Cyndi Lauper slammed Jann Wenner as “wrong” and “a little senile” after he claimed no woman or person of color was a “master” of rock and roll.
“I think he’s a little senile,” the “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” singer told Page Six at the recent off-Broadway opening of “Dig” when asked about his comments.
Lauper — a longtime activist for women’s rights and the LGBTQA+ community — also noted that many white rock and roll performers drew inspiration from black musicians.
“I don’t know why he would think that when African-American people invented rock and roll. I’m sorry Elvis learned from a black man,” she added. “So I really really think it’s so wrong. I always thought it was wrong.”
Lauper, 70, slammed the Rolling Stone magazine co-founder, 77, for refusing to include women and people of color in “The Masters,” a compendium of interviews he’s conducted over the years with rock stars such as Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Bono.
When asked about his decision to exclude these two groups of musicians, Wenner told the New York Times last week that none were “as articulate enough on this intellectual level” and did not see them as “philosophers of rock.”
You know, just for public relations’ sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism,” he said. “Which, I get it. I had a chance to do that. Maybe I’m old-fashioned and I don’t give a [expletive] or whatever.”
Following his comments, Wenner was ousted from the Board of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame during an emergency meeting that was convened hours after the article was published.
The motion reportedly passed with only two dissenting votes — one from Wenner himself and Jon Landau, Springsteen’s longtime manager and a former Rolling Stone critic.
Later on, he issued an apology through his publisher, Little, Brown and Company, which in part read, “I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences.”
Meanwhile, the “True Colors” singer is working on a new Broadway musical based on the hit 1988 movie “Working Girl” starring Melanie Griffith.
“I’m hoping it comes out sometime between now and death,” she quipped. “No, I’m kidding, probably late 2024, early 2025.
Lauper shared that she had been in talks to be in the original film about an ambitious secretary from Staten Island working in Manhattan but it hit too close to home.
“I didn’t want to,” she explained. “I was a gal Friday and it was really traumatic for me so even playing around in an office was too much. I couldn’t do it.”
The Tony winner added that she worked for the publishing giant Simon & Schuster but left “as soon as the electric typewriter came in and I only typed 19 words a minute.”
