Every year, I get irrationally mad about the nominations and inductions for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I’m not sure why. It doesn’t affect me in any way, it’s not going to change, and I know I’m not the only one to feel this way, but allow me to rant about it in hopes it gives me some comfort, and to maybe articulate what has had rock fans up in arms for at least a decade, maybe two at this point.
A lot is written about the performers who have been overlooked, and there are a ton of them. They’ve made some attempts to fill in some gaps over the years, but for every performer who has been brought into the hall years after they were eligible (after years of fans putting on pressure), there are tons who have never even been nominated. Overlooking deserving artists either forever or for too long is perhaps the first, most glaring problem, but there are a slate of other issues.
Second and in my opinion their single biggest problem is letting people in who absolutely don’t belong there. Now, I’m not a gatekeeper, I love that rock is a huge sprawling genre with a little something for everyone, which borrows from every single other form of music ever made. At the same time, there are things rock and roll is not. Now rock is kind of the great melting pot of music. It is not country, but some great rock is country tinged. It is not jazz, but can be jazzy. It is not rap or hip hop, but can incorporate everything from hardcore rap to smooth r&b. In short, just because a genre had previous perfomers who inspired rock, it doesn’t grandfather in every subsequent performer in that genre. They personally need to create or influence rock music, period to be nominated. Yes, early influencers in other genres can have a substantial future footprint in rock music. But that word, influence, leads to the next biggest problem they have in my opinion, which is…
Third problem, they don’t live up to their own rules. When the rock hall was founded, there were basically two main rules for induction…one, eligibility comes 25 years after the release of their first record and two, influence and significance of the artist’s contribution to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll is what makes you worthy of consideration. Influence and significance to what came after. That’s pretty simple, but very good criteria for ANY hall of fame. The third problem really then intertwines with the first two. How can you ignore performers who have influenced entire genres of music (what is more rock and roll than heavy metal?) and induct people who have never made a rock record, much less inspired anyone within the genre? And not only does the rock hall make a mockery of the second one of their rules, they get a bit loose with their interpretation of their first rule as I’ll discuss later.
But for now, I’m going to start with an example from the current year of how they stomp all over the second rule. When the nominees for 2024 were announced, they included Mariah Carey, Sade and Mary J. Blige, and Blige actually became an inductee. I am at a loss to understand how any of these performers in any way contributed to the development and/or perpetuation of rock and roll. They perform in genres where people who came before them inspired branches of the rock family tree, but what did they themselves do to contribute in any way to rock and roll? To try to address this criticim, a few years back, the rock hall made a change to its mission statement to say that it “celebrates the sound of youth culture and honors the artists whose music connects us all”. That’s a fun way of saying it honors “music” in my opinion. But it’s not the music hall of fame, is it? It’s not the “youth culture” hall of fame. It’s the ROCK AND ROLL hall of fame.
I look at country…for example, Hank Williams belongs in the Rock Hall as an early influencer, because countless rockers found inspiration in Hank’s music. But does Dolly Parton belong as a performer? Because that’s what she was inducted as. Now some of Dolly’s music has inspired some great rock and roll, and could be honored for that contribution…look no further than Jolene. But is any current country artist going to now be eligible, just because they belong to a genre where their predecessors like Hank and Dolly inspired rock? Hell no. The day Toby Keith is inducted is the day I fly to Cleveland and put a boot up someone’s ass.
Also, an induction like that brings up a fourth problem…how they’re inducted. They have sub categories and the main one is “performer”. Dolly was inducted as a performer the same year Judas Priest was inducted, but not as a performer…I’ve seen Judas Priest live a couple times..they are the epitome of rock performers, that makes no sense to not recognize them as performers, and is downright insulting to nominate an influencer as a performer and a performer as some made up category. Rock concerts would be much different today if Rob Halford hadn’t driven his motorcycle on stage for the first time in the 1970s. In short, I tend to think on one hand parsing out different categories in which a performer can be nominated is a disservice most of the time, but is wholly appropriate when you make the distinction between someone who “made” rock and roll and someone who “inspired” it. Either don’t make ANY distinction, or at bare minimum distinguish between people who made the music and people who inspired it. If you perform rock and that’s how you made your imprint, you should be nominated as such, and if you don’t perform rock, but influenced people who do, you’re an influencer. Seems pretty cut and dried.
So we get back to someone like Mary J. Blige. I don’t like her genre or style in and of itself, so I don’t listen to her music. It doesn’t speak to me. Do I hate her or wish her any ill will? Not at all. Do I think she lacks talent? From what I’ve heard, she’s very talented. She could be in 100 different halls of fame, and I wouldn’t take umbrage if those inductions were warranted. But please, connect her in any way to rock and roll. What has she created that inspired a single note of rock music? Make it make sense. Tell me one song, one note, one performance to her credit that could in any way be interpreted by any person as even peripherally related to rock and roll.
For the most part, nominations happen and there are a lot of head scratchers among them, and fortunately the majority of the real mind boggling choices ultimately don’t make it in, but some do sneak through the cracks. Every year the list of nominees is far more awful than the list of inductees, yet some real question marks make the cut. Laura Nyro? Whitney Houston? It wouldn’t bother me that they’re not “rockers” if they influenced any rock music that came after them, but they have absolutely nothing to do with rock. They have not inspired a single note of rock music, and if most rock fans have never even heard of the person, yet another issue exists, does it not? Unlike some genres that do get in that some purists might not be happy with, I’m willing to go much farther in my definition of rock than most fans. For example, I know a lot of people got mad when hip hop and rap began to sneak into the rock hall. But even if you hate funk rock/rap rock/nu metal, it is undeniably a force in rock and roll, and rap certainly played a roll in the creation of that branch of the rock family tree. It contributed to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll. The rappers who perform rock tinged rap and the rap originators who inspired future rock music are appropriate to nominate as performers and/or influencers repectively.
And as for what gets in or doesn’t, I’m not saying I have to like it myself…I’m certainly not the final voice in regards to what is and isn’t rock music….but I know it when I hear it., and more importantly, I know what it isn’t. I can appreciate when something is not rock but has inspired something that is, and there are many forms of rock and perfomers I can’t stand. I personally don’t like a lot of artists who have been inducted over the years, but they’re still rock. The biggest one, I might take heat for is the Rolling Stones (I’m more a Beatles guy). No one in their right mind would say they’re not rock and roll, but they’ve simply never done it for me. Do they belong in the rock hall? Absolutely. Grateful Dead…bores me to death, but they are rock and roll. Steely Dan…way too jazzy, not enough rock for my tastes…but they all earned their places in the hall, they are all types of rock and roll. They’ve been very impactful in terms of their own performances as well as influence on future music.
So I guess my point, if I do have one, is this. I’m not a gatekeeper. I’m not a music snob. Here in fact is my 2024 concert list…Tesla, Otto Van Shirach, Mr. Bungle, They Might Be Giants, The Time, Slave Raider, Hairball, Midnight Cowgirls, Stray Cats, Pantera, Filter, Ministry, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, Semisonic, All That Remains, Mudvayne, Megadeth, Yasmin Williams, Michael Kiwanuka, Brittany Howard, The The, Gregory Alan Isakov, Nathaniel Raetliff and the Night Sweats, Armored Saint and W.A.S.P. The last 5 are upcoming, the rest I’ve already seen and I enjoyed every minute of it…and as you can see, my particular tastes are all over the place, but regarding this list, all or at least most could be categorized as “rock” in some way (certainly not all are worthy of rock hall induction, though I think some are). Conversely, even though I love rock in so many of it’s forms, probably 25% of the inductees are not my thing, but they are rock and roll by any objective standard, but some things, well they just aren’t rock and if they are NOT rock and did not inspire rock, then what the hell are they doing in the rock and roll hall of fame?
One additional problem they have…what are we up to, five or six now…boils down to money (doesn’t everything)? It seems like they don’t want to miss the boat on new things or profitable things, while having already missed the boat on old things that maybe don’t cost them anything to continue to ignore. See heavy metal which is very lightly represented vs rap and grunge which make them more money and are thus better represented. They couldn’t wait to get hip hop artists into the hall because hip hop and rap are bigger moneymakers, more relevant 25 years on, and are more favored by the people who make the decisions. It’s all well and good that artists from these genres got in, they each represented a different direction for rock, even if you didn’t like those directions. Nirvana made it in right away and they do belong there, eventually. Again, I’m no gatekeeper. I grew up in the “hair metal” era, but I embraced grunge…(It’s still rock and roll to me). I personally respect Nirvana, love their music…a fact that doesn’t matter…but their induction came before so many artists who should have been in long before, some of whom still haven’t made it.
And consider how they’ve treated heavy metal, it’s almost like OK, we’ll induct Metallica because they make a ton of money (Metallica imo aren’t the “best” metal band…not even the best of the “big 4” thrash bands…again, just my opinion), but we’ll just ignore everyone else and call it good. In my opinion, Pantera changed heavy music as much as, if not more than Nirvana in the early 90s and unlike Metallica they did not put out a bunch of terrible albums in the 90s (my opinion), and yet Pantera will never be inducted. I’m not the biggest Motley Crue fan, but they ushered in a genre and style of music that dominated for a decade and they too will never make the cut. But the hall will keep inducting grunge artists, as well as hip hop and pop artists.
And at times they’re in such a hurry, back to problem #3, they don’t even live up to their first of their 2 criteria…25 years from the first album. Eminem for example, I agree with his induction, but they counted his 1996 independent release as his first album to make him eligible 3 years earlier than he should have been. I think he should have been eligble for the first time this year if they wanted to live up to EITHER of their own criteria. Though, it would have been more fair to induct him in a few years…which is another issue…how many people have been eligible for 5, 10, even 25 years at this point? So yet another problem, how many deserving artists are eventually brought in after years of pressure, long after they should have been recognized, so they can make room from some pop star or obscure songwriter or current moneymaker? Let’s go back to Judas Priest…first album 1974, inducted 2022, 23 years after they first became eligible. Eminem inducted the same year, 2 years BEFORE he was actually eligible. It makes no sense.
All that said, my thinking is this. if you’re going to have a hall of fame for anything, it should celebrate excellence, importance, influence, historical significance in that field. I don’t see Michael Jordan in the baseball hall of fame even though he tried to play. In order to have an honor that actually means something, you need some basic induction criteria, and I feel like 25 years after you release your first wide release, if you’ve had an influence on/contributed something important to rock music…changed it/enhanced it in some way…even if not everyone likes it, that’s a strict enough criteria that it would make induction an honor and not just a money grab, but a loose enough standard to allow anyone who has actually contributed to be considered. If you have a group of powerful people who just want to make money and celebrate their own tastes, well then you have a popularity contest that diminishes the value of the induction and makes it meaningless. Again, I don’t want to be a gatekeeper, it’s great how diverse rock is…but if it isn’t rock, it isn’t rock.
And at the end of the day, like I said, it shouldn’t matter this much to me. I have no skin in the game. I will be able to enjoy what I enjoy regardless of how it’s categorized or subcategorized, whether it’s won awards, whether the artists who made it have been recognized. In an ideal world they’d either stick to their own criteria or change the name of the institute. Call it the pop culture hall of fame. But if they want to be less and less relevant, that’s their call, and if they make more money doing it, well that’s the definition of selling out. And what’s more rock and roll these days than selling out? So, carry on rock hall, but don’t expect me to be happy about it. Until they start making sense, the whole thing is an irrelevant sick joke