Jann Wenner's Rock Hall is crumbling — is it worth fixing?

In the Old World, two titans who sought to make themselves gods conspired to control history and their place in it. They anointed themselves arbiters of sound — one an impresario, the other a scribe, both shadow figures in search of permanence. They devised a hall that would house The Greats and took turns inducting those they deemed worthy: above all else, those around them. And they did so in secret, away from prying eyes and pointed questions. They thought themselves enlightened men, bringing art appreciation to the philistines, when really they longed to be kingmakers, therein casting their shadows across an unwitting realm. They erected their tabernacle in Ohio.

In 2004, one of those titans, Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, inducted the other, co-founder Jann Wenner, into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, another institution that they helped to co-found. Ertegun spoke of Wenner as the ultimate authority of popular music, uniquely attuned to the ways that it reflected American realities and uniquely qualified to be its judge. "More than anyone else, he first identified rock as a politically and socially evocative form of music that would change our world," he said. Mick Jagger, among the greatest beneficiaries of Wenner's particular judgment, added, "Jann almost single-handedly pioneered the idea of popular music and rock and roll in particular as a vibrant art form not just a collection of flash-in-the-pan mediocrities." Perhaps Wenner did change the world but it kept on spinning, and when the asteroid