Carnival of Soul

For years, Jann Wenner, the co-founder and longtime editor of Rolling Stone, held court over the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s annual induction ceremony, formally ushering the night’s assembled superstars into the pantheon.

In time, Wenner, who founded the Rock Hall with the record executive Ahmet Ertegun, became more associated with the institution than any other figure — becoming its top negotiator in the industry, as well as the person blamed, fairly or unfairly, for its shortcomings.

That role will soon come to an end. Wenner, 73, will step down as chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation on Jan. 1, the organization announced Wednesday. He will be replaced by John Sykes, the president of entertainment enterprises for the radio giant iHeartMedia, who was among the first executives at MTV.

“I just felt I had done what I set out to do,” Wenner said in response to questions about why he decided to leave his post. “That it had been built, stabilized and become well financed and managed — and, after 30-plus years of running it, time for new energy, new ideas, a new generation.”

Wenner’s retirement is the biggest change to the management of the institution in its history, and it raises questions about how the Rock Hall will evolve under Sykes.

Many critics have contended — in sometimes detailed reports — that the Hall has admitted too few women and people of color. In an interview, Wenner denied that, pointing to the Hall’s history of inducting black pioneers of rock and R&B music, and saying that the induction process should not be influenced by such considerations.

“I don’t think that’s a real issue,” Wenner said. “People are inducted for their achievements. Musical achievements have got to be race-neutral and gender-neutral in terms of judging them.”

According to Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager and the chairman of the hall’s nominating committee, Wenner’s decision was driven in part by the need for a succession plan. Wenner, he said, nominated Sykes as his successor.

“It was a collegial and thoughtful process,” Landau said in an interview, “and was handled in a very fraternal way.”

But things have never been entirely collegial at the Rock Hall, which was founded by Ertegun, of Atlantic Records, along with a team of music and media executives, including Wenner, Landau and Seymour Stein of Sire Records. Wenner became chairman after Ertegun’s death in 2006.

Since its earliest days, the Rock Hall has been pilloried as unnecessary or even contrary to the spirit of rock ’n’ roll — an elite museum for a youthful and rebellious art form — and attacked for which artists its voters decide to include or exclude.

Even those who get in have balked, as Steve Miller did in 2016, complaining about issues like inductees’ licensing agreements. “They need to respect the artists they say they’re honoring, which they don’t,” he said.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame began in 1983 as less of an institution than a concept for honoring rock’s roots and elevating its heroes. It held its first induction ceremony in 1986 at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, but did not open the doors of its museum in Cleveland until 1995.

“A long time ago, when no one was thinking about our music and its posterity,” Mick Jagger said in a statement, “Jann saw that we needed a place to celebrate popular music and recognize the people who had made the music grow. It was a visionary idea and he stuck with it.”

In time, the Rock Hall came to embrace other kinds of music, like hip-hop — starting with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, in 2007 — and chart-topping pop singers like Madonna and Janet Jackson.

For Wenner, who will remain on the Rock Hall’s board, relinquishing control over that institution may be his final step in letting go of an extraordinary level of power and influence over pop culture.

In 2017, Wenner sold the celebrity magazine Us Weekly to American Media Inc., the publisher of The National Enquirer. Later that year, he sold a majority stake in Rolling Stone — the magazine he founded in 1967 with the music critic Ralph J. Gleason — to Penske Media Corporation, which has since redesigned the magazine and pursued new features like a Rolling Stone-branded chart to challenge Billboard. Wenner retains the title of editorial director at the magazine.

Reflecting on the twilight of his career, Wenner said he is working on a book, although he declined to offer details.

He said seeing Rolling Stone and the Rock Hall passed to another generation brought him “enormous satisfaction,” and added, “That’s better satisfaction that to hold on to some bitter end.”