"Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation," the foundation said in a terse statement, according to Variety.
Wenner's ouster comes a day after a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times was published.
Asked by the newspaper why no female musicians and no musicians of color appear in his upcoming book "The Masters" - which will be published on September 26 and brings together interviews with seven musicians: Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bono, Jerry Garcia, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend - he replied about women: "None of them expressed themselves in a sufficiently intellectually structured way."
"It's not that they're not creative geniuses. It's also not that they're not eloquent, however, try to have an in-depth conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. You know, Joni (Mitchell) wasn't a rock 'n' roll philosopher. In my view, it did not meet that criterion. Not by her work, not by the other interviews she has given. The people I interviewed were rock philosophers," he added.
As for black artists, "You know, Stevie Wonder, a genius, right? I guess the fault lies in using such a strong term as +masters+. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean they weren't expressing themselves at that level."
"Look at what Pete Townshend, or Jagger, or any of them wrote," he continued. "They were writing profound things about a particular generation, a particular spirit and attitude towards rock 'n' roll."
In this interview with the NYT, Mr. Wenner said he was aware that his remarks would displease some. "For public relations reasons, maybe I should have included a black artist and a female artist, not up to that historical standard, just to avoid criticism."
"I had the opportunity to do it. Maybe I'm old-fashioned and I don't care. In retrospect, I wish I could have interviewed Marvin Gaye. He might have been the man for the job. Maybe Otis Redding, if he had lived, would have been the man for the job," he said.
Wenner co-founded Rolling Stone in 1967 and left in 2019. He also established the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, of which he served as president until 2020.
© 2023 AFP