to mean a specific thing – something embodied only by white male artists – then perhaps that in itself is a boring way to understand music. That artists in the past were considered great because certain gatekeepers decided they were great.
Jann Wenner was one of these gatekeepers who shaped the culture but was also shaped by it – a product of his time and a prisoner of his prejudices. A guy who had his finger on the pulse of the culture at a certain time when it was more acceptable for all-white men to be rock gods and all-white men to be their high priests.
It would be one thing if Wenner had shrugged his shoulders and said, “Look, I like what I like, and this book isn’t for everyone,” and left it at that.
It’s quite another thing to blame the people you’ve excluded for not being intellectually engaging enough to hold your interest.
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