His brother River's death is one of his Rosebuds, Joaquin says,"but it's not a Rosebud in the way that people think." He says his gift for dark roles like the Joker is "prenatal," and he can leave them behind on set. "I fucking love my life," he says.
Longform Podcast #316: Joe Hagan
This was a very fun podcast to do and I got a lot of great feedback from it.
Joe Hagan is a correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine.
“It’s the story that begins with John Lennon on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1967 and ends with Donald Trump in the White House. In many ways the book takes you there, I wanted it to. It takes you through the culture as it metastasizes into what it is now. It had a lot to do with a sense of the age of narcissism. The worship of celebrity. Jann was very into celebrity, and worshipful of it and glorifying it and turning it into a thing and eventually celebrity displaces a lot of the ideas they originally started with in my estimation. That was a narrative thread that I began to pull in the book.”
WIN A 'STICKY FINGERS' POSTER!
The first 10 people to send me a picture of themselves holding a copy of STICKY FINGERS inside the ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME will win a FREE poster of the paperback cover. Send your picture and mailing address to joe at joehagan dot net and I’ll promptly send you an autographed poster. The cover is based on the classic 1960s Globe posters and was designed by Linda Huang.
ICYMI: MY PROFILE OF MICHAEL B. JORDAN IN VANITY FAIR
I profiled actor and entrepreneur Michael B. Jordan for the October 2018 cover story in VANITY FAIR. It was fast and furious.
REDUX: THE BILL FOX STORY
A lot of readers come to this site looking for my profile of the fabled Cleveland singer-songwriter Bill Fox, which was published in The Believer magazine in 2007. It’s not readily available online, but here is a link to the PDF download of the original magazine pages. Enjoy!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrd2q813n8gnu1j/bill%20fox%20story.pdf?dl=0
MY LATEST VANITY FAIR REPORT ON THE MICHAEL COHEN CASE
Michael Avenatti previews the next chapter of the Cohen paper trail—and why he’s still in the game to depose Donald Trump.
THE MAN WHO WANTED EVERYTHING
James Wolcott reviews "Sticky Fingers" in The New York Review of Books: "Joe Hagan’s gossipy, rackety, roller-coaster history of Rolling Stone and its founder, Jann Wenner ... is a tireless account of a velociraptor appetite. Wenner’s was omnivorous—for fame, glory, sex, drugs, food (in a ravenous frenzy, he once ate frozen food straight out of the icebox and was sped to the hospital when it expanded in his stomach, like some David Cronenberg beast), social status, cultural recognition, political clout, and luxury furnishings—and in its chewy path of creative destruction there was a notable absence of what the cultural theorist Irving Babbitt called the “inner check.”
I'VE JOINED VANITY FAIR AS A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Hagan — whose book Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine drew the ire of its subject — officially starts April 1 but his interview with Stormy Daniels’ attorney already appeared on VF’s The Hive site on Friday.
STICKY FINGERS: THE MIXTAPE
https://open.spotify.com/user/joexhagan/playlist/6knv10rB26D8stwUg5y4wv
IN NOVEMBER ISSUE, VANITY FAIR PUBLISHES FIRST EXCERPT OF STICKY FINGERS
From the November issue of Vanity Fair: The first time Jann Wenner put John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of Rolling Stone, in 1968, he was propping up his fledgling publication. The second time, in 1981, he was sealing Lennon’s legend. With the magazine now up for sale, Joe Hagan chronicles the relationship between Wenner and Lennon in an adaptation from his new biography of the Rolling Stone founder.
Jann Wenner, John Lennon, and the Greatest Rolling Stone Cover Ever
The first time Jann Wenner put John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of Rolling Stone, in 1968, he was propping up his fledgling publication. The second time, in 1981, he was sealing Lennon’s legend. With the magazine now up for sale, Joe Hagan chronicles the relationship between Wenner and Lennon in an adaptation from his new biography of the Rolling Stone founder.