The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Plays Catch-Up
Jay-Z and Foo Fighters made it in as soon as they became eligible this year. Carole King and Tina Turner on the other hand had to wait decades.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHoF) induction ceremony is set for this weekend. It’s a big class this year. In addition to the six performers (Foo Fighters, the Go-Go’s, Jay-Z, Carole King, Todd Rundgren, and Tina Turner) selected by the Voting Committee, select committees have also honored LL Cool J, Billy Preston, and Randy Rhoads with the Musical Excellence Award; Kraftwerk, Gil Scott-Heron, and Charley Patton with the Early Influence Award; and Clarence Avant with the Ahmet Ertegun Award (an award for songwriters, producers, disc jockeys, record executives, etc., whose main contributions were not made in the area of performance.)
Other countries have their fair share of halls of fame, but Americans, more than any other people on this planet, really get a kick out of honoring notable people/animals/ objects/etc., with collections of plaques or busts or whatnot. For instance, we in America have the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, the National Toy Hall of Fame, the Caddie Hall of Fame, the Insurance Hall of Fame, the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame, the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame, the National Reined Cow Horse Association Hall of Fame, and the Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame. If you’re from America, there’s a good chance your hometown or school or college has a hall of fame. Maybe you’re even in it! If not, start one and then induct yourself for the important role you played in honoring others. About the only hall of fame America doesn’t have is a Hall of Fame Hall of Fame to recognize noteworthy achievements in the hall of fame field.
If there was a Hall of Fame Hall of Fame, the first inductee would be the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is so esteemed it’s practically a national shrine. Other sports have their own halls of fame, but none have the cultural cachet of baseball’s. Oddly, after the Baseball Hall of Fame (and maybe the Football and Basketball halls) it’s probably the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that attracts the most national attention. That’s strange because a.) It’s only been around since the mid-80s, by when any organization with at least a dozen members had felt compelled to start their own hall of fame, and b.) The idea of a hall of fame honoring great musicians is kind of weird.
It’s not that there aren’t great musicians who could be honored. It’s just that with a sport like baseball, you can practically quantify excellence. That’s harder to do with art. Some might argue you could attempt to quantify greatness in a popular artform like rock and roll by looking at record or ticket sales. The problem with that is when it comes to rock and roll, commercially successful artists are sometimes considered sell-outs by rock and roll purists who insist an artist’s willingness to rebel against conventional standards of good taste is a sign of artistic quality. Yet that standard is problematic in its own regard. For example, how should a voter assess a band like the Rolling Stones, who were both popular and rebellious, or obscure critically-acclaimed and influential cult bands like Big Star? All this also raises the question of why anyone would think a presumably countercultural style of music ought to be memorialized with an official club-like institution. (Consider the letter below, which the Sex Pistols sent to the Hall when they were inducted in 2006.)
It’s debates like this that make it fun to follow the RRHoF even if the idea of a hall of fame for rock and roll is kind of ridiculous. As it turns out, people can get really worked up over this stuff, especially if they feel a favorite act or genre is getting snubbed by the nominating committee or the voters. It can get even wilder when an artist makes it known they feel snubbed; that’s how Kiss felt both before and after they got inducted. Debates about the RRHoF also get into questions of what constitutes rock and roll, specifically whether pop and rap acts qualify (sometimes those debates come with nasty racist and sexist overtones.) People get as upset over who’s been inducted as who’s been left out, and it is admittedly sad to see a long-eligible and deserving artist inducted posthumously. Nearly everyone who follows the RRHoF has a gripe about it. After reading this article, you probably will, too. So let’s dive into a review of this year’s nominees as a way to explore the issues surrounding the RRHoF selection process.
Before we get to that, though, let’s review how the selection process works. Artists become eligible for induction twenty-five years after the release of their first record. It’s a mark of distinction for an artist to be inducted in their first year of eligibility (although, preposterously, Radiohead recently had to wait a year for voters to put them in.) A nominating committee of about 30-35 musicians, music industry figures, critics, and journalists meets every year to select a group of 15-20 nominees. After that, ballots are sent to every past inductee and 500-600 people who are either connected in some way to the music industry or know a lot about rock and roll (like apparently Howard Stern). They can vote for up to five nominees. The top 5-7 vote-getters are typically inducted.
There is some tension between the preferences of the nominating committee and the larger voting pool. The nominating committee has, shall we say, more “refined” tastes and will inevitably nominate (and re-nominate) acts whose critical merits are often lost on the wider voting public. This is why acts like Chic, Rufus/Chaka Khan, War, Kraftwerk, the New York Dolls, and the Meters are nominated year after year but never seem to get inducted. That isn’t to say the voters don’t have discriminating tastes, just that they’re more inclined to vote for familiar big-name artists or well-known critically acclaimed acts. Also, remember if ballots are sent out to some 600 people who can only vote for 5 of 20 nominees, the margins separating those who get in from those who get left out could be tiny.
In evaluating who should be inducted into the RRHoF, I take three factors into account. First, I look at an artist’s historical importance, specifically the influence they had on other artists and the overall evolution of rock and roll. The basic question I would ask is whether or not the story of rock and roll can be told without mentioning this artist; if it can, I’d leave them off my ballot. Secondly, I’d look at their artistry: Did they make memorable, moving music of good quality (however you want to define that in rock and roll terms)? And third (even though this isn’t as important as the other two, it needs to be considered) I’d take into account how beloved an artist is with other people. That isn’t necessarily about record sales but rather the soundtracks of people’s lives and if an artist made music that is dear to others. That doesn’t mean every act that’s ever sold-out an arena tour gets a free pass into the RRHoF, but rather that in some instances—particularly when some measure of critical acclaim is in the mix—some artists are simply too big and have too many fans and have meant too much to too many people to ignore.
As for this year’s inductees, the one no-doubter to me is Jay-Z. When it comes to rap, he’s the G.O.A.T., and that’s why he’s getting inducted in his first year of eligibility. I don’t buy the “rap isn’t rock” argument; I mean, what sort of music do rap artists primarily sample anyway, and isn’t rap’s essential spirit basically an extension of the rebellious rock and roll spirit? What makes me even more inclined to disagree with that argument is that those who make it seem to do so in order to diminish hip-hop. (About the only way I could accept the rap-isn’t-rock argument is if someone claimed rap is such a unique and distinguished form of expression in its own right that it deserves to be celebrated independent of the wider rock and roll universe. As it is, I’d rather err on the side of inclusion.)
The RRHoF has done a fairly good job when it comes to rap’s most important artists. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, N.W.A., 2Pac, and the Notorious B.I.G. have all been inducted, although Salt-N-Pepa, Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Dre, Wu-Tang Clan, Fugees/Lauryn Hill, and OutKast are big names yet to make it in. They did make up for a major oversight this year by inducting LL Cool J—rap’s first solo superstar—via the Musical Excellence Award. That was a rather controversial move since LL Cool J had been nominated multiple times before—including this year—without getting voted in, making it appear he was admitted through the backdoor or via behind-the-scenes machinations. (I suspect LL Cool J’s reputation as a popular performer who lacked a more critical or even political edge turned off voters, as did his ongoing turn as the star of a cookie cutter CBS crime drama.)
I don’t mind bringing LL Cool J into the Hall this way so long as inducting overlooked artists in this manner becomes an annual way for the RRHoF to address its backlog of deserving artists. (The other recipients of the Musical Excellence Award—the versatile Billy Preston and neoclassical heavy metal guitarist Randy Rhoads—are good choices for this award.)
It’s also worth noting here that spoken word poet and rap forerunner Gil Scott-Heron is being inducted as an early influence this year, which is a big deal because that award has typically been reserved for artists from the pre-rock era like fellow inductee Charley Patton. (Scott-Heron released his first album in 1970.)
More controversially, however, the RRHoF has given the same award to Kraftwerk, the groundbreaking German electronic band that is sometimes described as the most important band to emerge after the Beatles. Kraftwerk had been nominated many times before, and, while most people have never heard of them, they were probably the RRHoF’s biggest oversight. Are they actually an early influence though? Maybe, if you think full-on electronica didn’t really go rock until the appearance of synthpop in the late 1970s. It’s a good thing they’re finally in though, as it’s impossible to tell the story of rock and roll and even hip-hop (consider the song “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa, who might be in the RRHoF today if not for some terrible allegations that have been made against him) without Kraftwerk. Maybe it would have been better, however, to bring them in via the Musical Excellence Award.
I mentioned earlier I thought Jay-Z was this year’s only no-doubter, which may strike some as odd given three other big names on that list. Let’s start with Foo Fighters, who, like Jay-Z, made it into the RRHoF in their first year of eligibility. While I think they’re definitely hall of fame material, if I had a ballot, I probably wouldn’t have voted for them. Even though Dave Grohl and his mates are the elder statesmen currently carrying the torch for classic guitar-based rock and roll (and maybe the last; who else are they going to pass it to?) I’ve always found their brand of post-grunge rock fairly conventional. Rage Against the Machine, another 90s hard rock band on the ballot that also happens to be fiercely political, is more deserving. Still, it’s hard to argue against putting in a band like Foo Fighters who are so devoted to the spirit of rock and roll.
Carole King is almost as close to a lock as Jay-Z. People may find it astonishing that King is not already in the RRHoF, especially if you’re doing the math and realizing Tapestry came out twenty-five years before Jay-Z released his debut. In truth, King was technically eligible for the RRHoF’s first class back in 1986 since she had been releasing singles in the late 1950s. But King already is in the RRHoF as a non-performer with her songwriting partner and former husband Gerry Goffin. (They wrote such classics as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, “The Loco-Motion”, “Up on the Roof”, “One Fine Day”, and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, among others.) The nominating committee must have felt it wasn’t a priority to put King on the ballot again, and while there are numerous inductees who have made it in both for their work in a group and on their own (such as John Lennon, Michael Jackson, and Eric Clapton) King’s legacy as a recording artist is largely confined to one album. That album, though—Tapestry—is pretty monumental, so it does make sense to honor King for that.
You would be correct to assume a similar technicality has kept Tina Turner out of the RRHoF all these years as well. Turner, like King, is also a RRHoF inductee, but she was actually honored as a performer in 1991 when the act “Ike and Tina Turner” was inducted by (of all people) Phil Spector. While “Ike and Tina Turner” is a historically important act, if you are marginally familiar with Tina Turner’s biography, grouping her with Ike is quite problematic and probably explains why she didn’t show up in 1991 to pick up her trophy. (Ms. Turner, who is 81 years old and lives in Switzerland, won’t be traveling to the ceremony this year either; RRHoF watchers are hoping she’s recorded a thank-you video and that Beyonce—who will probably be in attendance with Jay-Z—is preparing to tear-up the stage in her honor.) Maybe the nominating committee in 1991 thought nominating Ike alongside Tina was a way to slyly acknowledge the important contributions Ike made to the history of rock and roll (he’s one of the few people who could legitimately claim to have invented the genre) or maybe they thought nominating them together would be a way to induct Tina while she was still a major concert draw (although she could have technically been nominated as a solo artist in 1989) or maybe they weren’t thinking at all. Regardless, ever since Ike and Tina Turner got in, there hasn’t been much urgency to induct Tina Turner on her own. Personally, I think her 80s output—the music that’s essentially being honored here—is somewhat overrated, even if her best songs from that era (“What’s Love Got to Do With It”, “Better Be Good to Me”, “The Best”) are great. But 80s-era Tina Turner is iconic in so many ways it’s ridiculous she didn’t make it in on her own years ago.
As far as female 80s acts go, the Go-Go’s aren’t quite as iconic as Tina Turner, but, as the first commercially successful all-female group to write and perform their own songs, they can claim historical significance. Yet their discography is rather thin: A #1 album debut (Beauty and the Beat) with two big singles (“Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat”) and two more largely forgotten albums that generated a hit a piece. (It should be acknowledged that before they hit it big and polished their sound, they were a pretty fierce L.A. punk band; that influence is present on Beauty and the Beat if you listen for it.) I do think, though, that female acts should be assessed in a different light since the music industry almost always considered female artists pop acts disposable, which meant they often weren’t taken as seriously as their male contemporaries and weren’t promoted as serious artists. Facing those headwinds, the Go-Go’s achieved quite a lot in their short time together as a group (1978-1985).
The final inductee, Todd Rundgren, is someone I don’t think I could be convinced to vote for. Rundgren has a reputation as a rock and roll whiz kid who dabbled in all sorts of styles and production techniques. He has a handful of recognizable songs (“I Saw the Light”, “Hello It’s Me”, “Bang on the Drum All Day”) but none—well, maybe the under-the-radar power-pop number “Couldn’t I Just Tell You”—that could be considered part of the canon. While recognized as a fiercely independent music maker who always blazed his own path, his catalog has left little impression on me. Either because he’s miffed it’s taken this long to induct him or because he finds the idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame silly, Rundgren won’t be attending the induction ceremonies.
If Rundgren should have been left off the list, who should have taken his place? The 2021 ballot had many other excellent options: Mary J. Blige, Kate Bush, Devo, Iron Maiden, Chaka Khan, Fela Kuti, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine, and Dionne Warwick. The only one on that list who I wouldn’t consider is Warwick, whose music is too soft for me. While I think Iron Maiden is deserving, Judas Priest and Motorhead deserve to go in ahead of them. I’ve also got to learn more about Nigerian artist Fela Kuti, although the more I listen to his music, the more I think he is a major oversight. As for the others, how do you choose? They’re all really influential and more than deserving. Maybe I would have voted for the oldest artists on the list—New York Dolls, Devo, or Chaka Khan—to make sure they were recognized in their lifetimes (the Dolls and Devo have both lost members). Or maybe I would have thrown my weight behind Blige, Bush, and Khan, since women are woefully underrepresented in the RRHoF. It’s hard to pick just five.
In their early years, the RRHoF inducted fairly large classes. Over the past two decades, though, they’ve often capped their number of honorees at five (maybe six) per year. Some have speculated that had a lot to do with the ceremony being televised and needing to fit within a certain running time, or an assumption on the nominating committee’s part that there weren’t as many artists from the 1970s and 1980s worth inducting, which led them to focus on artists from earlier eras that had been passed over. Their honorees also had a tendency to conform with what might be called the Rolling Stone version of rock and roll history. Advocates for progressive rock and hard rock have chipped away at that critical consensus recently, but as classic rock has faded from view and poptimism has risen to the critical fore, a new group of acts no one years ago would have imagined getting inducted into the RRHoF have started to gain consideration. As this year’s nominees and inductees demonstrate, this has created a bit of a backlog at the Hall.
So what should the RRHoF do to address their oversights? The main thing is that they need to check their blind spots, where large pools of deserving acts are residing (although, to their credit, they’ve started doing this in some cases.) So for example, since enshrining Parliament/Funkadelic and Earth, Wind and Fire over two decades ago, they’ve mostly overlooked 70s funk acts (i.e., the Meters, Betty Davis, the Ohio Players, the Commodores, Kool and the Gang). Mainstream pop artists like Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, and Janet Jackson have been honored recently; they should continue this trend by putting Mariah Carey, George Michael, and Diana Ross (in with the Supremes, but not for her solo work) on the ballot, as well as re-nominating Chaka Khan. Additionally, important contemporary female singer-songwriters like Tracy Chapman, the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, Liz Phair, and Alanis Morrissette have never been nominated.
Despite inducting bands like the Ramones, Talking Heads, and the Clash, the RRHoF has historically struggled with groups connected to punk, probably because many of punk’s most important bands are also relatively unknown. This explains why the Modern Lovers, the Runaways, Television, Suicide, and X have never made a ballot, and why the MC5 and New York Dolls keep getting nominated but never make the cut. Alternative rock groups that broke through to the mainstream like R.E.M., Green Day, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam have had no problem getting in, but despite being nominated on occasion, underground alternative rock bands from the 80s (Husker Du, the Bangles, Sonic Youth, the Replacements, Pixies, Jane’s Addiction) have had a harder time gaining traction with the broader voting pool. Hardcore groups such as Black Flag, Bad Brains (nominated once), the Dead Kennedys, and Fugazi are also seemingly off the RRHoF’s radar.
The RRHoF’s biggest backlog, however, involves British bands who never hit it big in the States. While the RRHoF was slow to induct progressive rock groups like Genesis, Yes, and the Moody Blues, they have yet to recognize the Soft Machine or King Crimson (perhaps the most important band of the bunch). Hair metal progenitors Def Leppard made it in a couple years ago, but, to the chagrin of metalheads, fellow New Wave of British Heavy Metal groups Judas Priest, Motorhead, and Iron Maiden are still on the outside looking in. Influential punk and post-punk groups like the Jam, Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four, and the Fall have been ignored by the Hall. Following the induction of the Cure and Depeche Mode, the RRHoF seems more willing to consider synthpop groups, so perhaps we’ll soon see nominations for Joy Division/New Order, Duran Duran, Eurythmics (nominated once), the Human League, and Pet Shop Boys, or their forefather, Brian Eno. And while American alternative bands have made it in, the RRHoF seems oblivious to British alternative bands like Cocteau Twins, PJ Harvey, Blur, and Oasis (although the Smiths, one of the RRHoF’s biggest oversights, have been nominated a couple times before.)
There is a smattering of other artists who also deserve consideration: Singer-songwriters like John Prine, Carly Simon, Jackie DeShannon, Warren Zevon, and Joan Armatrading; country rocker Gram Parsons (he’s not even in with the Byrds); guitar instrumentalists Link Wray and Dick Dale (the so-called “king of the surf guitar”); soul groups the Spinners and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (ft. Teddy Pendergrass, who also merits consideration as a solo artist); bubble gum pop group Tommy James and the Shondells; ska revivalists the Specials; avant-gardist Captain Beefheart; krautrockers Can and Neu!; new wavers the B-52s; sophistipop artist Sade; and house DJ Frankie Knuckles. And that’s all before we get to recently eligible acts like Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Sleater-Kinney, Pavement, No Doubt, the Dave Matthews Band, Weezer, and TLC.
Fortunately, over the next few years, fewer artists who are obvious first-year inductees will become eligible. (The big one next year will be Eminem, with Fiona Apple as a sleeper pick.) That gives the RRHoF some time to clear up their backlog. If they were serious about that task, they would not only rely on the Musical Excellence Award to recognize long-standing snubs, but they would also set up special committees to explore their blind spots as well as a veteran’s committee to make sure they haven’t skipped over acts from the 50s and 60s who are as meritorious as previously-inducted artists.
When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was in its infancy, it was relatively easy to identify the bands from the 1950s and 1960s who deserved enshrinement. But as the RRHoF aged and began judging the merits of acts from the late 1960s onward—when rock and roll fragmented and diversified and alternative scenes developed that scoffed at rock and roll’s increasingly mainstream appeal—the task became more difficult. The challenge going forward is making sure acts from previously maligned or overlooked genres get honored and figuring out what to do with artists who never hit it big but proved exceedingly influential in underground circles.
Thanks for reading.
If you really want to go down the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rabbit hole, check out the Future Rock Legends website. Not only does the site have a list of the inductees, but it also has information on past nominees, snubs, nominating committee members, induction ceremonies and performances, which artists will become eligible in future years, etc. It’s a treasure trove. And there’s also the RRHoF’s website itself if you want to learn more about the inductees.
Exit music: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, and Dhani Harrison ft. Prince from the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Petty and Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra) were there to induct Dhani’s father George Harrison into the RRHoF, while Winwood (on organ) had been inducted earlier in the ceremony as a member of Traffic. (Recall that Petty and Lynne—along with Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison—were members of the Traveling Wilburys with Harrison.) To honor their friend, they performed Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from the Beatles’ self-titled 1968 album (also known as “The White Album.”) Prince—who had also been inducted earlier in the evening—steps in to take the guitar solo and turns what had been an honorable tribute to Harrison into a transcendent moment and one of the greatest single performances in rock and roll history. I don’t want to build this up too much, but anything less would undersell what you’re about to witness. Just look at Dhani’s face when he realizes what is happening and how Petty acquiesces to Prince when he realizes what has to happen.