Prior to its eventual cancellation due to the pandemic, the 2020 Induction Ceremony was supposed to be a cross-generational three hour celebration of this year's class, according to organizers Joel Gallen and Rick Krim. They outlined what the Hall of Fame had planned for the May ceremony during their appearance on the Who Cares About the Rock Hall? podcast.

Here are some highlights from their discussions on the podcast:

• Ceremony Scheduling: The Rock Hall considered a few options when it became clear that an in-person 2020 induction ceremony couldn't happen: 1) Bump the ceremony back to 2021, and slide all subsequent Rock Hall classes back a year. 2) Honor the 2020 class in the Spring and the 2021 class in the Fall. 3) Do both the 2020 and 2021 classes in a single week. According to Joel Gallen, "HBO came back and said that doing two shows in a week or even within a year was not an option — budget wise, schedule wise, all kinds of things. They said we can only do one show, but they still were open to us coming back to them with a version of this year's show that would be pandemic-friendly."
• Show Opening: The show was going to open with a six song medley honoring the performer inductees with Weezer as the house band. They intended to use Miley Cyrus for the Nine Inch Nails portion of the medley, Billy Idol and Billie Joe Armstrong for T. Rex, Lauryn Mayberry from Chvrches for Depeche Mode, and Weezer for the Doobie Brothers. No artists had been lined up for Notorious B.I.G. and Whitney Houston before the ceremony was postponed. Gallen wanted the opening medley to be performed outside in front of the Rock Hall museum, but costs were too high, so a turntable stage in Public Auditorium was going to be used.
• T. Rex: The opening medley would have concluded with "Bang a Gong" and then would have rolled into the video package. Billy Idol was lined up to give the induction speech and then likely would have performed "Jeepster" with Billie Joe Armstrong.
• Doobie Brothers: Gallen proposed a "cold open" for each performer segment with a different artist paying tribute to the inductee. For example, they had wanted The Chicks to perform "Black Water," but they weren't available in May because of their album release, so they were exploring other artists. Luke Bryan was booked to induct the band, and the Doobie Brothers would have performed.
• Depeche Mode: They didn't have anyone booked to do the opening, but they were trying to line up a particular female artist to do a stripped down performance. Charlize Theron was in discussions to be the presenter, but she hadn't committed. Depeche Mode would have performed.
• Nine Inch Nails: St. Vincent was booked to be the presenter and Nine Inch Nails was going to perform three songs.
• Whitney Houston: No presenter was confirmed because Alicia Keys had a conflict in May, but may have been available in November. Slated to perform were Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson and H.E.R. with a three song tribute backed by the Roots.
• Notorious B.I.G.: Diddy was set to be the presenter and The Roots would be the backing band for a performance. They had tried to get Jay-Z, but that was a long shot, and they didn't have anyone else booked at the time the ceremony was cancelled.
• 2021: There have been discussions about trying to include this year's living inductees (NIN, Doobies and Depeche Mode) into next year's ceremonies to allow them to have a moment to be honored.

Gallen claims he had the ceremony projected to last 2 hours 48 minutes on paper to fit within the three hour time limit HBO required, but given the history of past ceremonies and the ambitious schedule outlined above, that seems hard to imagine. Hopefully Gallen will be given the opportunity to try again next year.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted five more songs into their Singles Category this year, despite not mentioning them in a press release or the televised induction special. The lack of information about the category prompted reporter Troy Smith to ask the Foundation about it in October. When asked specifically about the category, the Rock Hall Foundation said, "it is something that we preferred to have done live, so we are skipping it this year with the plan to return it next year.” The Foundation seemed to have forgotten that it had in fact selected five songs for induction in 2020 (they were printed in the souvenir book), and shortly after their denial added the singles to their website without any official announcement, beyond a wordless Tweet from one of the Museum's Vice Presidents.

pic.twitter.com/tvte92hYyY

— Jason Hanley (@jasonhanleyrock) October 30, 2020

The five songs selected are:

• Irma Thomas - "Time Is on My Side" (1964)
• Junior Walker & the All-Stars - "Shotgun" (1965)
• Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs - "Wooly Bully" (1965)
• The Troggs - "Wild Thing" (1966)
• The Box Tops - "The Letter" (1967)

On a recent episode of the podcast Who Cares About the Rock Hall? ceremony director/producer Joel Gallen was asked about the Singles Category's exclusion from the 2020 HBO induction special. He said that he had initially planned to include a short segment during a live ceremony, but after that was canceled, he was never asked to include it in the shortened induction special. Gallen was surprised to learn that the only premise of the category had been undermined in 2019:

Here’s the moment when the Joel Gallen (the Rock Hall ceremony producer/director) realizes the entire premise behind the Singles Category was undermined when an Isley Brothers song was selected last year. ⁦@rockhallpod⁩ pic.twitter.com/pM80YVXth8

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) November 21, 2020

The Rock Hall has already said they are continuing with the category in 2021, but by the way they continue to treat it, they make it easy to forget.

Eight months after the Inductees were announced, and four months after the ceremony was to have taken place, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame added six names to the list of 2020 honorees. Initially, Nine Inch Nails sole inductee was Trent Reznor, but this week the Rock Hall added six current and former members of the band: Atticus Ross, Robin Finck, Chris Vrenna, Danny Lohner, Ilan Rubin, and Alessandro Cortini.

Ilan Rubin, born July 7th, 1988, becomes the youngest person ever inducted into the Rock Hall, beating the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Josh Klinghoffer, who was also 32 at the time of induction*. Notably, Rubin is also the first Hall of Famer that was born in the 1980s.

* (When should a person be considered "inducted" into the Rock Hall? When the inductees are announced? At the date of the ceremony? January 1st of their induction year to control for variable ceremony dates? Using any of these calculations, Rubin beats out Klinghoffer.)

The late additions to the inductees is nothing new for the Rock Hall these days. They have made slight adjustments to the inductee lists in each of the last few years (Reeves Gabrels in 2019, Hugh McDonald in 2018), but a major correction this far after the inductees were announced is unusual. After the inductees were announced, Reznor was asked by Rolling Stone about getting in alone:

They are just taking you and nobody else from the band. Was that the right call?

My preference would be that my band get inducted. I’m not the one deciding that, but there’s an effort on my part to acknowledge that.

Reznor collaborated with the Rock Hall's curatorial staff on the Nine Inch Nails special exhibit and was also eager to participate in the ceremony and surrounding festivities. It seems clear that his cooperative attitude greased the skids for getting his band members inducted.

For its part, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has not officially commented on the added inductees, other than to confirm that they are now included. As usual, they will offer no explanation, criteria, or reasoning for their decision. Trent Reznor once said of the Rock Hall, "I honestly couldn’t give less of a shit,” which pretty much sums up how the Rock Hall feels about its own credibility.

The Rock Hall also announced that the next live induction ceremony will be in Cleveland in the fall of 2021. They imply that fall ceremonies will become the norm moving forward after that.

The previous "induction season" typically followed this pattern over about 7 1/2 months:

1. September: The Nominating Committee meet in New York to create the ballot. Artists are eligible if they released a record 25 years prior this year.
2. October: The Rock Hall announces the nominees. Voting begins.
3. December: The inductees are announced.
4. April: The induction ceremony is held.

Assuming the Rock Hall holds onto the current eligibility schedule, "induction season" could be nearly a full calendar year between the creation of the ballot and the induction ceremony.

The current eligibility / induction years are already a source of confusion, although it at least makes sense based on when the nominees are announced (for example, Notorious B.I.G. is a first ballot hall of famer with the class of 2020, but his eligibility was based on 2019 — 25 years after his first record in 1994). If nominees aren't announced until 2021 (despite when the NomCom meets), it will feel strange to be talking about the previous year's eligibility class. With the culmination of an "induction season" now in November, It would be a lot cleaner the entire process is within a single year. This would require a catch up year where two years-worth of new artists would become eligible at the same time.

So when should we expect to see the 2021 ballot? Under the old induction season timeline working backwards from a November ceremony, the nominees should be announced in late April or early May, with inductees announced two months after that. But it seems likely the Rock Hall may stretch things out and announce nominees as early as February, with inductees announced in May. That would leave six full months to prepare for the induction ceremony.

The future of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's Singles Category has been suspect since last year's induction ceremony segment announcing the honored songs was cut from HBO's broadcast. To cast further doubt on the viability of the category, the Rock Hall has been slow to display the inducted singles in the Museum and on the website (the songs are now listed on the site with their induction classes). There was also no mention of the category when the inductees were announced last week.

The category's sole champion to date has been Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee member Steven Van Zandt. This week he clarified the flexible criteria for the category in a tweet:

No real rules. Special songs from the soundtrack of our lives. Influential. Or important. Or fun. Mostly by artist that won’t get in but not always. Like a Rock Hall Jukebox. A few of us just pick em.

The Rock Hall describes the category with weightier (but still vague) language:

This category of recognition focuses on the songs which have established a permanence in our history and influenced rock and roll. These songs have had an immense cultural impact and merit a place in history.

So, songs could have "immense cultural impact" or just be "fun." Van Zandt will talk to a couple people and just pick a few songs to carve into history. Whatever. When literally thousands of songs meet the loose definition of the category, it effectively becomes a meaningless award.

Steven Van Zandt was recently interviewed by Brian Ives for Beasley Media to discuss the Rock Hall and his position serving on the Nominating Committee for 18 years:

Ives: You’ve advocated for a lot of legendary acts to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: the Rascals, the Dave Clark Five, Darlene Love, the Hollies. But are you getting turned on to relatively younger bands, as groups like the Cure and Radiohead get inducted?

SVZ: I’m not opposed to checking things out. It’s just mostly they don’t speak to me. I don’t make a value judgment on it. I may not love something but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I got no problem with any of that. They might just not be something that necessarily speaks to me.

Like the bands I am still trying to get people into like Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n Roll Trio and Procol Harum, The J. Geils Band. I’m still trying to get into the basic obvious bands that should be in for historic reasons. The difference is, when it comes to the Radioheads and the Cures, and those kinds of bands, I tend to think more chronologically. It’s not that they shouldn’t be in, but I just think the ones that without whom they wouldn’t exist, we need to get them in first. These are the ones that really created this thing that we are all still making a living from, you know. That includes some doo-wop groups and others that should be in.

Van Zandt echoes some of the same frustrations that fellow NomCom member Seymour Stein did when lamenting that The Clovers, Connie Francis and Ivory Joe Hunter still couldn't get nominated.

Ives then asked Van Zandt about KISS's controversial exclusion:

Ives: I think that Tom Morello turned a lot of people’s heads with his speech at KISS’s induction. It was as passionate as his speeches about worker’s rights. I know a lot of people on the nominating committee had it in for KISS. Did any of that change, in your mind, when he made that speech?

SVZ: I liked them and I had seen them. I had happened to go, Doc [McGhee], the manager, called me to come down and check them out. For some reason, I had never seen them. And I went to a show. I thought this was like maybe 20 years ago. I was quite surprised by how many good songs they had. There was one good song after the other.

Now, a lot of these things have to do with context and perspective. When they came out we were all coming out of the Renaissance period of the ’50s and ’60s. We weren’t going to judge them the same way because that was at the beginning of the early ’70s and the beginning of the fragmentation [of rock and roll], and the beginning and the hybrids and theatricality and the beginning of so many things that were now going to go against tradition. Those of us who were traditionalists were not necessarily ready for it or put it into perspective. But you know 20-30 years later, I look at them compared to even groups of the ’80s and certainly in the ’90s. And you say, you know what, they had a bunch of really good songs. And they are great performers. So no, I had absolutely no problem with KISS going in.

Some people were a little bit upset about it. But you know it’s tough. It’s tough to get in that Hall of Fame. And I get very upset when people don’t show up for it.

Ives: Like Radiohead or the Sex Pistols.

SVZ: Yeah.. I don’t like it. It’s going to be the first line in your epitaph, man. You know what I mean?

Performers:

• Depeche Mode
  
• The Doobie Brothers
  
• Whitney Houston
  
• Nine Inch Nails
  
• Notorious B.I.G.
  
• T. Rex
  

There are also two inductees receiving the Ahemet Ertegun Award for Non-Performers.Non-Performers:

• Irving Azoff
  
• Jon Landau

Inductees will be honored at the Induction Ceremony in Cleveland on May 2, 2020, and will be broadcast live on HBO.

Even though there haven’t been any polls of official voters, since 2013, there have been two different fan polls to look for clues:

1. The Rock Hall’s official Fan Vote: This poll reflects the will of the unwashed masses. It generally skews towards artists that are regulars on classic rock radio and ones with rabid fan bases who are willing to vote everyday regardless of how little the fan vote counts. Hip hop, R&B, funk and other non-traditional “rock” artists generally perform poorly in this poll. Notably, fans can select between one and five artists with each vote (many strategically vote for a single artist daily, so results tend to be top heavy).
2. The Future Rock Legends Poll: This poll (and site) generally favors objective and knowledgeable music fans who are students of the Rock Hall itself, not just their particular favorite artists. While still primarily rock-focused, contemporary artists, and hip hop and R&B artists tend to perform better than with the Rock Hall’s fan voters. The poll requires voters to select five artists, so the results are more evenly distributed. Unlike the Rock Hall’s poll, which allows daily voting, the FRL poll only permits one ballot submission per voter.

So which of these two polls best reflects the demographics of the official 1000+ voters? Which poll aligns with the results the Rock Hall voters have produced? We’ll focus on the top five results of both polls. Since the class of 2013, if you finished in the top five of the Rock Hall vote, you had a 71% chance of being inducted that year. Finishing in the top five of the FRL poll, gave you a 63% chance of being inducted. But what if an artist finished in the top five of both polls? Since 2013, that’s happened 21 times, and 76% of those artists were inducted that year, including 100% (!!!) of the artists in the last four years.*

So... who finished in the top five of both polls this year? Three artists: Pat Benatar, the Doobie Brothers, and Judas Priest.

Future Rock Legends predicts the inductees of the Rock Hall class of 2020 will be:

1. Pat Benatar: Nearly all inductions these days can be categorized as “overdue,” because the Rock Hall perpetuates a system where the backlog gets longer every year. So the fact that has taken 20 years for Pat Benatar to show up on a ballot is an indictment of the institution, not the artist.
2. The Doobie Brothers: Ever since signing on with Rock Hall Board member Irving Azoff’s management company, this induction has been in the works. Their string of radio-friendly hits and the promise of a Michael McDonald reunion performance makes them a lock, and should also provide a dance-friendly segment to the induction ceremony.
3. Judas Priest: Rob Halford and company were disappointed when they didn’t get inducted two years ago. Reports of them not performing well with voters didn’t bode well for their return to the ballot so soon. The Nominating Committee had other ideas, and decided to give them another shot this year. Plenty of Hall of Famers didn’t get in on their first try (Aerosmith, Queen, Pink Floyd, David Bowie), so Judas Priest will be in good company when they make it in.
4. T. Rex: If last year’s induction class proved anything, it was the power of the British voting bloc. Every band that made it in last year was from across the pond, adding even more voters who know the unique impact that T. Rex had in that country. Marc Bolan is one of those names that people have been lauding around here for 13+ years, and usually when that type of genius gets nominated, they get inducted immediately.
5. Nine Inch Nails: When the nominees were announced in October, nominating committee member Alan Light discussed the importance of artists staying relevant to get the attention of voters and used the NIN sample on “Old Town Road” as a great example. Since that time, Trent Reznor’s work on the critically acclaimed Watchmen score has only bolstered his case as one of the top 100 artists ever.
6. Notorious B.I.G.: Alan Light felt that there was a clear opportunity for Biggie Smalls to be inducted in his first eligible year, so the Nominating Committee opted to keep him as the only hip hop artist on the ballot so there would be no vote-splitting in that genre. That strategy worked well in 2017 when Tupac was inducted as the sole hip hop nominee on a large ballot. The Nominating Committee is doing everything it can to keep the hip hop lane clear: next year, Jay-Z becomes eligible. The following year it will be Eminem. After that comes Missy Elliott. Unless the Nominating Committee decides to widen the hip hop highway, they need to keep traffic moving, and they can’t afford to not get Biggie in this year. A single lane for hip hop has already kept LL Cool J, Outkast, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul, and Eric B. & Rakim (among many others) stuck in traffic, a problem the Rock Hall faces in nearly every genre of music.

Additional Notes:

• Like Erockracy and Iconic Rock Talk Show, we’ll take Alan Light and Joel Peresman’s suggestion seriously that Kraftwerk could be honored this year as an Early Influence inductee, because it might be the only viable path to getting them in the Rock Hall, even if they have to change the meaning of the category.
• It’s true that every Rock Hall fan vote winner has been inducted, so why not Dave Matthews Band this year? They are certainly a worthy nominee and should get inducted eventually, but their relatively tepid first place finish in the fan poll (compared to previous first place finishers) combined with a poor showing in our own poll, gives us enough pause to think they won’t make it this year. Could it happen? Absolutely. Dave Matthews is extremely well connected and has made a lot of money for the music industry, and that can never be discounted.
• The Rock Hall’s decision to extend voting an additional month effectively killed off any momentum they had from the nominations. Hopefully they won’t do that again.
• There is more uncertainty than usual with this year’s induction class. HBO’s live broadcast of the ceremony could potentially pressure the Rock Hall to induct a smaller class than usual to keep the event under four hours. On the other hand, the Museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary, so perhaps there is something special in the works. We’ll find out which way things go on January 15th when the inductees are announced.
• * - In the last four years, there were 10 artists who finished in the top five of the Rock Hall and FRL polls: The Cure, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Moody Blues, Dire Straits, The Cars, E.L.O., Pearl Jam, Chicago, and Deep Purple.
• If you like this type of analysis, we humbly request you consider supporting Future Rock Legends by purchasing a shirt in our store at Teespring. For the next two weeks, you can get a 20% discount on anything by using the Promo Code FRL20 at checkout (just $20 for a classic shirt).

As noted above, for thirteen years we have been conducting an unofficial poll on this site which requires voters to select five artists on their ballot. The results (after 1873 ballots):

1. Pat Benatar 59% (she appeared on 59% of the ballots)
2. The Doobie Brothers 52%
3. Whitney Houston 42%
4. Judas Priest 34%
5. Nine Inch Nails 34%
6. Motörhead 33%
7. Depeche Mode 33%
8. Soundgarden 32%
9. Thin Lizzy 31%
10. T. Rex 30%
11. Kraftwerk 30%
12. Notorious B.I.G. 29%
13. Rufus featuring Chaka Khan 20%
14. Dave Matthews Band 15%
15. Todd Rundgren 15%
16. MC5 11%

This class has the chance to be defined by 90s icons like Notorious B.I.G. Soundgarden and Dave Matthews Band; overdue hard rockers like Judas Priest, Motörhead and Thin Lizzy; or classic rock staples the Doobie Brothers and Pat Benatar. This year’s inductions will also be the first time HBO will broadcast the ceremony live, and we’ll see if that has any impact on the overall ceremony length and the number of inductees.

There is now official Future Rock Legends gear available in our store at Teespring. To celebrate the class of 2020, get a 20% discount on anything by using the Promo Code FRL20 at checkout (just $20 for a t-shirt). Thank you for supporting independent websites like Future Rock Legends!

The top five artists, as selected by the public, will comprise a “fans’ ballot” that will be tallied along with the other ballots to choose the 2020 inductees.

So why is the Fan Vote perceived to be so important? Why would nominated artists often urge their fans to vote every day just to get that one extra vote? Well, it just so happens that since 2013, every winner of the fan poll has been inducted (Rush, KISS, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Chicago, Journey, Bon Jovi, and Def Leppard). Assuming the Rock Hall is playing it straight with the votes, the correlation of the fans’ desires and the Voting Committee’s desires is just coincidental and not causal, but that hasn’t prevented people from thinking it is directly linked.

There is a good chance that this may be the first year in which those two voting blocks won’t see eye to eye. When the inductees are announced in mid-January, there are two possible outcomes:

1. Dave Matthews Band is a 2020 inductee: This scenario would reinforce the general perception that winning the fan poll guarantees an induction since every fan poll winner gets in. Popular artists with strong fan bases (e.g. Mötley Crüe, Phish, Jimmy Buffett, Iron Maiden) would see this as a path to induction.
2. Dave Matthews Band does not get inducted this year: This is where things get interesting. Fans of Dave Matthews Band who voted will feel like it was a waste of time and will become skeptical of the Rock Hall’s induction process (if they weren’t already). Artists may wake up to the realization that getting the fans involved is far less important than getting their friends with actual ballots to vote. The Rock Hall will likely try to defend the poll by pointing to any artists in the top five who did get inducted (e.g. Pat Benatar and the Doobie Brothers).

So how is this going to shake out? We’re guessing the Voting Committee is more in line with the voters in the FRL Fan Poll, where Dave Matthews Band is currently placed next to last (appearing on 15% of ballots), so they will fall short and the fan poll blowback can begin.

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.