Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine

Entertaining, informative, and well written. It gives insight into a difficult individual, while painting a picture of the times and the characters who helped define an era. I looked at the negative reviews and wondered if we had read different books, or if they were friends of Wenner, who was not happy with this book or the author (Wenner's autobiography doesn't even acknowledge this book's existence, which he asked Hagan to write).If you want a feel for Rock & Roll royalty, get this and enjoy.

Joe Hagan’s biography of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner is a no-holds barred, warts and all, examination of the man who, more than any other, has defined the story of Rock in the 20th century. Wenner is a narcissist, a social climber, an ingratiating fanboy, but he also proved to have a nose for great talent, and a penchant for tapping into the hidden desires of the Baby Boomer generation. As a person, the stories told reveal an ultra-sensitive jerk whose appetites for food, drugs, and alcohol consumed him, but as an editor he was somehow able to craft one of the most important publications of the last 50 years. His story is rife with contradictions, interesting anecdotes, and lots of dirt, which makes for one helluva entertaining read.

Journalist Joe Hagan has written for Rolling Stone magazine, among other high-profile publications, so he has had a working relationship with Jann Wenner, the founder and long-time editor of Rolling Stone. In 2013, Wenner asked Hagan to write his biography. Hagan agreed to do it if he could write an honest biography without Wenner’s interference. Wenner was interviewed by Hagan, and gave Hagan access to his archives, but otherwise stayed out of it (by Hagan’s account, anyway). The resulting biography, Sticky Fingers, was published in 2017. One has to wonder if Wenner was happy with the end product, because Hagan’s biography is relentlessly unflattering to its subject.Why would I want to read a biography of Jann Wenner? I like rock and roll, particularly the early years. Wenner was there in the heyday of rock in the ‘60s and ‘70s, documenting not only the music but the rock-and-roll lifestyle of youth culture for Rolling Stone. No doubt he has all sorts of great behind-the-scenes stories of his interactions and friendships with countless rock stars and counterculture figures. What’s surprising about Sticky Fingers is how little rock and roll actually figures in the book. Most of the people who appear in Wenner’s biography are not musicians but journalists, fashion designers, and executives who were big in the ‘70s and not so much anymore. Hunter S. Thompson is a major figure in this narrative who, in hindsight, seems quite childish. When rock stars do appear, you are likely to lose respect for them. John Lennon and Paul McCartney come out looking rather petty. Bruce Springsteen and Bono are portrayed as sycophants sucking up to Wenner to cement their place in rock and roll history. Paul Simon and Bob Dylan show up once in a while for a minor spat with Wenner. The one interesting thread in this book is Wenner’s relationship to Mick Jagger. The two use each other to make money, but Jagger always seems to get the upper hand over Wenner. Really though, rock and roll doesn’t really figure largely in this business biography replete with investment deals and corporate acquisitions. In fact, the book is rather anti-rock and roll, implying that not just Rolling Stone, but the music it stood for, was hogwash. Rock and roll is just another commodity, with Wenner its apex peddler.In preparing this biography, Hagan interviewed many people, famous and not. He has certainly done his diligent research. I have no problem with his writing. This is really a well-crafted work of investigative journalism. It is just so depressing and unpleasant to read a book full of so many unlikable people. No one comes out of this story looking good. Wenner comes across as incredibly shallow, clueless, greedy, and vindictive. He shells out millions of dollars on personal luxuries while nickel-and-diming his staff and writers. Wenner and his friends do a lot of drugs and a lot of sleeping around, but it never seems fun and enjoyable, instead rather sad and mean. You want to root for Wenner as a successful gay businessman at a time when homosexuality was not accepted by the mainstream, but you can’t even do that because Hagan paints him as a predator and sexual harasser who goes after everyone Rolling Stone employed, male and female alike. You end up hating the guy early in the book, and it just keeps getting worse from there.This reminds me of a book I once read about Saturday Night Live (Live from New York), which one would hope would be about how fun, challenging, and exciting it is to make that TV show. Instead, the book ended up being entirely about Lorne Michaels’s personality and ego. The effect is similar here. You want a book about rock and roll culture, or at least a lively inside look at the publishing industry. Instead, you get an extended psychoanalytic study about what a jerk Wenner is. Enjoy.

Quick ship, great product, excellent communication +++++

Hagan does a fine job of finding a journalistic tone here, the book manages to make a case for Wenner's importance while undercutting much of what we typically think Wenner did with Rolling Stone. The details of the rise of Rolling Stone do Wenner no favors, he stumbles his way into publishing a magazine that was for about a decade or so actually important, though he often didn't seem to fully understand what he had and a lot of the fine work done in the magazine was done in spite of Wenner. Let's just say you are not on Wenner's side by the end of the book, he's arrogant, entitled, vindictive, no intellectual, and a sycophant of the first order. And Hagan makes a case that this is the real importance of Wenner, he was out in front of a me first culture that eventually transformed into a celebrity sycophantic culture that still reigns today. Wenner was always that way, he changed negative reviews of his rock star friends to please them, he begged and lied and cheated. And while he certainly suffered as a closeted man, he was no friend of gay culture and still isn't. The book does a fine job covering the central years of the magazine (think Hunter Thompson and Annie Leibowitz) and if you're interested in the magazine, there is plenty of dirt.

This is a deeply researched book about a flawed, but highly successful entrepreneur. Jann Wenner brought rock and roll to our mailboxes for decades, yet most of us knew little about him. After reading Sticky Fingers there’s not much we don’t know about him. The book is so well written that it’s difficult to put down. If you’re a baby boomer this is a must read. Hagan has captured the essence of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s rock scene and laid it all out in detail for our reading pleasure.

Quite a read! Wenner will hate this biography for obvious reasons. The author correctly points out that he is, in many ways, the mirror image of Donald Trump. They are each cruel narcissists and self-mythologizers. Granted, Wenner through the force of his personality as an editor, publisher and groupie, provided an amusing and at times profound running commentary of music and youth culture during the late 60s & early 70s in the pages of Rolling Stone. But he got fat and lazy fast! By the time the punk & disco eras arrived, he was clueless. Eventually, Rolling Stone fully morphed into a fawning enabler of the rubbish that passes for pop music in the 21st Century. But hey, Hagan’s book is a fun read. Enjoy!

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Instructif

would be nice if was original but still haven't played and have had it a few years now lol

Great copy

Hagan's talent and work ethic, coupled with Wenner's perverse cooperation, make this an essential reference in studies of the commodification of 60s counter culture, the lionisation of Manson, Lennon, Jagger and other proto type celebritarians and the fin de siècle of printed collective experience.It also partly explains why Paul Simon was so underated for so long. So long.