How Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner built and lost a rock and roll empire (Joe Hagan, author, "Sticky Fingers")

Author Joe Hagan talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his new book, "Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine." In the book, Hagan traces Wenner's rise as an eccentric, spendy and sometimes barbaric media mogul and how Rolling Stone became the "entire internet" for the music world before the internet existed. Wenner — who commissioned the biography — publicly denounced the book when he found out that Hagan had also written about his drug use, sexual escapades and business failings, but the author explains how the two men have reached a sort of peace and why he sympathizes with Wenner's "tragic" later years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices