The Rock Hall of Fame: Who’s In, and Who’s Out

Hey, I just got my Official Ballot from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Time to go over the too-few nominees offered up each year by the powers that be. This year, there are nine names to ponder, and I’m asked to vote for five, max, in order of preference. In a couple of months, the Rock Hall will announce the top five vote-getters and, thus, the class of 2008, based on what my fellow music industry peers and I checked off.

Here are the nine:

• Afrika Bambaataa
• Beastie Boys
• Chic
• Leonard Cohen
• Dave Clark Five
• Madonna
• John Mellencamp
• Donna Summer
• The Ventures

A pretty wide range of artists there, including a couple of holdovers from previous ballots. And, as it’s been almost every year, it’s a controversial group of nominees. Madonna, some say, isn’t even rock and roll. But, of course, you could say the same about Leonard Cohen, the folk singer-songwriter who, unless Madonna, never had a hit record of his own. Ditto Donna Summer and Chic (disco and R&B), and, to a lesser extent, Afrika Bambaataa and the Beasties (hip-hop and rap-rock fusion pioneers).

But, of course, from its inception 22 years ago, the Rock Hall has recognized artists in all forms of popular American music (excepting classical and jazz). So all nine nominees are welcome.

I’ll vote for the two rockers—the Ventures, who inspired an entire generation of boys (mostly boys) to take up Fender guitars and form garage bands, and the Dave Clark Five, who were right in there with the Beatles (for awhile, anyway)—and three others. Not sure which ones, yet.

But while I consider Cohen and Chic; the Beasties and Bambaataa; the former Ms. Ciccone and the former John Cougar, I have to think, too, about some of the many worthies who have never even been nominated.

There’s an angry music site, bearing a heading, “The Great Rock and Roll (Hall of Fame) Swindle,” that lists about 200 “overlooked artists” and people who’ve worked as session players, songwriters, and in other positions behind the scenes.

“Obviously,” a writer on the site says, “it's the same cast of dain-bread, drool-drunk idiots who vote on the Grammys...cigar-chomping ‘moguls’ whose musical tastes stopped evolving when they turned 21, so they vote for their sentimental favorites while raking in millions with irredeemable noise designed specifically to separate teenagers from their allowances.”

Well, I’m certainly no mogul, and the only millions I rake in are the leaves atop my garage after a windstorm. I vote every year, and, for a short time a few years ago, did a consulting stint for the Hall of Fame. But I do agree that there are many artists—and what the Rock Hall calls “non-performers” — who have long deserved to be nominated, if not inducted. The “Swindle” site names such wide-ranging figures as the Monkees, Todd Rundgren, Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, Roxy Music, Heart, Yes, KISS, John Mayall, Paul Butterfield, Three Dog Night, Chicago, and Linda Ronstadt. Among non-performers, it names the late rock critic Lester Bangs, the pioneer photographer Annie Leibovitz, the bebop-to-hip-hop producer Quincy Jones, and the engineer Eddie Kramer.

These are all excellent choices. But in there, I see one of the Rock Hall’s problems. There’s a hipness factor that’s been in play since the beginning. Not that the people I just named aren’t hip. But I’ve noticed, over the years, that while a Ricky Nelson or a Bobby Darin have been (deservedly) inducted, a Neil Diamond or a Johnny Rivers have not. Nelson was always a critics’ darling for his body of work, including his mastery of country-rock. But what about Darin, who happened to record for a label run by the late, great Ahmet Ertegun, one of the founders of the Rock Hall of Fame? In my view, he deserved induction, given his amazing range of skills and his many hits. But, in the rock and pop world, he had three or four hits. (The rest were in pop—“Beyond the Sea,”—or country and folk. Johnny Rivers had a dozen—and was a pioneer in turning live recordings into hit records. And wrote such songs as “Poor Side of Town.” And started his own record company, discovering other major songwriters and artists. He’s never even been nominated.

He appears to be in the same boat as Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Neil Diamond, Jackie DeShannon, the Monkees, Three Dog Night, and Pat Boone.

Don’t even get me started about Pat Boone. He deserves his own piece, about not ever being considered for the Rock Hall, and how he feels about it.

So: visit the Hall of Fame’s site, at www.rockhall.com. Check out the honor roll of inductees. Who do you think ought to be in there?