What is the future for rock’n’roll, a genre of music which is as much a relic of the past as baroque organ music of the 1650s, Viennese opera from the 1780s, symphonic music from the 1870s or an MGM musical from the 1940s?
True, it will always be possible to hear a Bach cantata, a Mozart opera, a Wagner Ring Cycle or The Wizard of Oz in glorious technicolour, just as TV footage of Elvis or The Beatles is preserved for history. We are now six decades removed from those acts playing Las Vegas or sports stadia, five decades from the disco explosion, four decades from Live Aid and three decades from the chart battle between Blur and Oasis, two bands that did poorly in the USA but sold millions upon millions of record thanks to attitude, guitars and, above all, melody.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, henceforth ‘the Rock Hall’, opened in September 1995, a fortnight after this UK chart tussle, and soon it might well add these two British bands to the roster of mainly American acts who populate it. In the entrance lobby of the Rock Hall in Cleveland, dozens of musicians patiently wait. Metaphorically since 1986 and physically since the Museum opened, the rock aristocracy have been celebrated in a museum in Ohio that does for the music industry what Cooperstown, New York does for baseball and what the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville does for hillbillies.
The Rock Hall is a bit of harmless fun but, as with everything, it has taken on significance among people who like to cheerlead for their favourite artists. I can tell you now that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé will both be inducted within the next ten years, as will plenty of acts from the digital era: Lady Gaga, Blink 182, The Killers, John Mayer, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Usher, Alicia Keys, The White Stripes, Bruno Mars, Coldplay and The Strokes have all been critically and commercially successful. They also have powerful record labels and/or fan communities who can lobby on their behalf.
And what about Kanye West, one of the era’s most significant stars? There are murderers and adulterers in the Rock Hall, although I don’t think there are any acts hostile to Jewish people (this is the music industry we’re talking about). Actually Professor Griff from Public Enemy, who got kicked out of the group for his antisemitism, is in, so under the Griff precedent, Kanye will be in the Rock Hall by the end of the decade. He will join Jay-Z, whose music he produced, unless these nasty allegations completely torpedo Jay’s reputation beyond reasonable doubt (and yes, that’s a pun on Jay’s debut album).
I am yet to really dive into the podcast Who Cares About the Rock Hall, which makes the case for missing artists and discusses annual classes of inductions with music critics; in 2024, Hollywood Steve Huey advocated for Ozzy Osbourne, Lindsay Zoladz made the case for Cher and the great Chris Molanphy championed Lenny Kravitz. The podcast has a Patreon page (patreon.com/rockhallpod) which offers extra audio episodes too; it has 200 paid followers.
Kravitz failed to be inducted in 2024, meaning that unless he goes in without the public vote, he will be in the mix for 2025 along with some very famous performers. It would be odd for Mariah Carey, Iron Maiden, Cyndi Lauper and Sting (as a solo artist) not to be inducted, especially because Sting is out on the road next year promoting a trio. Singer/songwriters Beck, John Prine and Warren Zevon have all been considered in recent years – the fact that Zevon didn’t get in was, to Randy Newman, ‘inexcusable’ – as have Bad Brains and Afrika Bambaataa, who might need a public campaign to marshal support for them.
Ditto TLC, who have never even been nominated, given their unrock’n’roll attitude of promoting safe sex, while by that same logic the Spice Girls ought to be considered too. James Brown’s band The J.B.’s were nominated in 2016, a few years after all plenty of backing groups were chucked in, as we shall discover. In 2014, the E Street Band got their own spotlight which usually shines upon bandleader Bruce Springsteen, while Nile Rodgers was belatedly shone upon in 2017, perhaps because it was starting to get embarrassing that Chic had been nominated 11 (eleven!!) times by then.
Some acts, like Nile, seem to have been inducted apologetically, just to get them into the Rock Hall and, perhaps, to stop any more angry emails or charges of racism or, in some cases, hostility to homosexuals. LL Cool J, Chaka Khan, Dionne Warwick and Judas Priest (whose frontman Rob Halford is gay) are all in there now, and in 2024 they were joined by acts who could not accept the honour because of death: Jimmy Buffett, whose life and career was celebrated at the Hollywood Bowl; and the MC5, the proto-punks from Detroit whose last surviving member Wayne Kramer died in 2024. Fortunately Bernie Taupin was still around the previous year to receive praise usually given to the man who fits melodies around his words, Elton Hercules John.
There are several repeat nominees awaiting induction by vote or by surrender: Chuck Willis (six); The J Geils Band (five); The Meters, Rufus and Joe Tex (all four); Devo, Ben E King, New York Dolls, Gram Parsons and War (three each); and a host of acts with one or two nominations. I would surmise that a few of these acts will go into the Rock Hall before 2030; it certainly seems like an oversight that the pioneers of punk (New York Dolls), funk (The Meters), Americana (Gram Parsons) and art rock (Devo) are not within the Rock Hall walls.
Mary Wells is absent too, although her former brother-in-law Bobby Womack is in there; might her omission be due to the lawsuit for loss of royalties she brought against Motown the year before her death in 1992? Surely Motown are not blocking any further nominations for the lady who sang My Guy. Garth Brooks, who is currently facing a deeply troubling lawsuit over charges he denies effusively, might have to wait a while too, although he significantly brought rock’n’roll aesthetics into country music shows, which Kenny Chesney and many others took all the way to the bank.
With country acts being inducted in both 2022 and 2023, and the genre being so hot right now, there is a chance that another member of the Country Music Hall of Fame will join the other 17 in the next few years. Perhaps it will be Conway Twitty, nominated in 2005 for the Rock Hall; he began his career singing rock’n’roll in the 1950s before becoming one of the most successful country acts by record sales, rivalled only by Charley Pride, who is also not in the Rock Hall. I wonder if the likes of Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, George Strait, Jerry Jeff Walker, Brandi Carlile and the aforementioned Chesney will be considered. And where’s Glen Campbell, who had a network TV show before fame got too much for him?
Then we come to the rappers. I am aware that rap and rock’n’roll are entirely different genres but, with at least half a dozen rap icons already in the Rock Hall, it would seem certain that Outkast, Salt N Pepa, Queen Latifah, 50 Cent and The Roots will all be inducted in the next decade. Given that Roots bandleader Questlove is a) on TV most nights of the week on the NBC Tonight Show and b) the professor of American music – he is to rock’n’soul what Neil DeGrasse Tyson is to cosmology – it seems a case of how soon The Roots can get in rather than if they will get in.
Questlove, aka Dr Ahmir Thompson, is also on the Nominating Committee, which used to be chaired by Jon Landau. The Committee includes famous critics like Anthony DeCurtis, Alan Light and Amanda Petrusich, as well as Dr Thompson’s and fellow musicians Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, Darryl McDaniels aka DMC from Run-DMC, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Steven Van Zandt from the E Street Band. Past committees have included Patti Smith’s guitarist Lenny Kaye, Band member Robbie Robertson and David Letterman’s Musical Director Paul Shaffer, who wrote It’s Raining Men and thus could well end up in the Rock Hall himself.
Questlove probably has a tale to tell about every one of the Rock Hall inductees across the last 40 years, including the list of Early Influences. These encompass country stars like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, as well as blues guitar players Freddie King, Link Wray, Alexis Korner and John Mayall. Rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson is still with us at 87, having had her first country hit in 1954 and her first rock’n’roll hit in 1960; she was unbelievably ahead of her time, and deserves to be in the Rock Hall.
There are the proto-hip-hop stars DJ Kool Herc and Gil Scott-Heron, civil rights campaigner Harry Belafonte, electronica forefathers Kraftwerk and blues shouters Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Big Mama Thornton. And you could not begin to think about rock’n’roll without a host of black performers who developed jazz and blues: Louis Armstrong, Charles Brown, Nat King Cole, Willie Dixon, Billie Holiday, Howlin Wolf, Mahalia Jackson, Elmore James (shouted out by George Harrison in For You Blue by The Beatles), Louis Jordan, Lead Belly, Professor Longhair, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, T-Bone Walker, Dinah Washington and Benny Goodman’s guitar player Charlie Christian.
The Soul Stirrers, who briefly included among their number Sam Cooke, were a gospel group before that form of music morphed into doowop, where The Ink Spots, The Orioles and The ‘5’ Royales brought harmony singing out of the church and on to the street corner. From the folk world come two men significant in the Bob Dylan story: Pete Seeger, who was blacklisted for his political beliefs; and Woody Guthrie, who taught Dylan everything he knew and would have been a rock’n’roll star if amplification from the likes of Les Paul had been developed when he was writing ballads and tirades in the 1930s and 1940s.
Robert Johnson is more myth than music, but he was one of the three figures to be nominated for the Rock Hall in the first year of existence, along with Jimmie Rodgers and Jimmy Yancey; the latter is directly responsible for Jools Holland, who keeps the boogie-woogie style alive over a century after it was popular in a time before rock’n’roll.
Back in 1986, the first tranche of inductees included many pioneers and progenitors of what would morph into rock music. These ten acts kicked down the door through which many subsequent invitees sauntered through, and were a mix of black and white: among the former were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino and Little Richard; the white fellas influenced by black sounds included the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and some bloke called Elvis Aaron Presley, who would have turned 90 years old in January 2025 and is being celebrated on BBC Radio 2 on New Year’s Day.
Then, in 1987, came another two dozen or so stars, again a mix of black blokes and black-influenced white ones, plus one woman enjoying a second wind of success. In the former category were The Coasters, Bo Diddley, Marvin Gaye, BB King, Clyde McPhatter, Muddy Waters, Jackie Wilson and Big Joe Turner, while the latter included Eddie Cochran, Bill Haley, Ricky Nelson, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins. Smokey Robinson, as this post goes up at the end of 2024, is about to turn 85; he holds the distinction of being the only living member of either of the 1986 or 1987 classes.
The woman, by the way, was Aretha Franklin, who will forever be the first of her gender to be inducted into the Rock Hall. The second to fourth were The Supremes: Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, but not Cindy Birdsong. This was likely down to lobbying from Berry Gordy, but also testament to how they had 12 US number ones in the 1960s, ten of them between 1964 and 1967.
Two men from Liverpool and one from Minnesota are among those still around from acts who were among the third tranche of inductees in 1988. Aside from The Beatles and Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, The Drifters and the aforementioned trio of Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Les Paul all became honorees, as did Gordy, who is still alive at the age of 95 and who was the Henry Ford of pop music who soundtracked Young America in the 1960s.
Important figures in the boardroom like Gordy have been honoured at the Rock Hall too: Jerry Wexler and Ahmet & Nesuhi Ertegun of Atlantic Records, Leonard Chess, Art Rupe of Specialty, Don Kirshner of Aldon, Sam Phillips of Sun, Syd Nathan of King, Jim Stewart of Stax and both the A and the M of A&M: Herb Alpert (still alive at 89) and Jerry Moss.
Then came the new breed of executive that made their shareholders countless millions in the glory days of rock’n’roll, many of whom are themselves in their eighties or nineties: Chris Blackwell of Island is 87, Clive Davis of Arista is 92, while Jac Holzman of Elektra is 93. Seymour Stein of Sire and Mo Ostin of Warner/Reprise have both passed on, the latter in 2022 at the age of 95(!), while the incomparable David Geffen, the first man ever to make a billion dollars out of music, turned 80 in 2023.
Geffen and Jon Landau, the baby of the bunch at 77 who will be memorialised in a forthcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic, are characters in a book called The Mansion on the Hill, which chronicled the golden age of rock’n’roll from the business perspective. I expect in future years we will see some of the leading lights of hip-hop being inducted too, including Lyor Cohen and Rick Rubin, the Jewish rabbis who helped kick Def Jam acts like Run-DMC and LL Cool J into public consciousness, and Dr Dre, the producer/rapper/mogul who followed Geffen to billionairehood.
Also due an induction are the last of the remaining non-performing songwriters, mainly Scandinavian guys like Max Martin and Stargate, but also Diane Warren, who deserves a jukebox musical for her dozens of hit ballads. Her 14 Oscar-nominated-but-not-winning songs include Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, Because You Loved Me, How Do I Live and There You’ll Be.
Already in the Rock Hall are Mort Shuman, Otis Blackwell, Bert Berns and Jesse Stone aka Chuck Calhoun, who wrote Shake, Rattle and Roll. Ditto the famous songwriting teams of Holland-Dozier-Holland, Gamble and Huff and four New York-based duos: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. It is an oversight that Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield are missing; the former is still kicking at 85, while Greenfield died of AIDS a week before his 50th birthday in 1986.
The group of writers who made the world swing, including LA Reid, Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, Dallas Austin and Teddy Riley must be up for induction soon, especially given that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were included in 2022.
Deserving their own paragraph, the achievements of the quartet of Lou Adler, Quincy Jones, George Martin and Allen Toussaint are too numerous to mention; only Adler, who turned 91 in December 2024, is still with us.
Then the managers: without Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham, nobody would have heard of the bands they managed, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones; without John Hammond, there would be no Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen; without Irving Azoff, no Eagles (and no Harry Styles either, because his son is Harry’s manager); no Leo Fender, no Stratocaster.
Then the impresarios: Dick Clark, Don Cornelius (who hosted Soul Train and was basically the black Dick Clark), Alan Freed, Bill Graham and Sylvia Robinson, who put together the Sugarhill Gang who brought hiphop to the masses. Jimmy Iovine, like his business partner Dr Dre, got more rich off of Beats headphones than from engineering rock records by Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty.
And would anybody outside the industry know the names and professions of journalist Paul Ackerman, talent scout Ralph Bass, record exec Milt Gabler, lawyer Allen Grubman, radio wizards Clarence Avant or Tom Donahue, or talent manager Frank Barsalona? I shamefully had never come across the name Suzanne de Passe, the 2024 Rock Hall honoree for her work setting up Motown Records in California, which included developing a young group of brothers from Gary, Indiana; no Suzanne de Passe, no Michael Jackson?
Back to the artists: the British invasion was marked in 1989 by The Rolling Stones (alongside Dion, Otis Redding, The Temptations and Steve Wonder) and in 1990 by The Who and The Kinks, who went in alongside Hank Ballard, Bobby Darin, The Four Seasons, The Four Tops, The Platters, and the heavenly duo Simon & Garfunkel.
In the 1990s the Rock Hall was keen to get plenty of women into its ranks, given that only four were inducted in the first three tranches: in went LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown, Etta James, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell and Tina Turner, who was inducted alongside her abusive husband. Also in before the millennium was marked were The Shirelles, Dusty Springfield, Martha and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight and her Pips, Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, the ladies of Fleetwood Mac and the Mamas of the Mamas & the Papas. Plus, correctly, gospel market leaders the Staple Singers, whose member Mavis is 85 and the subject of a quite brilliant documentary, the exclamatory Mavis!
As for the blokes, in went Billy Joel, Curtis Mayfield, Bruce Springsteen and, after five nominations, Del Shannon, all in 1999; the Eagles, Santana and, after six nominations, both Gene Vincent and Lloyd Price in 1998; and The Bee Gees, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Rascals/Young Rascals, The Jackon 5 (after three previous nominations) and both California bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997, the same year as Joni Mitchell. Crosby and his compadres The Byrds had been inducted in 1991 alongside John Lee Hooker, The Impressions, Wilson Pickett and, after five previous nominations, Jimmy Reed.
It took Bobby “Blue” Bland six goes before he was inducted in 1992 alongside Booker T & the MGs, Johnny Cash, The Isley Brothers, The Yardbirds, and two acts who went in on the first go: The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sam & Dave. In 1993, it was the turn of Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Doors, Van Morrison and, after seven previous nominations, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers.
In 1994 Duane Eddy went in at the eighth time of asking. He was joined by The Animals, The Band, The Grateful Dead, Bob Marley and longtime frenemies Rod Stewart and Elton John, as well as by Elton’s pal John Lennon through his solo work; McCartney followed on his own in 1999, with George and Ringo following respectively (and in the former case posthumously) in 2004 and 2015.
The Allman Brothers Band, Al Green, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and the then recently deceased Frank Zappa were inducted in 1995, followed in 1996 by David Bowie, Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground and, after seven previous nominations, Little Willie John in 1996.
In the year 2000, Eric Clapton went in on his own, alongside Earth, Wind & Fire, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor and, at the sixth attempt, The Moonglows, among whose number was the legendary Harvey Fuqua. In 2001, Solomon Burke managed it on the ninth attempt and The Flamingos on their fifth, while legendary acts to be inducted alongside them included Aerosmith, Queen, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Ritchie Valens and, without his brothers, Michael Jackson.
In 2002, Gene Pitney was seventh time lucky in a year when punk acts began to be acknowledged. Eligibility only comes into effect 25 years after a band or artist’s first release, so it was no surprise to see the Ramones, Talking Heads and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers all going in instantly. They were joined by Isaac Hayes and Brenda Lee, which shows the breadth of music considered by the Rock Hall. Rock is an attitude, not a genre of music. In the rest of the 2000s, bands from Australia (AC/DC), Ireland (U2) and Akron, Ohio (The Pretenders) got the Rock Hall call, as did plenty of British acts: The Clash, The Police, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Traffic and the aforementioned pair of Beatle George and Beatle Ringo.
It took the Sex Pistols five tries, Lynyrd Skynyrd seven and Black Sabbath eight(!) to join them and the other 2000s inductees: Blondie, Jackson Browne, doowop group The Dells, Buddy Guy, The O’Jays, The Righteous Brothers, Bob Seger, Percy Sledge and ZZ Top. Plus Miles Davis, who took jazz to new dimensions, synthesised jazz and rock on his album Bitches Brew and interpreted Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper.
Prince, who is to the guitar what Davis was to the trumpet, also went in at the first attempt in 2004 alongside George Harrison. This accounts for why it was that year’s Rock Hall induction ceremony that gave the room the pleasure of seeing Prince, alongside Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne of ELO, Steve Winwood and George’s son Dhani, playing a three-minute solo coda to While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Only after his death in 2016 would the world be able to marvel at his dexterity and talent; the Youtube video, whose two versions currently have 170m accumulated views, would have enjoyed far more if Prince hadn’t forbidden any of his music to be uploaded to the platform in his lifetime.
And where the hell does his guitar go?!
How about this for a 2007 class: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, REM, The Ronettes, Patti Smith (after six nominations) and Van Halen. Madonna was admitted in 2008, her first year of eligibility, while Leonard Cohen had not even been considered until that year. The Dave Clark Five represented the Brits, The Ventures surf rock and John Mellencamp the American heartland. In 2009 it was Jeff Beck and Metallica – two acts who rocked in very different ways – alongside Little Anthony and the Imperials (never nominated before), Run-DMC and Bobby Womack, who all did black music in very different ways: doowop, hip-hop and soul.
ABBA were nowhere near rock’n’roll in the 1970s but in 2010 it was fair to say the Rock Hall rewarded spirit and attitude, perhaps to incorporate successful acts who would not ordinarily have been on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1972, let alone 1982. Alongside the Swedes were Jimmy Cliff, Genesis and The Hollies – respectively Commonwealth and British acts – well as, on their eighth nomination, Iggy Pop and The Stooges. No such delays greeted Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Dr John and Tom Waits in 2011, while Darlene Love went in with them.
The year 2012 boosted the membership by acknowledging the backing bands of those musicians who were among the first inductees: The Blue Caps, who backed Gene Vincent; The Crickets, who backed Buddy Holly; The Famous Flames, who backed James Brown; The Midnighters, who backed Hank Ballard; The Miracles, who backed Smokey Robinson; and Bill Haley’s Comets. It was also time for Donovan, the late Laura Nyro and both The Small Faces and The Faces, as well as some of the biggest bands of the MTV era: the Beastie Boys, Guns N Roses and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
By the middle of the decade, more acts from the late 1980s and early 1990s were inducted, including Green Day, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, who all married melody, power and sex appeal. Blues is represented in the Rock Hall by Albert King, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Stevie Ray Vaughan and his band Double Trouble, while there was also room for singer/songwriters of the 1970s: Randy Newman, Cat Stevens (as he has reverted to being known), Bill Withers, and Peter Gabriel, the last of these having already been inducted as part of Genesis.
Other mononym bands went in too, including Chicago, Heart, Kiss and Rush. The likes of Boston and Styx are not there yet, nor is P!nk, who becomes eligible for what ought to be immediate induction in 2025. Conversely, it took Hall & Oates and Linda Ronstadt until 2014 to go in, each with their first nomination, with Lou Reed and Joan Jett, who went in with the Blackhearts, following in 2015.
Deep Purple, Cheap Trick and Steve Miller were all inducted in 2016 alongside NWA, who themselves followed a few years after Public Enemy and a year before Tupac. Joan Baez was deemed rock’n’roll enough in 2017, where the induction class included Electric Light Orchestra and Yes.
Which acts were missing by 2018? Bon Jovi, for a start, and Dire Straits and The Cars and The Moody Blues, but also Nina Simone, whose attitude was very rock’n’roll even if she didn’t have groupies or drive cars into swimming pools. Ditto Donna Summer, the queen of the discotheque, inducted upon her fifth nomination in 2013.
British acts were given their due in 2019, perhaps because Her Majesty may have put a word in for them: The Cure of Crawley had had nine members in their 40-year career, the only constant one being Robert Smith, while Def Leppard of Yorkshire, Radiohead of Oxfordshire, Roxy Music of Tyneside and The Zombies of Hertfordshire joined them. Depeche Mode of Essex and T.Rex of North London followed in 2020, the year The Doobie Brothers, Nine Inch Nails and a late pair of black artists – Whitney Houston and Notorious B.I.G. – were awarded virtually, with the USA still under restrictions caused by Covid-19.
Also accepting a much welcome induction in 2019 were Janet Jackson and, without her bandmates, Stevie Nicks. In 2021 it was the turn of Foo Fighters and The Go-Go’s; Pat Smear of the former band and Belinda Carlisle of the latter were in teenage punk band The Germs together, so this was magnificent rock’n’roll poetry, while the induction enabled Taylor Hawkins to enter the Rock Hall before his death the following year. It took until 2019 for Todd Rundgren to even be nominated, and it was third time lucky for him in a year which saw the inductions of Carole King and Tina Turner in their own right, respectively 22 and 24 years after their only other nomination as performers.
Jay-Z, the first billionaire hip-hop star, went in on the first attempt, 25 years after his breakthrough, as did Eminem. Again showing the looseness of the ‘rock’ definition, boyband Duran Duran were inducted in 2022 alongside Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon and, bringing country back to the institution, Dolly Parton. Having initially refused the offer, Dolly not only accepted it but made an album in 2023 that mixed original rock’n’roll compositions and covers; she drafted in a few dozen Rock Hall members for help including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Heart, Joan Jett, Elton John, Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow.
Sheryl followed Dolly into the Rock Hall in 2023, in a class which included the 90-year-old Willie Nelson, Missy Elliot and a couple of Brits: Kate Bush and the late George Michael. It was also the class that finally chose The Spinners after four nominations and Rage Against the Machine after five; perhaps having the band’s guitarist Tom Morello on the Nominating Committee was a hindrance, but it was an inevitability that Rage would go in eventually.
Morello gave a quite brilliant acceptance speech, apologising for being the only member of the quartet to show up (‘we have differing perspectives on a lot of things’) but seeking to connect with the band’s fans, whom Morello gave three pieces of advice: ‘Dream big and don’t settle. Aim for the world you really want without compromise or apology. And don’t wait for us.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9smVi1cs44Y
Fully nine acts were inducted in 2024: Mary J Blige, Dave Matthews Band, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang, Ozzy Osbourne as a solo artist and, after nominations in 2022 and 2023, A Tribe Called Quest. The other two acts were notable for different reasons.
The producer Mark Ronson had pushed for Foreigner, a band containing his stepdad Mick Jones, to be inducted, and had asked fellow musicians including Paul McCartney, Slash and Dave Grohl to join his successful campaign. Cherilyn Sarkisian once told the Rock Hall to buzz off, but with the first part of her memoir needing a bit of a push and her old boyfriend (and Rock Hall member) David Geffen doubtlessly doing some lobbying, Cher was finally inducted – without Sonny Bono – 25 years after Believe gave her the biggest song in the world for at least two months.
Then came Baby One More Time. Will the Rock Hall induct Britney Spears in 2025? She’s eligible, and so are Antony & the Johnsons, Joe Bonamassa, Dashboard Confessional, Nelly Furtado, Interpol, Linkin Park, Sufjan Stevens, the recently retired Sum 41 and the disgraced singer Ryan Adams. Gorillaz are eligible too, while Damon Albarn’s other band Blur have been eligible for a decade; although their entry is possible, I would think it extraordinary if Oasis, who are on a world tour and making millions of dollars, do not go in.
Thin Lizzy, nominated in 2020, also put out a set next year, in that stupid phantom way of setting old vocal tracks to new arrangements. It’s ghastly but it might help their Rock Hall chances, even as the band has evolved into Black Stone Cherry, who could accept the induction on behalf of the departed members of the original band including bassist and songwriter Phil Lynott.
I fear that tussles between bandmates will scupper the inductions of both The Smiths and Jane’s Addiction, and possibly Joy Division/New Order too, although it would be nice if Sinead O’Connor, whose fearless spirit was extraordinarily rock’n’roll, gets in on the second attempt if she repeats her 2024 nomination. The hair metal acts of the late 1980s, including Mötley Crüe, are also in the running, but Tommy Lee never dares to shout ‘Fight the real enemy!’ and tear up a picture of the pontiff, as Sinead did.
Finally, a word for the Musically Excellent, although it is rather sad that this category is now dedicated to smuggling in acts who have somehow not been garlanded in the main awards. Starting in 2000, sidemen were awarded their own prize to praise folk who were always 20 feet from stardom.
They range from drummers like Benny Benjamin, Hal Blaine, D.J. Fontana and Earl Palmer; brass players like King Curtis and Steve Douglas; bassists Bill Black and James Jamerson; guitar-slingers like James Burton, Scotty Moore and Randy Rhoads; pianists Floyd Cramer, Johnnie Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Billy Preston and Leon Russell; and Al Kooper, who quite literally does it all, including busking the organ part on Like a Rolling Stone.
Plus producer and arranger Norman Whitfield and studio engineers Tom Dowd, Glyn Johns and Cosimo Matassa. Matassa worked at J&M Recording Studio in New Orleans in the 1950s, and thus contributed to the recorded output of a host of black superstars, including Ray Charles, Fats Domino and Little Richard. Imagine trying to control the levels of the magnificent Little Richard, keeping his voice out of the red or, in some cases, pushing it just a little into the danger zone.
The Studio is one of 11 – why not just make ten louder? – Historic Rock and Roll Landmarks that contributed to the genre’s development. Most of them are in Ohio, which accounts for why the Rock Hall is in the Midwest and not in, say, San Francisco. Cleveland, as the Rock Hall chairman John Sykes said recently, is the birthplace of rock’n’roll, a status marked by bands passing through the city and giving its residents a big ‘HELLO CLEVELAND!’
The city boasts the Corner Tavern and Leo’s Casino, as well as AM radio station WJW and TV studio WEWS; Brooklyn High School in the Ohio town of that name saw Elvis’ first concert performance; King Records in Cincinnati put out hundreds of releases by black artists like Little Willie John and James Brown.
Outside Ohio, there’s the famous Crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi where Robert Johnson definitely sold the devil his soul for the ability to create dangerous music, the Whisky a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood that did so much to develop LA rock acts, and the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and Austin City Limits Studio in Texas, which host music of all kinds today but are most connected to hillbilly, country and Western styles. Plus the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, which is self-explanatory and was the last place Buddy Holly, J.P. ‘The Big Bopper’ Richardson and Ritchie Valens played before they perished in a plane crash, aka The Day The Music Died.
The Rock Hall ceremony is now screened on Disney+, that bastion of rock’n’roll rebellion. Every year there is a fine mix of race and gender in the nominees, as befits America in the 2020s. Nominees on the 2025 longlist for whom the 500 members can vote include Coldplay, whose debut album came out in 2000 making them eligible for the first time, and two Warrens, Zevon and Haynes of the band Govt Mule. I am also persuaded by the idea of posthumously inducting Kris Kristofferson and, via his band Linkin Park, Chester Bennington.
Then there’s Jonathan Richman and his band the Modern Lovers, Conor Oberst aka Bright Eyes, and the previously nominated rockers Soundgarden and Iron Maiden, who could both mobilise the troops to put pressure on the voters.
I will eat a large marzipan hat if Jack White of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, as well as the creator of one of 2024’s best albums No Name, is not in the Rock Hall by this time next year. If anyone defines the spirit of the Rock Hall, it’s the man who started out making blues records and by 2003 was headlining festivals and stadiums, where the set highlight would be Seven Nation Army, one of rock’s last great riffs before the technology revolution that had killed the record industry started to eat into the profit margins of the music business.
White now runs a label called Third Man out of Nashville, with branches in Detroit, Michigan and London, England. He is feted by his audience and by critics, and he has one of the most encyclopaedic knowledge of rock’n’roll this side of Dr Questlove, who would certainly bow to White in his ability to recall long forgotten blues heroes from the 1920s. It also helps, of course, that White oozes sex appeal.
This month (January 2025), the journalist Liz Pelly brings out a book about Spotify, which as things stand does not have a Hall of Fame. The tension in the current generation is about how rock’n’roll, which evolved from the church and the blues holler, then turned white kids like Elvis and Jack White on to black music, can exist in a world where rebellion is frowned upon and where a playlist culture has replaced the jukebox, music video and three-minute record. And who even listens to a whole album anymore anyway?
But, to answer my opening question, the future of rock’n’roll, really, is its past. Head to Cleveland to the Rock Hall itself and you can view instruments, draft lyrics and outfits from dozens of acts, contained in exhibits on the Rolling Stones, Sun Records, the half century of hip-hop and the year 1984. Go up to level two and you can plug in and play, or doss about with a ukulele, perhaps inspired by the Hall of Fame itself on the third floor. The next floor up has a replica of the Pink Floyd wall, which was assembled and then demolished during a show in Berlin in 1990: rock’n’roll and politics, gender or civil, cannot be divorced from one another.
Writing this piece has brought home to me – and reading it has brought home to you, I hope – the rich multitude of music contained within the Rock Hall and the efforts taken to preserve the history of a genre that started out as a teenage fad. What is the fad in 2025: getting upset at people through an app accessed on a screen that is owned by a billionaire? Is Elon Musk today’s rock star, or just a very naughty boy?
Rock’n’roll is about being, to paraphrase that well-known rocker Aaron Burr, in the room where it happens: hearing the feedback, marvelling at the gestures and the costumes, and cheering when an act asks if you’re having a good time. ‘Hello Cleveland!’ is more than just a greeting; it’s a clearing of the throat before a two-hour performance that proves, in Tom Morello’s words, ‘music can change the world or at the bare minimum stir up a shitload of trouble!’
There is a reason rock still happens in sports stadiums: it’s about the human experience mediated through beat-driven song. The Rock Hall celebrates those who are either the best marketed or genuinely most talented, from Prince to Queen to Carole King. Taylor Swift helped induct Carole, ‘a female genius’, into the Rock Hall: ‘her songs speak to the true and honest feelings everyone has felt…or hopes to feel one day’.
I think there’s room for dozens more in the Rock Hall, some of whom may not have been born yet, as Taylor wasn’t when Tapestry rocked the world in a slow, soft way in 1971.