Jann Wenner Pled His Case in Emergency Meeting Before Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Board Voted Him Out

Before being removed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's board of directors due to controversial comments about Black and female musicians, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner pled his case during an emergency conference call Saturday.

Sources tell Billboard that the 77-year-old, who helped found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1983 and served as its chairman until 2020, made a "self-serving" and poorly articulated "bad apology" in an attempt to explain his remarks.

Nearly every board member on the call — including YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen, music manager and executive Irving Azoff, former chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment Doug Morris and Creative Artists Agency managing partner Rob Light — voted to drop Wenner.

The only board member who voted in Wenner's favor was John Landau, a music manager and former critic who wrote for Rolling Stone for years beginning with the inaugural issue in 1967.

After being ousted, Wenner issued an apology through the publisher for his new book The Masters, which contains interviews with Bono, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Bruce Springsteen and the late John Lennon and Jerry Garcia.

"In my interview with The New York Times I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius and impact of Black and women artists and I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks," Wenner said. "I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences."

In the New York Times interview, Wenner stated that women and Black artists weren't "articulate enough on this intellectual level" to merit inclusion in his book. "The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock," he said.