Let’s take a look at the history of each of the four categories and which former designations are included in each:

• Performers (1986-present): This is the most straightforward of the categories and has gone unchanged since the Rock Hall’s inception. The description of the category at the museum states: “These inductees are the artists who have changed the world of rock with their mastery and artistic vision.” Notably, this is the only category in which inductees are chosen by the Voting Committee. Inductees in the other categories are selected by subsets of the Nominating Committee.

• Ahmet Ertegun Award (2008-present): After Rock Hall co-founder Ahmet Ertegun died in 2006, the Non-Performer award was renamed in his honor. In previous years, there were two separate awards, one for Lifetime Achievement and one for Non-Performers, as evident in 1991, when Nesuhi Ertegun was given the Lifetime Achievement award and Dave Bartholomew and Ralph Bass were inducted as Non-Performers. The induction program noted the difference (see the photos below), and up until a few years ago, RockHall.com also made the distinction (they now blend the two categories into the Ahmet Ertegun award). To further confuse things, Jann Wenner was inducted in 2004 with the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Nonperformer Category.

  

  

  

• Early Influence (1986-present): In the first induction class, this category was called “Forefathers and Early Influences.” Between 1987 and 1991, it was sometimes shortened to just “Forefathers,” even inducting Ma Rainey in that category in 1990. Since 1992, the category has been called “Early Influences,” but is only used sporadically.

  

  

  While the name of the Early Influences category eventually settled down, the definition slowly became more flexible. On RockHall.com, the category is still defined as “Honoring the artists that pre-date the birth of rock & roll, but have had a profound impact on music’s evolution and its iconic artists.” The only proscriptive criteria is that artists should pre-date rock & roll, generally considered to have begun in the early 1950s. That hasn’t stopped the Hall from inducting artists such as Wanda Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Freddie King, all of whom were first nominated in the Performer category before being inducted as Early Influences, despite the bulk of their careers occurring during the rock & roll era. Rock Hall Foundation President Joel Peresman recently suggested that the definition of the category be further expanded to potentially include influential genre-pioneers like Kraftwerk, who didn’t form until 1970.

• Award for Musical Excellence (2011-present): The Sideman category (2000-2009) was retired after the 2009 ceremony, and all 15 inductees have been folded into the Award for Musical Excellence category, which is an honor that is now used as a catch-all for “performers, songwriters and producers.” Never mind that performers have their own category and producers and songwriters have traditionally been inducted into the Non-Performers category. The Rock Hall has used this category as a way to induct artists like Leon Russell, the E Street Band, Ringo Starr, and Nile Rodgers, without having to go through the formality of putting them on the ballot that is sent to the voters.

  This award was originally called the "Award for Recording Excellence" in 2011, but was changed to the current name in 2012.

  

• Singles (2018-2019?): This well-meaning category was initially created as a way to honor artists who had historically significant songs but generally would have been unable to get inducted as Performers under the current system. But in 2019, the Rock Hall inducted a song by a current inductee thereby throwing out its only rule for the category and making it meaningless. The Rock Hall Museum never embraced the Singles inductees with an exhibit and has now scrubbed any mention of them from their website. (January 2020 Update: The Singles have been added to the Rock Hall's website.) HBO didn’t broadcast the Singles segment of the Induction Ceremony in 2019, so this category may be toast.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s casual attitude towards its own history continues to be troubling. For an institution that has a robust Library & Archives, they are all too willing to change their own history, either by quietly inducting people after the induction ceremony or by omitting the names of inducted artists from their website and Hall of Fame wall that go unfixed for years. With their most recent website redesign, they removed valuable content that they had built over the years in favor of highlighting their online store and paid memberships. Hopefully some of the Museum’s talented curators can turn their attention to preserving the history of their own institution and live up to their “commitment to forever.”

• Underrepresentation of nearly every genre of music among its inductees.
• Skepticism by fans and artists over the fairness and propriety of the induction system.
• Lack of diversity and conflicts of interest among the decision makers at the Rock Hall.
• The mishandling of inducted artists, which led to animosity and refusals to appear or perform at the Induction Ceremony.
• Unclear rules which get changed without logic or explanation.

Many of us who follow the Rock Hall have come up with a number of proposals which could help solve their chronic issues.

1. Address the Backlog: This, more than any other issue, is the heart of the problem. The current induction system, which only inducts between five and seven performers each year, has produced a lengthy list of artists who are arguably worthy of induction, but can’t break through. Every year in which more worthy artists become eligible than are inducted, the list just gets longer. By arbitrarily limiting the number of inductees, the Hall created a system where it is guaranteeing that worthy artists will never get a chance to be honored. The Rock Hall is currently at the bottom of a hole they have been digging for over 20 years. They’re not going to get out of it by increasing the number of annual inductees by one or two per year. More creative measures are needed. Some potential solutions:
   • On the Hall Watchers podcast, Eric and Mary proposed moving the ceremony to a two night event which would allow the Hall to induct more artists without compromising the induction ceremony format. For its 25th anniversary, the Rock Hall staged a two-night all-star concert at Madison Square Garden, so they have some experience with that format.
   • The Hall could also move to a system of themed induction classes, where a dozen artists could be enshrined around a common theme.
   • This upcoming ceremony will be the Rock Hall’s 35th, which provides an opportunity for the Rock Hall to have super-sized classes every five years.
   • Change the entire ceremony structure to allow for large induction classes. This would require shorter speeches and performances, but it would give the Rock Hall flexibility to induct significantly larger classes.

   A change like this can’t happen without upending the expectations of what a Rock Hall induction looks like (but again, this is the hole that the Rock Hall dug itself).

2. Create a Veteran’s Committee: Years ago, Tom Lane offered up this proposal modeled on other Sports Halls of Fame which have a system meant to catch worthy inductees who were left behind for one reason or another.

   As John Sykes takes steps to keep the Rock Hall up with the times, it would behoove them to create a new category that fills in the historical gaps in the rock and roll canon. The Rock Hall has been trying to play catch up for 35 years now, and there are still foundational artists who can’t even get nominated, and it’s not even at the expense of newly eligible artists who also can’t get on the ballot.

3. Listen to Criticism: Over the past year, much of the conversation about the Rock Hall has revolved around the underrepresentation of women. Instead of taking a dismissive attitude about the issue, listen to your critics and engage in the conversation. Take the opportunity to improve your institution and create some goodwill with the public. Burying your head in the sand isn’t going to work.

4. Become Transparent: The Hall has been proudly opaque since its inception which has led to conspiracy theories and allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest. The Hall could turn that around under its new leadership by publishing their rules, providing independent accounting of votes (or publishing the numbers), reveal the members of the Nominating and Voting Committees, and making those in charge available to the media. As non-profit entities, the Rock Hall Foundation and Museum should have a minimum amount of transparency about the core functions that support their mission.

5. Stop the secret inductions: We highlighted a couple of examples of artists who were quietly inducted after the fact. This type of behavior creates distrust with the public and doesn’t properly honor those who get inducted.

6. Eliminate or Fix the Singles Category: A lot has already been written on this subject, so we won’t rehash it here, but it’s unwise to create Rock Hall categories that don’t have a clearly defined purpose and are left to the whims of one individual.

7. Term Limits for Nominating Committee Members: The Country Music Hall of Fame utilizes a system where Nominating Committee members are appointed to three year terms. Each year, one third of the members get replaced. After serving out their term, members are eligible to return for another three years, but only after sitting out for at least one term.

   While there would be some institutional knowledge lost in this system, it would greatly increase the number and diversity of voices in the room. Members who distinguish themselves would be invited back after three years, while others would just be let go.

8. Rethink the Voting Committee: There has always been a tension between the will of the Nominating Committee and the results produced by the 1000 or so members of the Voting Committee. The NomCom nominates worthy artists over and over and yet they keep getting bypassed by the voters. While it seems fair on the surface, a system where each inductee automatically becomes a voter has created a population of voters who tend to favor artists closest to themselves, which magnifies the imbalance. One way to improve the system would be to give inductees with multiple members a fraction of a single vote. So each member of The Cure would get 1/10th of a vote as opposed to the 10 votes they currently get. By minimizing the voting power of large bands, it would provide a more representative power to each solo inductee.

9. Change the Voting System: With the significant backlog of worthy artists, getting on the Rock Hall ballot is an achievement unto itself. Why not expand the list of artists who meet that threshold by greatly expanding the number of nominees well past the 15-20 that have been nominated in recent years? There is a lot of frustration from the Nominating Committee about not wanting to put forward similar artists in the same year, but a ballot of 50 names would open up a new world of possibilities. Likewise, when the Voting Committee gets the ballot, allow them to vote for as many Hall of Fame worthy artists as they like. Currently they are restricted to voting for only five, which creates strategic voting that leaves clearly worthy artists on the outside. There are so many different ways to vote that are superior than the current system, the Rock Hall should start experimenting immediately. (The Hall should consult with inductee Krist Novoselic, who has been an advocate for proportional representation in politics.)

10. Give the Fan Vote some actual power or just eliminate it: The Hall of Fame seems to love the fan engagement from the online fan poll, but most fans have no idea how little it (officially) matters in the actual tally (the fan vote is cumulatively about 0.1% of the total ballots). Provided the Rock Hall can stage an online poll that can’t be rigged, the results should at least be worth 5% of the total. Otherwise you’re just taking advantage of passionate fans’ time.

There are many other ways that the Rock Hall could be improved, but the most important thing for John Sykes is to just get started.

Alan Light was asked about nominating Notorious B.I.G. without first getting in five time nominee LL Cool J:

"I believe very much in going back and standing on the ones that you think are important and sometimes it takes putting somebody to ballot, especially if they're in a more specialized genre, a bunch of times, to say, 'no, we really believe this one is important, we're not just going to dump them.' But I'm still fighting to get more hip hop in, and when there's a win to take, I will take it. And I think that Biggie has a good shot and we can come back to LL Cool J next year if there's not somebody else. I want to take the wins where I find them.”

Alan Light on the struggle to get R&B artists inducted:

"I'm happy to come back and fight for Chaka and Rufus again. The post-1970 soul is still a very difficult, you know it's a tough sell within the voters, because there's that sense of maybe it's softer, it's more female. Those are still a challenge. And that's why it was so exciting to get Janet [Jackson] in last year and say, okay, maybe now we're at a place where that generation of R&B singers can get looked at within this framework.”

On the potential to redefine the Rock Hall’s Early Influence category, which is currently supposed to honor artists who “pre-date the birth of rock & roll”:

Light: "We've said this before, there's also some of these who at a certain point should you look at them as Early Influences? Should Kraftwerk be not in the general ballot, but moved to go in a different way because of everything in that whole universe tracing back to this one band. That's another thing that we would look at.”

Peresman:"Absolutely. As we get older and move on, when you think about Early Influences it's not the 50s and 60s anymore. The Early Influence can be 70s and 80s depending on the certain genre of music.”

Alan Light told the following story about the 2018 inductions, but perhaps had Sister Rosetta Tharpe (nominated as a Performer, but inducted as an Early Influence) confused with Nina Simone (nominated and inducted as a Performer):

Light: "Two years ago we put Sister Rosetta Tharpe on the ballot really to force the hand of the Early Influencers committee to say, this is somebody that needs to be in. I had zero expectation that she would be voted in, and would be one of the biggest vote getters of that year. And who the hell knows sometimes.”

Majewski: "Wait, she wasn't voted in, she was an Early Influence.”

Light: "No, she was voted in. She went in from the ballot. Yes, absolutely.”

Mejewski: "Joel's making a face.”

Peresman: "I'm not sure.”

Light: "No, no, because that was the whole thing. She was voted in and I never anticipated that would happen.”

After that they went to commercial but never corrected the mistake.

Why is the Nominating Committee “forcing the hand” of the Early Influence committee to induct certain artists? Why isn’t this simply planned out in advance of putting out the ballot? The Early Influence committee isn’t some separate entity, it’s essentially a subset of the Nominating Committee. This really makes no sense and is a bizarre and haphazard way to run an induction process.

Alan Light was asked why Pat Benatar was finally nominated after being eligible for 20 years:

”I think it's a different reassessment of that era. What you see here is there is a lot of 80s into 90s that are on [the ballot] now. I think we're moving out of the 'greatest generation' classic rock 60s and 70s. I feel like the Zombies going in last year was the last piece of the British invasion to go in from that. It's more reassessing, who's been out there if we're going to go back, if there's not a lot of brand new first time eligible [artists], if that's not going to fill a lot of the space, who have we missed or who should we be thinking about again?”

Light was asked why it sometimes takes an artist dying for them to get the Rock Hall’s attention:

”That's always a challenge. On the one hand you want to honor people while they're around to be honored. And on the other hand, sometimes when they pass, there's this different appreciation and this different visibility and you think about them in a different way. And part of you feels bad like, well, maybe we should have done it before when they were here, but at the same time maybe you need that distance and that context to really understand what their contribution was.”

Alan Light on which factors he considers for nominees:

”To me this always comes down to this balance, the levers your pulling and pushing between excellence, influence, and popularity. Those are the three things you want to consider.”

”Our responsibility is to put together the best, strongest ballot that we can put together. That's what this represents. Now what happens from here, what the voters do with it, and then when that peels off into -- are there other ways, like we did ended up doing with Nile Rodgers, and putting him in the Musical Excellence category, otherwise you don't want the ballot to be the same names over and over again each year and holding those spots and blocking other people from getting their shot. We've got to think through when enough is enough.”

Alan Light on the impact of the “Voice Your Choice” voting kiosk at the Rock Hall Museum:

”I know that Greg Harris, who runs the Museum side of things, always brings in the top [artists], you can vote in the Hall of Fame on a touch screen for who you would want to see in, and he makes a point of presenting all that information into the nominating meeting.”

One of Alan Light’s artists he pushed for this year was Whitney Houston. Light was asked to make the case for her:

”Let me start with: Whitney Houston is the biggest selling artist who is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. She is also the most awarded artist, Grammys and beyond, who is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And there's an entire generation of vocalists who say, 'that's the gold standard, that's the voice that we all aspire to.' So when I go back to excellence, influence, and popularity, there's no argument on any of those things for her.”

Light’s first argument for Houston is about record sales (he also cited seven consecutive number one albums to support Dave Matthews Band’s nomination), which is a direct contradiction of the Rock Hall’s previously stated criteria that “Gold records, number one hits, and million sellers are not appropriate standards for evaluation.” Apparently that’s not the case anymore in the populist era of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Update: Alan Light also went in depth about the Rock Hall on his own SiriusXM show, Debatable, where Greg Harris appeared again. Here are some additional highlights:

Harris said that the Nominating Committee were able to put a lot of artists on the ballot who have waited a long time because there wasn’t “a large body of artists who were first time eligibles.” There are at least six obvious Hall of Famers who became eligible this year, but it sounds like those artists are in for a long wait.

Before the Rock Hall backtracked and changed the nominated members of Motörhead, Harris was asked what the process was for choosing which members to induct:

”Some of our researchers, some historians have worked on this. There have been a number of passes at it. The idea is to identify those core band members that were there for the creation of the most iconic music of the band’s era. To give you an example, if a band made their best records in the first 10 years, their most impactful, influential records, but they continued touring for another 30, the touring musicians, later musicians, are not a part of it. Now you have a band like the Doobie Brothers who had two distinct eras and while a number of band members remained the same, of course you’re going to put Michael McDonald in with the band because that was another chapter, another sound, another iteration, as opposed to different band members playing the same stuff.”

Since the Rock Hall has to change the listed members after they release them almost every ballot, perhaps they need to rethink that process because there are many errors (here is a list of them) made over the years that aren’t so easily corrected.

Alan Light acknowledged there are definite flaws in the system:

”Is it an imperfect system? It is an imperfect system. I am the first one to say I have lots of ambivalent feelings about a Hall of Fame. But it’s an opportunity to tell a story about excellence in music and we keep sorting out and refining and working out along the way what that means.”

Alan Light was asked if the thought a Nine Inch Nails song appearing in a Black Mirror episode this year was a factor in getting them back on the ballot:

”I would say, in some ways yes. I think in some ways “Old Town Road” and everybody figuring out it’s a Nine Inch Nails sample while the band is out touring. I think between looking at the biggest song of the year having this element from a Nine Inch Nails song. The Black Mirror episode being based on a revision of a Nine Inch Nails song. These kinds of context do change over time. You do gain an appreciation for somebody’s influence or longevity.”

Light was asked why T. Rex finally was nominated:

”Sometimes looking at all the UK acts that went in last year, then looking to what the influences were on them. Looking at the way T. Rex was responsible for so much for laying the groundwork for glam rock. Def Leppard going in, and Joe Elliott flying the flag as a massive T. Rex fan, you pick up on all those things. Of course you do.”

”Voters do look at [the fan poll results]. The rest of us [on the Voting Committee] who get one vote will look at that and say ‘oh there’s somebody that a lot of fans are really getting behind.’ That can absolutely make a difference for putting somebody on your own final ballot.”

Light was asked about Early Influences:

”Sinatra is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Is that a forerunner, is that an early influence on rock and roll? Some argue it is, some argue isn’t. That hasn’t been resolved to being in there. There’s always more work to be done. I think also those early influencers that continues to move up in time too. In some ways I feel like you should be looking at Kraftwerk as an early influence as the formative band for electronic music. That may be a more appropriate way to honor them and the right way to put them in rather than on a list of performers where it’s going to be really hard for them to break through just because not enough people, not enough musicians, know who they are. So I don’t think there’s a hard and fast year zero where it starts.”

Alan Light also named his biggest snub:

”I have more frustration for the Sidemen category, more than the big Performers category, I think there are more that are missing. Always the one that I stand and scream for is Carol Kaye, the bass player from the Wrecking Crew who played on every one of the Phil Spector records, all of the Beach Boys records, everything that came out. She’s not in. Hal Blaine the drummer is in. That to me is a bigger oversight than one of my favorite bands isn’t on this ballot that I would like to see get in someday. So, that’s a different process, those are different voters. I mean it’s not a voting thing, it’s a committee thing. Those are always being reviewed and revisited as well.”

The Sidemen category was replaced with the Award for Musical Excellence in 2010, so presumably that would be the way Carol Kaye would be inducted now.

A caller asked Light if hip hop and pop artists were being nominated, why not more country artists too?

”I think it’s a totally legitimate question. I know that some of the people from the Board of the institution get mad at me if I talk about conversations that went on within the nominating room, so I want to be careful. I need to be careful because the understanding is that those are there in confidence. But I should say Willie [Nelson] is somebody that gets discussed and talked about and I think there’s an interesting case to be made. You know Johnny Cash is in. Now Johnny Cash was on Sun Records and was a rockabilly early on, and you can make a little more direct connection. Country obviously is a different tradition, it’s a different history, it’s a different place. But you know some of those names -- Patsy Cline has come up. Some of those figures have come up. There may be a year where everybody looks at it and goes, you know what, that makes sense and we should do that. All of these things are continually being evaluated and I think it is a totally legitimate thing to say if you’re talking about rock and roll as a spirit and attitude that some of those outlaw guys absolutely carry that. Which side of that line goes in and which does not is a shifting thing, but it’s a fair question.”

About the three women on the ballot, Light said, “I’d love to continue to see more women get nominated and continue to see more get in.”

Light was asked if Whitney Houston can get nominated, why not Garth Brooks?

”It’s a legitimate question. We may not be quite there yet, but we could get to a day where somebody could look at it and say that. Similar times, similar scale [as Whitney].”

The real problem involving women and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — the central, intrinsic, original sin part of the hall, worse even than its insider-y nature and inconsistency — is the lack of women on the nominating committee. In recent years, there have been five or six on a committee that ranges from 30 to 45 members, and that’s a high mark for the hall.

It is appalling, sexist, unforgivable, and f*cking ridiculous. All the men on the committee — particularly critics like Anthony DeCurtis, David Fricke, Bill Flanagan, and others who would be expected to note such nonsense in other institutions — should be called out for not having the guts to stand up and say they won’t participate in such a preposterously sexist organization. But of course, this timidity is no doubt what has made them, from the perspective of organization leaders like Jann Wenner, ideal nominating-committee members.

I don’t know what effect a balanced gender representation on the nomination committee might have. It might make for more women nominees, it might lead to a more sophisticated appreciation of dance music, or it might keep the hall just as insider-y and in-clubby as it is now, only with more women involved. Any of those outcomes is acceptable; that’s not the point. The makeup of the committee is the hall’s major scandal.

During his appearance on SiriusXm for the nominee announcement, Rock Hall Foundation president Joel Peresman said that the Nominating Committee basically remained unchanged from last year, but a “woman from Los Angeles” was added to the group. That will increase the number of women on the Committee to 23% (seven women, compared to 23 men) In the early 2000s, that number was around 6%.*

Incoming chairman of the board, John Sykes, has pledged to diversify the Rock Hall Foundation’s board with “more women, more people of color and [become] a board that reflects the artists that are now being inducted.” The Board currently has 26 members, two of whom are women (8%). Sykes hasn’t directly called for more diversity on the Nominating Committee, but he seems to be setting the tone for how he wants the institution to move forward.

* - It should be noted here that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will not release a list of Nominating Committee members to journalists who ask, and prefers the names not be made public.

• Pat Benatar
  
• Dave Matthews Band
  
• Depeche Mode
  
• The Doobie Brothers
  
• Judas Priest
  
• Kraftwerk
  
• MC5
  
• Motörhead
  
• Nine Inch Nails
  
• Notorious B.I.G.
  
• Rufus featuring Chaka Khan
  
• Soundgarden
  
• T. Rex
  
• Thin Lizzy
  
• Todd Rundgren
  
• Whitney Houston
  

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Incoming Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation Chairman, John Sykes, revealed this week that the 2020 Induction Ceremony will be broadcast live on HBO. This will be the first time the event will be shown live since HBO took over broadcast duties in 2012.

Producing an awards show for a live audience is different than one that can be edited and broadcast later. The last eight ceremonies have each been four to five hours long, where inductees generally get an unlimited amount of time to speak. At the 2019 ceremony, many of the artists also performed four or five songs, knowing that not all of them would make the HBO version.

There are two different ways HBO could take the ceremony:

1. The ceremony could be streamed live on HBO Max, the new streaming service from AT&T’s WarnerMedia, which just happens to launch in the spring. In this case, the ceremony format could essentially remain unchanged, since fitting the event into a certain time window becomes far less critical. An edited version of the ceremony could still be created for regular HBO, just as it has been (although Sykes did say it would be live “instead of taped”).
2. The induction ceremony would be shown live on regular HBO and becomes a more traditional awards show like the Grammys, where the event is produced to fit a predetermined time frame (three hours?). In this case, performances would be far more limited and speech times would have to be carefully budgeted. The Rock Hall would be faced with even greater pressure than they are now to limit the number of inductees.

Given the nature of the streaming wars, we’re betting that HBO and the Rock Hall have the first option in mind, although with Sykes’s stated interest in “looking to do more in California,” that could suggest returning the induction ceremony to LA and going with a more traditional award show.

Prior to HBO’s involvement with the Rock Hall, the Fuse Network broadcast the ceremonies live on cable during their three year tenure. At the tail end of the VH1 Classic era, the 2007 and 2008 ceremonies were streamed live before airing later on TV. Given the intimacy of the Waldorf Astoria and the relatively limited audiences back then, the broadcasts didn’t seem to be overtly geared towards television. It will be fascinating to see how HBO treats it moving forward. We’ll be watching.

Along with Ahmet Ertegun, Jann Wenner is responsible for creating the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an institution and for spearheading the campaign to create a Museum. Those accomplishments are monumental feats and should be applauded. Mick Jagger provided this statement: “A long time ago, when no one was thinking about our music and its posterity. Jann saw that we needed a place to celebrate popular music and recognize the people who had made the music grow. It was a visionary idea and he stuck with it.” The positive impact the Rock Hall has had on Cleveland culturally and economically (over $2 billion since it started) is incredible. It is fitting that Wenner is himself an inductee in the Hall of Fame he birthed. But as Ben Sisario wrote for the New York Times, Wenner “became more associated with the institution than any other figure — becoming its top negotiator in the industry, as well as the person blamed, fairly or unfairly, for its shortcomings.”

Wenner was long believed to be the Rock Hall’s primary gatekeeper, keeping out any artists he felt unworthy. Wenner’s biographer, Joe Hagan reinforced this notion in a Billboard interview:

To me the real takeaway is that everybody believes Jann has his thumb on the scale when it comes to who gets into the Hall of Fame. And that Jann doesn't go out of his way to disabuse people of that. The biggest red flag, I suppose, is that many people campaign to Jann for their artist to get into the Hall of Fame, because they believe that if Jann would like that artist to be in the Hall of Fame, it will happen.

Ric Ocasek was at the concert, too, trying to butter Jann up about the Cars getting in the Rock Hall. Everyone goes to kiss the ring, because they think Jann runs the thing. The Rock Hall is meaningful to people. Jann obviously has a big influence on this thing and I think he has always enjoyed having these people lavish him with attention and campaign for it.

Over the years, many of the artists Wenner had been rumored to be responsible for keeping out were eventually inducted (Rush, KISS, Chicago, Quincy Jones, the Moody Blues), but there remain others who still think they are blackballed (the Monkees, Toto, Ted Nugent, the Guess Who).

The most notorious case of Wenner putting his “thumb on the scale” is the 2007 induction of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. As Roger Friedman reported at the time*:

According to sources knowledgeable about the mysterious ways of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, British Invasion group The Dave Clark Five and not Grandmaster Flash finished fifth in the final voting of the nominating committee and should have been inducted on Monday night.

According to sources, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, who recently appointed himself chairman of the Foundation after the death of Ahmet Ertegun, ignored the final voting and chose Grandmaster Flash over the DC5 for this year's ceremony.

”Jann went back to a previous ballot instead of taking the final vote as the last word," my source insisted. "He used a technicality about the day votes were due in. In reality, The Dave Clark Five got six more votes than Grandmaster Flash. But he felt we couldn't go another year without a rap act.”

R.E.M., Van Halen, The Ronettes and Patti Smith were the top four vote-getters, with Grandmaster Flash finishing fifth when the votes were counted on the first date ballots were due in to the Rock Hall office.

But when all the ballots were counted a few days later, the DC5 had pulled ahead. Wenner decided to ignore that and stick with the earlier tally.

According to Friedman, after the controversy became public, Wenner had to meet with Dave Clark and guaranteed their induction the following year. Sadly, DC5 singer Mike Smith died 11 days before the 2008 induction ceremony.

Former Nominating Committee member Joel Selvin also alleged Wenner manipulated the process to get the Paul Butterfield Blues Band inducted. Wenner had previously mentioned them as a priority.

For his part, Wenner has consistently denied any wrongdoing, telling Rob Tannenbaum in 2015, “I understand the basis of [the conspiracy theories], but I don’t care about the speculation. After doing this for 30 years, nobody’s ever found any credible charge of chicanery or undue influence.”

The Rock Hall has come under fire over the years about its induction process and its lack of racial and gender diversity in its Hall of Fame classes. Wenner dismissed that criticism today, “I don’t think that’s a real issue. People are inducted for their achievements. Musical achievements have got to be race-neutral and gender-neutral in terms of judging them.”

The Jann Wenner chapter in the story of the Rock Hall may be coming to a close this year, but a full accounting of his legacy has yet to be written.

An article in the New York Times announcing the 1994 inductees provides the clearest criteria for the rule:

In most years, the seven top vote-getters gain induction; this year, there is an eighth inductee, under a provision that allows the hall's board to honor someone who has missed election in seven consecutive years.

The only inductee that year that fits that description is Duane Eddy, who appeared on the first seven Rock Hall ballots. Further evidence of his automatic induction is this rundown of the 1994 nominees in the L.A. Times, written by Nominating Committee member Robert Hilburn, which never mentions Duane Eddy.

The previous year, Billboard listed the 1993 nominees in its July 18, 1992 issue:

Strangely, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers aren’t included even though they were inducted as Performers that year. It now seems clear that they were inducted using the same “seven consecutive years provision,” because like Duane Eddy, they too had appeared on the first seven Rock Hall ballots without being inducted.

While there are other artists who have been nominated at least seven times, these two artists seem to be the only inductees that fit the “seven consecutive years” criteria required for automatic induction. That would also explain why Solomon Burke and Chic were able to be nominated more than eight times, because they never appeared on a string of seven consecutive ballots.

Is the “seven year rule” still in effect? It seems unlikely, although with the Rock Hall, you never know for sure.

The Midnighters were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 in an effort to correct a previous oversight when Hank Ballard was inducted solo in 1990. According to the Hall of Fame’s website, The Midnighters enshrined that night included seven members: Henry Booth, Cal Green, Arthur Porter, Lawson Smith, Charles Sutton, Norman Thrasher and Sonny Woods. Alonzo Tucker and guitarist Billy Davis were notably not included. In January of 2013, Hank Ballard’s son, Daryle even noted Davis’s omission in the comment section of this website, hoping he would be included at some point. Someone at the Rock Hall must have had a change of heart, because later that year, Davis’s name was quietly added to the official website.

As with the Kenny Laguna situation, the result isn’t the issue, it’s the process where the Rock Hall tries to secretly rewrite its own history.

thanks, Jake

The “so many others” that Ament mentioned in the speech were listed on his t-shirt (most also appear on our own Snub List):

Since he wore that shirt two years ago, Ament should be pleased that quite a few of the 97 artists he listed have been nominated and/or inducted:

There have been a total of twelve artists inducted in the performer category in the last two years, five of whom appear on Ament’s list. Another five were nominated in 2018 or 2019 but didn’t make the cut. It’s worth keeping an eye on this list to see if it will be a road map for the Nominating Committee in the coming years.

[Props to Jeff Ament for shining a light on the Rock Hall’s huge backlog problem.]

In 1999, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the “Early Influence” category. For years, the Rock Hall clearly listed all of the Playboys individually on their website as inductees, as this screenshot from 2010 shows:

When the new Hall of Fame exhibit at the Museum was unveiled last year, the Texas Playboys were omitted from the signature plaque and removed from the website:

Why on earth* would the Rock Hall remove Tommy Duncan, Leon McAuliffe, Johnny Gimble, Joe Holley, Tiny More, Herb Remington, Eldon Shamblin, and Al Stricken? We all know the Rock Hall has a problem inducting women, but throwing out dead male inductees doesn’t seem like a good solution. If you’re going to erase history, at least provide an explanation for what you’re doing.

* - Please don’t say it’s because they didn’t fit on the plaque.

Update (May 4, 2019): The Rock Hall Museum’s President and CEO, Greg Harris, tweeted today to say that the Texas Playboys have been restored to the website and will be added to the signature wall soon.

All, thank you for bringing the Bob Wills item to our attention, we’ve checked our records and updated the website to reflect the way we’ve had it since 1999 including the Texas Playboys. Plaque will be updated shortly again thanks.

— Greg Harris (@rockhallceo) May 4, 2019

Update (January 22, 2020):

Happy to report that the Texas Playboys are once again displayed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Thanks to @KatBoydRocks for the photo pic.twitter.com/5JsAsPOpb5

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) January 19, 2020

It wasn’t just the plaque that was wrong, the Rock Hall’s website never included Laguna as an inductee until sometime last year. The official program from the 2015 induction ceremony didn’t illustrate Laguna among the inductees either.

Contemporaneous reporting around the 2015 induction ceremony never mentioned Laguna as an inductee, and clearly stated which Blackhearts were included. Cleveland.com even speculated that Laguna might be the presenter for Joan Jett.

You know who did know he was being inducted? Kenny Laguna knew. At the induction ceremony, Laguna gave an acceptance speech (even thanking “advocate” Steven Van Zandt).

Why didn’t anyone else seem to know that Kenny Laguna was actually inducted for over three years?

The first evidence on the internet of his induction seems to be on his Wikipedia page, which was updated about three months after the ceremony (the citation referenced for this fact includes a list of eleven Blackhearts, most of whom weren’t inducted). Other than that, there are very few mentions of his induction until last year, when there was some press surrounding the Bad Reputation documentary.

So, a few questions:

• If Laguna was in fact inducted in 2015, why didn’t the press know about it at the time?
• Why wasn’t he listed on the Rock Hall’s website or on the museum plaque for over three years?
• Does the Rock Hall plan to make any other retroactive changes to the inductees?
• Are there other instances of quietly adding or removing inductees?
• Is the canonical list of inductees maintained by the Rock Hall Museum or Foundation? Can it be published?
• Are there any other inductees who are not listed on the signature plaques at the Museum?

This is all so weird and stupid. How does this keep happening?

In Rolling Stone’s article announcing the nominees, reporter Andy Greene wrote that only six members of Roxy Music were included by the Rock Hall, and John Gustafson and Graham Simpson were not among them:

The classic Roxy Music lineup of Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera, Eddie Jobson and Paul Thompson made the cut, though none of their many bassists did.

After the inductees were announced in December, John Gustafson’s contributions to the band were still mentioned in the Rock Hall’s biography, but his name disappeared from the inducted members listing:

A month later, Andy Greene spoke with Andy Mackay about the inducted lineup:

RS: They’re taking in Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Eddie Jobson, you, Phil Manzanera, Graham Simpson and Paul Thompson. Did they get that right? Did they miss anybody?

Mackay: It’s difficult, isn’t it? Over the band’s career there were many different people. For a period, we worked with American session musicians on a few records. By and large, the four of us there at the beginning were there at the end. That’s probably what counts. And Eddie Jobson obviously did play on three records in the middle of the band’s career. With bass players, it is hard to say who is the definitive bass player. The guy who played on “Love Is the Drug,” John Gustafson, died a few years ago. He was a fantastic player who had been in a Liverpool band before the Beatles. He was a great player that did a lot of session work in London.

The official Rock Hall program doesn’t specifically list which members were inducted, but the front and back covers illustrate each inductee. There are only seven yellow circles for Roxy Music, and Gustafson is not one of them.

The Rock Hall already changed course with this class when they decided to include The Cure’s current guitarist, Reeves Gabrels, but it’s not so clear why Gustafson was removed from the Roxy Music lineup. Did the Rock Hall change its mind? Was there input from the band?

The Rock Hall started announcing the band lineups with the nominations each year in an effort to avoid these types of controversies, but it’s clear they still have no problem making things up as they go along.

Many people are wondering why was John Gustafson dropped from your original list of eight Roxy Music band members to be inducted after the details were displayed on the HOF website during the weeks before the ceremony? 🙄

— Roxy (@Roxysiren) April 7, 2019

For the record, we had been listing Gustafson as an inductee since December, but based on the above information, he has now joined the list of Snubbed Members.

Big thanks to Joe Kwaczala, host of our favorite podcast, for bringing this to our attention.

After the Rock Hall introduced the “Singles Category” at the 2018 ceremony there were no shortage of questions, criticism, and speculation about the purpose and future of the award. After all, the Rock Hall had previously published a list of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll,” so how would this be different? Last year, Steven Van Zandt made clear to state that there was only one rule for a song to be honored: “the records are by artists not in the Rock Hall.” With that in mind, let’s take a look at the 2019 recipients*:

• The Chantels - "Maybe" (1957)**
• The Champs - "Tequila" (1958)
• Barrett Strong - "Money (That's What I Want)" (1959)
• The Shangri-Las - "Leader of the Pack" (1964)
• The Shadows of Knight - "Gloria" (1965)

• The Isley Brothers - "Twist and Shout" (1962)

The whole point of this category is that its artists that aren’t in. Bullshit.

— Who Cares About the Rock Hall? (@rockhallpod) March 30, 2019

As you probably know, the Isley Brothers are in the Hall of Fame, inducted in 1992. So in the second year of this brand new Rock Hall category, the one and only rule gets trashed.*** What are we even doing here?

The Rock Hall’s own website and museum have been slow to acknowledge the category after it was introduced as a surprise at last year’s ceremony. Greg Harris, the Museum’s president and CEO has tried to emphasize that the songs are not inducted into the Rock Hall, and “Singles” isn’t even a Hall of Fame category (what?). A year later, the museum still hasn’t accommodated the song list in its Hall of Fame exhibit (although Harris says the songs will eventually receive a special place of honor). It took months, but their website finally listed last year’s singles on the “Induction Process” page (but they weren’t actually inducted, right?), and hasn’t bothered to add this year’s winners, four weeks after the ceremony.

Just like last year, the artists of the honored songs were not in attendance at the Induction Ceremony, and according to a source close to one of the artists, weren’t even notified about the “honor” in advance.

In January, Joel Peresman, the Rock Hall Foundation’s President & CEO, who is theoretically in charge of this mess, said that this category “will be included again this year and always going forward.” Always! If that’s the case, someone needs to turn Steven Van Zandt’s vanity project into something meaningful. Otherwise, there’s really no point in discussing it further.

* - In his introduction, Steven Van Zandt said they don’t always select the original version of the singles, but they honor “the most iconic versions that time has proven to have had the biggest impact on the soundtrack of our lives.”
** - With this honor, it’s likely the Chantels won’t be back on the Performer ballot, where they had been twice been nominated. The other non-Hall of Famers have never been nominated.
*** - So, out of the hundreds of foundational songs to break the non-Hall of Famer rule, why “Twist and Shout”? It was written by Bert Berns, whom Van Zandt had gotten inducted in 2016. Just one more reason the entire system is broken.

Steven Van Zandt, of course, narrates the new Berns documentary and is a producer for the Broadway show about Berns. #RockHall2016

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) March 24, 2016

[Janet] Jackson is one of only two women being inducted into the hall this year, out of 37 inductees, including the members of the five all-male bands being inducted. The other woman is Stevie Nicks. During the 34 years since the hall was founded by Jann Wenner and Ahmet Ertegun, 888 people have been inducted; 69 have been women. That’s 7.7 percent. The problem is spreading.
...
The Rock Hall is the most obvious offender in what I’ll call the manhandling of musical history. Manhandling is akin to, and often — as with the Rock Hall — intersects with, whitewashing. Manhandling pushes women out of the frame just as whitewashing covers up black bodies. People of color account for 32 percent of Rock Hall inductees, a far better figure than for women, but still not representative of the enormous role African Americans and Latinx people have played in American popular music.

McDonnell makes the case that the gender disparity was baked in from the first induction class and takes aim at one of the Rock Hall’s founding members:

[Buddy] Holly and [Chuck] Berry were both among the first 16 acts inducted in the Rock Hall, in 1986. All their fellow inductees were male. Built on such grotesquely imbalanced footing, the institution may never get itself right. After all, its main instigator was Ahmet Ertegun, an admittedly legendary records man who treated women abominably, according to Dorothy Carvello’s 2018 memoir Anything for a Hit. Carvello is a music executive who began her career working for Ertegun at Atlantic. Ertegun subjected her to crude sexual harassment and once fractured her arm in anger. The Rock Hall named its main exhibition hall after Ertegun. How can this ever be a place where women feel welcome, let alone safe? Just as universities have removed from buildings and fellowships the names of film executives who gave them money, such as USC renaming their Bryan Singer Division of Critical Studies, the Rock Hall should remove Ertegun’s name from the building and from the annual industry executive award that bears his name. It’s an award that has never been given to a woman.
...
Guys like Ertegun, who died in 2006, reportedly manhandled in the workplace, in addition to creating the Cleveland shrine to gender inequity. Carvello’s book documents in scandalous detail how he and other executives created a boys’ club environment where women had to either pretend to be one of the boys, betraying their sisters, or trade sex for promotion. In Ertegun’s world, women were not allowed to step up; they were stepped on. Having systematically excluded and oppressed women from the business of making music, Ertegun and his cronies at the Rock Hall then carved that exclusion into stone by essentially writing them out of history, year after year after year. When women do get let into the Rock Hall boys’ club, it is on the arms of men: Carole King is there for her songwriting with Gerry Goffin, not as the woman who recorded numerous hit songs herself, including those on the record-smashing album Tapestry. Tina Turner was inducted alongside her abusive ex-spouse Ike.

McDonnell also points out that the induction system created by the Rock Hall perpetuates the gender imbalance every year because each inductee becomes a voter, who then “vote in their friends and heroes, who tend to be men.”

Those of us who criticize the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame do so because despite its flaws, the institution does matter. McDonnell feels the same way:

It’s tempting to just say so what. I would like to not care about what institutions such as the Met and Hall of Fame do. They are essentially shrines to white men created by white men, so of course, they honor white men. But they pretend to serve the public — and in the Met’s case, it is in part a publicly funded institution. The Hall of Fame and its associated museum have enormous cultural power, writing in stone the historical importance of individuals in a way that no other institution or publication or organization does. They also create real economic benefits for culture workers. Being inducted into the Rock Hall doesn’t just look good on your resume, it helps sell records and tickets. Most importantly, these institutions provide inspiration — role models — for future generations. And if the only women you’re going to see receiving awards on that stage at the Barclays Center are Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks, would you, if you were a little girl, go pick up a guitar?

It should be noted here that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum is also supported by taxpayers to the tune of over $125 million since 1995.

McDonnell offers a course of action for the Rock Hall:

There are three things the Hall of Fame can do to rectify that imbalance: 1. Flood the nominating committee and voting membership with more women. Six out of 29 members of last year’s nominating committee were women; the notoriously tight-lipped hall has not revealed this year’s committee members. 2. Reduce the voting power of members inducted as players in bands (so, say, the five dudes in Def Leppard each get one fifth of a vote). 3. Nominate a shit ton of all-female bands next year.

Evelyn McDonnell also edited last year’s Women Who Rock anthology.