Like a Rolling Stone by Jann S. Wenner

Author:Jann S. Wenner [S. WENNER, JANN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

WE DECIDED TO locate the museum in Cleveland. The city obviously wanted us and offered us $25 million to build it. Ahmet told us at the time he thought it would in the end cost $100 million, which it did. No one on the board really wanted to be in Cleveland, once a dynamic big city—now best known for the Cuyahoga River catching fire from its industrial waste—but they needed us. When we flew out for a visit, a delegation, including the governor of Ohio and the presidents of the local Fortune 500 companies, met us at the airport and gave us a tour of the city. At every stop crowds of people were carrying banners and waving signs. At lunch they presented a petition signed by over 750,000 Clevelanders who wanted us to come. I overturned all objections to the city, and Ahmet went along with me.

Ahmet had already decided on our architect. There was no competition, bidding, or process. He wanted I. M. Pei, who had recently finished his glass pyramid at the Louvre. I. M. was not a rock and roller; he was seventy. He was a slight man, born in China, dressed in tailored suits, soft-spoken, an old-world gentleman. He had designed the John F. Kennedy Library, so I called Jackie to find out whether she thought I should work with him. She said, “If I had to choose one person in the world to be stranded with on a desert island, it would be I. M.”

On matters rock and roll, we had to bring I. M. up to speed. Ahmet and I began taking him to concerts, starting with something easy, a Paul Simon show. Then we graduated to the loud stuff. We took I. M. and his wife, Eileen, to Graceland, one of the kitschiest places on the planet, with our wives, Susan Evans, and Seymour Stein along. We flew on to New Orleans to continue our musical education. Ahmet’s Louis Vuitton suitcase, custom made for eight pairs of shoes, got lost, and a limo driver had to wait for it at the airport all night. We chartered a small bus and toured the slave plantations at the very roots of American music. That night we all went to Tipitina’s, where Ahmet and I got drunk—continuing I. M.’s lessons in rock and roll. The Peis watched us with polite amusement, as if nothing unusual was happening. After we got back to New York, I. M. told me he had figured it out, the music and what the building should be about: “Energy.” This was 1985. Ten years were to pass before the doors opened.

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