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cherryghost15's review against another edition
1.0
Well, I did it. I quit reading two books in two days. I don’t know the purpose of this book. It’s one of the most cringe-worthy things I’ve ever seen. I was in broadcast radio and have loved music for as long as I can remember. I like Rolling Stone, but it hardly was any kind of bible. Magazines flourished in the 80s and 90s. If you were into other genres, you read other publications. The snide tone and constant harsh focus on Jann Wenner is ridiculous.
There is no joy here. Rolling Stone connected to music which gives joy. The book makes Wenner’s ambition, sexuality, success, and every other detail about his life from childhood on seem like forces of darkness.
It’s just awful. There are some readers who liked it and found the stories interesting. I think most of them are possibly young and maybe didn’t feel the negative slant. I don’t know. I don’t know why this exists. Jann Wenner didn’t ruin music or journalism, music, rock concerts, politics, or our culture, I especially don’t care to know every detail of his love/sex life; and I believe marriage is private between the two people, no matter what is going on or what you might find out—I don’t want to read about it. I think they both knew what they they were getting into. Good grief.
What a bunch of schlock. He took years and researched and had total access and this Jann Wenner tell-all is what he puts out?!? It’s confounding. Constantly calling Wenner’s character into question, this author needs to take a long look in the mirror. Disgusting. Homophobic to boot.
There is no joy here. Rolling Stone connected to music which gives joy. The book makes Wenner’s ambition, sexuality, success, and every other detail about his life from childhood on seem like forces of darkness.
It’s just awful. There are some readers who liked it and found the stories interesting. I think most of them are possibly young and maybe didn’t feel the negative slant. I don’t know. I don’t know why this exists. Jann Wenner didn’t ruin music or journalism, music, rock concerts, politics, or our culture, I especially don’t care to know every detail of his love/sex life; and I believe marriage is private between the two people, no matter what is going on or what you might find out—I don’t want to read about it. I think they both knew what they they were getting into. Good grief.
What a bunch of schlock. He took years and researched and had total access and this Jann Wenner tell-all is what he puts out?!? It’s confounding. Constantly calling Wenner’s character into question, this author needs to take a long look in the mirror. Disgusting. Homophobic to boot.
mbkarapcik's review against another edition
5.0
If you enjoy reading books about the rock industry, do not miss or pass this one over. Chock full of more sex, drugs, and rock and roll as well as epic drama than even the most lurid of rock biographies, you get a very inside look at Jann Wenner and the drive he had to make Rolling Stone magazine what it became. Very well-written, rife with celebrity encounters. No matter what you end up thinking about Jann after reading this book, he has led a full life and doesn't regret it. If you didn't know that the book was about a real person, you would believe it was a fictional character because so much happens. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction. Now I'm waiting for the movie or TV series to come out.
ericfheiman's review against another edition
3.0
Rolling Stone was pretty much the only music magazine I could get my hands on growing up in 1970s and 80s rural western Pennsylvania. If the magazine was hopelessly mainstream and square by urban hipster standards at this point, it was just about my only accessible guide to decent music outside of the AM/FM radio wasteland I lived in. (And especially before MTV.) That has to be some measure of success, right?
Little did I know then the rather sordid story of Rolling Stone’s rise, never mind the monomaniacal narcissist who founded it. I can almost begrudgingly admire Jann Wenner’s chutzpah and eventual success that came from it, but, man, what a dick. It’s a testimony to Hagan’s work here that Sticky Fingers is so compulsively readable despite the repeated atrociousness of its main players—Wenner, his wife Jane Wenner, Hunter Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, and on down.
I also stuck with it because it provides, first, a microcosm snapshot of the 1960s Boomer generation, warts and all. But mostly warts. Did the 1960s change our culture? Absolutely. In mostly good ways, though? The jury is still out. If this book is evidence of anything, it’s that the 1960s also wrought an age of solipsistic selfishness leading to the Yuppie culture of the Gordon Gekko go-go 1980s that we’re still reeling from today, whatever outdated and repressive cultural mores were necessarily upended in the process. I sympathize with (and cheer on) every Millennial and Gen Z-er “OK, Boomer” post on social media. This book is their evidence and motivation to do so.
Sticky Fingers also highlights the age-old question of what it takes to actually create something of value and significance. How much of an asshole does one need to be? How many people does one need to fuck over to do it? Do the often-despicable means always justify the so-called worthy ends? I still don’t have a clear answer and nor does this book. But, damn, if it doesn’t make you at least ask the question...
Little did I know then the rather sordid story of Rolling Stone’s rise, never mind the monomaniacal narcissist who founded it. I can almost begrudgingly admire Jann Wenner’s chutzpah and eventual success that came from it, but, man, what a dick. It’s a testimony to Hagan’s work here that Sticky Fingers is so compulsively readable despite the repeated atrociousness of its main players—Wenner, his wife Jane Wenner, Hunter Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, and on down.
I also stuck with it because it provides, first, a microcosm snapshot of the 1960s Boomer generation, warts and all. But mostly warts. Did the 1960s change our culture? Absolutely. In mostly good ways, though? The jury is still out. If this book is evidence of anything, it’s that the 1960s also wrought an age of solipsistic selfishness leading to the Yuppie culture of the Gordon Gekko go-go 1980s that we’re still reeling from today, whatever outdated and repressive cultural mores were necessarily upended in the process. I sympathize with (and cheer on) every Millennial and Gen Z-er “OK, Boomer” post on social media. This book is their evidence and motivation to do so.
Sticky Fingers also highlights the age-old question of what it takes to actually create something of value and significance. How much of an asshole does one need to be? How many people does one need to fuck over to do it? Do the often-despicable means always justify the so-called worthy ends? I still don’t have a clear answer and nor does this book. But, damn, if it doesn’t make you at least ask the question...
johndiconsiglio's review against another edition
3.0
Jann Wenner can't get no satisfaction from this long but brisk Rolling Stone history. Although he handpicked the author, he was apparently enraged by the 50-year chronicle of turned-on, tuned-in, dropped-out stoners becoming billionaire powerbrokers. (Wenner here is more hustling star you-know-what’er than hippie.) Warts-&-all reporting, from Altamont to UVA. You read a book like this for the gossip, especially with a cast like John, Mick, Hunter S. Thompson & Annie Leibovitz. (Boz Skaggs anecdotes won’t cut it.) Lotsa cocaine & bed-swapping. Really, what did Wenner expect? I know it’s only rock 'n roll but I like it.
thematinee's review against another edition
4.0
"You cannot make friends with the rock stars … I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it. They are trying to buy respectability for a form that is gloriously And righteously dumb. Now, you’re smart enough to know that. And the day it ceases to be dumb is the day that it ceases to be real, right? And then it just becomes an industry of…cool."
- Cameron Crowe, former Rolling Stone writer, 2000.
Wenner is the ultimate starfucker, who went from writing about rock stars to being their friend...and we are all worse off for it.
- Cameron Crowe, former Rolling Stone writer, 2000.
Wenner is the ultimate starfucker, who went from writing about rock stars to being their friend...and we are all worse off for it.
toddlleopold's review against another edition
4.0
I have a friend who isn’t interested in reading “Sticky Fingers,” the new biography of Rolling Stone co-founder and media mogul Jann Wenner. He explained that after reading too many rock ‘n’ roll biographies that are essentially litanies of sex, drugs, bad behavior, sex, drugs, and sex and drugs, he’s not interested in another one.
I can’t really blame him, but with a caveat: “Sticky Fingers” (an oddly appropriate title for the digit-in-every-pie Wenner) isn’t really about sex and drugs. It’s about money and power.
Wenner was born to money – new money, but money nonetheless. His father, Edward (whose last name was originally Weiner), founded a San Francisco-based company selling baby formula. It was the beginning of the baby boom, and business thrived.
His mother, known as Sim, was an unhappy housewife – a lesbian who thought she wanted a standard family life, but quickly realized it was a gilded cage. She and Wenner’s father divorced when he was a teenager.
Wenner – born “Jan,” a spelling he changed during his college years at Berkeley – was a precocious child who, like his mother, grappled with his sexuality. Unlike her, however, he didn’t come to terms with it until well into adulthood. It’s a plotline that comes to the fore throughout “Sticky Fingers,” often presented in gossipy ways. I’m not sure Hagan could have been higher-minded in discussing it, but after awhile the list of Wenner’s affairs, with men and women, becomes boring despite its alleged salaciousness.
The blunter throughline, however, is money. Wenner is presented as always on the make, a Sammy Glick for the Age of Aquarius.
Rolling Stone, which he co-founded with San Francisco music writer Ralph J. Gleason, does have its ideals, but Wenner never fools himself – as its staffers sometimes do – that he’s in it for justice. He sees his generation the way Madison Avenue did: as a bunch of free-spending consumers, whether buying LPs, cigarette papers and stereos or – later – cars, computers, diapers and liquor. That 1980s “Perception/Reality” ad campaign reflected Wenner’s true values.
And he wasn’t wrong: Apparently a lot of Rolling Stone readers DID vote for Ronald Reagan, despite the stories in William Greider’s politics column. (Of course, as one staffer notes, Greider’s work was always some of the least-read in the ‘80s version of the magazine.)
Which is not to say that the self-styled “Citizen Wenner,” who loved the movie “Citizen Kane,” didn’t also pride himself on creating a bold, muckraking magazine. One turning point was running the lengthy 1970 “Lennon Remembers” interview, which smashed some of the Beatles’ myths and, not coincidentally, boosted circulation at a time when the magazine was running aground financially. Another was hiring Hunter S. Thompson, who gave its political journalism a distinctive voice – also expressed by such writers as Tom Wolfe, Joe Eszterhas and Joe Klein.
In typical Wenner fashion, however, he managed to alienate John Lennon by pursuing more money out of the interview – publishing a book under RS’ aegis, one that Lennon explicitly told him not to do. It was not unusual behavior; over the years, Wenner would make enemies of friends, often shrugging it off as the price of business. (Even Gleason, whom Wenner idolized, fell away.)
But hey, business was very good. As RS’ chief stockholder, Wenner started living a life that was unavailable to many run-of-the-mill magazine editors. First he hung around with rock stars and record men, befitting their chief courtier. Then it became producers (“SNL’s” Lorne Michaels) and the Aspen/Sun Valley elite. The residences got more ostentatious; so did the overall lifestyle. I gasped when Wenner got a $300 million loan to buy back some stock and “would pay back nary a dime … funneling all the profits directly into his lifestyle.” This was in 2006; you know how the story ends.
I also gasped – or grimaced – upon reading how Wenner protected friends at the expense of journalism. It’s long been known that he’s played favorites on the review pages, making sure his pals in the Rolling Stones get glowing reviews for their crummy post-“Tattoo You” albums. (Of course, this may be payback for the crummy reviews folks like Lenny Kaye gave now-classic Stones albums like “Exile on Main Street.”) But I was surprised to read that he also gave interviews and cover stories to their subjects for vetting.
Bad form, Jann.
But, after awhile, the gasping and grimacing gave way to simply going along. Though the book makes a nice corrective to Alex Gibney’s too-glowing documentary on RS (which was produced in cooperation with the magazine), it’s missing the depth of Gibney’s interviews, which provided some nice context for the magazine’s evolution from music rag to respected periodical. It’s as if Hagan took one person’s jibe at Jann – that he simply rode a good idea for all it was worth – and overplayed it. Every so often Wenner the editor-in-chief comes into view, a man who is pretty good at his job, but then goes away in a cloud of money.
Sex and drugs, too.
As noted, there is plenty of sex and drugs. It was the ‘60s, after all; the ‘70s and ‘80s, too. LSD and pot give way to heroin and cocaine; free love gives way to slick sex and safe sex. Wenner and friends partake of it all. He manages to stay (reasonably) clear-headed while many around him fall apart.
Not the least of them is Wenner’s long-suffering wife, Jane, who was instrumental in molding the early Rolling Stone and smoothing Jann's rough edges. Often ignored by her husband – who was busy either with the magazine or his famous friends – she plowed much of her energy into decorating, sex and drugs. The last wasn’t as easy for her to shake off as it was for her husband: at one point she’s described as so strung out that she won’t get out of bed for several days.
And that’s not counting the stories of other RS notables, especially famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose relationships with her subjects went well beyond taking pictures. At times chronicling these escapades is revealing. Leibovitz, for one, was discouraged from joining the Rolling Stones on a tour for fear that she’d barely emerge from the other end. She did the tour and, indeed, began a downward spiral that wasn’t turned around for a decade.
But more often it’s simply wearying. It's a shame because Hagan also writes well when he has rich material, such as Wenner's relationship with record labels and their moguls (such as Clive Davis and Ahmet Ertegun) and his willingness to go out on journalistic limbs when necessary (it was Rolling Stone that broke the full story on the Patricia Hearst kidnapping).
Hagan has some stylistic tics. He occasionally recapitulates some events as if you hadn’t just read them a chapter or two before. He also narrates too much, instead of letting some observers, such as Cameron Crowe, do the talking. (In Hagan’s defense, in some cases the observer didn’t give him an interview.)
He also gets some easy things wrong. “Saturday Night Live” comes live from Studio 8H, not 3H, and Dave Marsh – though he edited the “Rolling Stone Record Buyer’s Guide” – sure as hell didn’t write every entry.
But, for the most part, Hagan appears to have gotten it right. I do wish his portrait of Wenner were more well-rounded, but that probably says more about Wenner than it does about Hagan. As it is, “Sticky Fingers” says a lot about how money can’t buy ultimate happiness, but it sure as hell can buy so many other things.
Sex and drugs included.
I can’t really blame him, but with a caveat: “Sticky Fingers” (an oddly appropriate title for the digit-in-every-pie Wenner) isn’t really about sex and drugs. It’s about money and power.
Wenner was born to money – new money, but money nonetheless. His father, Edward (whose last name was originally Weiner), founded a San Francisco-based company selling baby formula. It was the beginning of the baby boom, and business thrived.
His mother, known as Sim, was an unhappy housewife – a lesbian who thought she wanted a standard family life, but quickly realized it was a gilded cage. She and Wenner’s father divorced when he was a teenager.
Wenner – born “Jan,” a spelling he changed during his college years at Berkeley – was a precocious child who, like his mother, grappled with his sexuality. Unlike her, however, he didn’t come to terms with it until well into adulthood. It’s a plotline that comes to the fore throughout “Sticky Fingers,” often presented in gossipy ways. I’m not sure Hagan could have been higher-minded in discussing it, but after awhile the list of Wenner’s affairs, with men and women, becomes boring despite its alleged salaciousness.
The blunter throughline, however, is money. Wenner is presented as always on the make, a Sammy Glick for the Age of Aquarius.
Rolling Stone, which he co-founded with San Francisco music writer Ralph J. Gleason, does have its ideals, but Wenner never fools himself – as its staffers sometimes do – that he’s in it for justice. He sees his generation the way Madison Avenue did: as a bunch of free-spending consumers, whether buying LPs, cigarette papers and stereos or – later – cars, computers, diapers and liquor. That 1980s “Perception/Reality” ad campaign reflected Wenner’s true values.
And he wasn’t wrong: Apparently a lot of Rolling Stone readers DID vote for Ronald Reagan, despite the stories in William Greider’s politics column. (Of course, as one staffer notes, Greider’s work was always some of the least-read in the ‘80s version of the magazine.)
Which is not to say that the self-styled “Citizen Wenner,” who loved the movie “Citizen Kane,” didn’t also pride himself on creating a bold, muckraking magazine. One turning point was running the lengthy 1970 “Lennon Remembers” interview, which smashed some of the Beatles’ myths and, not coincidentally, boosted circulation at a time when the magazine was running aground financially. Another was hiring Hunter S. Thompson, who gave its political journalism a distinctive voice – also expressed by such writers as Tom Wolfe, Joe Eszterhas and Joe Klein.
In typical Wenner fashion, however, he managed to alienate John Lennon by pursuing more money out of the interview – publishing a book under RS’ aegis, one that Lennon explicitly told him not to do. It was not unusual behavior; over the years, Wenner would make enemies of friends, often shrugging it off as the price of business. (Even Gleason, whom Wenner idolized, fell away.)
But hey, business was very good. As RS’ chief stockholder, Wenner started living a life that was unavailable to many run-of-the-mill magazine editors. First he hung around with rock stars and record men, befitting their chief courtier. Then it became producers (“SNL’s” Lorne Michaels) and the Aspen/Sun Valley elite. The residences got more ostentatious; so did the overall lifestyle. I gasped when Wenner got a $300 million loan to buy back some stock and “would pay back nary a dime … funneling all the profits directly into his lifestyle.” This was in 2006; you know how the story ends.
I also gasped – or grimaced – upon reading how Wenner protected friends at the expense of journalism. It’s long been known that he’s played favorites on the review pages, making sure his pals in the Rolling Stones get glowing reviews for their crummy post-“Tattoo You” albums. (Of course, this may be payback for the crummy reviews folks like Lenny Kaye gave now-classic Stones albums like “Exile on Main Street.”) But I was surprised to read that he also gave interviews and cover stories to their subjects for vetting.
Bad form, Jann.
But, after awhile, the gasping and grimacing gave way to simply going along. Though the book makes a nice corrective to Alex Gibney’s too-glowing documentary on RS (which was produced in cooperation with the magazine), it’s missing the depth of Gibney’s interviews, which provided some nice context for the magazine’s evolution from music rag to respected periodical. It’s as if Hagan took one person’s jibe at Jann – that he simply rode a good idea for all it was worth – and overplayed it. Every so often Wenner the editor-in-chief comes into view, a man who is pretty good at his job, but then goes away in a cloud of money.
Sex and drugs, too.
As noted, there is plenty of sex and drugs. It was the ‘60s, after all; the ‘70s and ‘80s, too. LSD and pot give way to heroin and cocaine; free love gives way to slick sex and safe sex. Wenner and friends partake of it all. He manages to stay (reasonably) clear-headed while many around him fall apart.
Not the least of them is Wenner’s long-suffering wife, Jane, who was instrumental in molding the early Rolling Stone and smoothing Jann's rough edges. Often ignored by her husband – who was busy either with the magazine or his famous friends – she plowed much of her energy into decorating, sex and drugs. The last wasn’t as easy for her to shake off as it was for her husband: at one point she’s described as so strung out that she won’t get out of bed for several days.
And that’s not counting the stories of other RS notables, especially famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose relationships with her subjects went well beyond taking pictures. At times chronicling these escapades is revealing. Leibovitz, for one, was discouraged from joining the Rolling Stones on a tour for fear that she’d barely emerge from the other end. She did the tour and, indeed, began a downward spiral that wasn’t turned around for a decade.
But more often it’s simply wearying. It's a shame because Hagan also writes well when he has rich material, such as Wenner's relationship with record labels and their moguls (such as Clive Davis and Ahmet Ertegun) and his willingness to go out on journalistic limbs when necessary (it was Rolling Stone that broke the full story on the Patricia Hearst kidnapping).
Hagan has some stylistic tics. He occasionally recapitulates some events as if you hadn’t just read them a chapter or two before. He also narrates too much, instead of letting some observers, such as Cameron Crowe, do the talking. (In Hagan’s defense, in some cases the observer didn’t give him an interview.)
He also gets some easy things wrong. “Saturday Night Live” comes live from Studio 8H, not 3H, and Dave Marsh – though he edited the “Rolling Stone Record Buyer’s Guide” – sure as hell didn’t write every entry.
But, for the most part, Hagan appears to have gotten it right. I do wish his portrait of Wenner were more well-rounded, but that probably says more about Wenner than it does about Hagan. As it is, “Sticky Fingers” says a lot about how money can’t buy ultimate happiness, but it sure as hell can buy so many other things.
Sex and drugs included.
dogtrax's review against another edition
4.0
Intriguing bio of an egotistical man ... whose influence on culture through magazine is undeniable ... (for good or for ill)
laineyg's review against another edition
I don't know how to rate this so I won't. I will give some notes though:
1. As someone who is hyper-interested in this facet of culture (60s/70s music scene), it was not difficult for me to stay invested. However, for anyone slightly detached I can see how this would be a bit of a drag past page 35o or so.
2. Jann Wenner is such an ass and I want to meet him so badly.
3. Very noticeable reluctance to use the word "bisexual".
1. As someone who is hyper-interested in this facet of culture (60s/70s music scene), it was not difficult for me to stay invested. However, for anyone slightly detached I can see how this would be a bit of a drag past page 35o or so.
2. Jann Wenner is such an ass and I want to meet him so badly.
3. Very noticeable reluctance to use the word "bisexual".
countingstarsbycandlelight's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting book about a lot of shitty people. I learned some things about the 70s. Fun pool read.
LOLZ.
k
LOLZ.
k