On Saturday, the Rock Hall issued a brief statement to the press: "Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation."

That announcement followed a wild 36 hours since a New York Times interview was posted where the Rock Hall co-founder and 2004 inductee made comments that were dismissive of Black and women artists.

Here is the exchange in the interview which led to the controversy:

There are seven subjects in the new book; seven white guys. In the introduction, you acknowledge that performers of color and women performers are just not in your zeitgeist. Which to my mind is not plausible for Jann Wenner. Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Wonder, the list keeps going — not in your zeitgeist? What do you think is the deeper explanation for why you interviewed the subjects you interviewed and not other subjects?

Well, let me just. …

Carole King, Madonna. There are a million examples.

When I was referring to the zeitgeist, I was referring to Black performers, not to the female performers, OK? Just to get that accurate. The selection was not a deliberate selection. It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.

Oh, stop it. You’re telling me Joni Mitchell is not articulate enough on an intellectual level?

Hold on a second.

I’ll let you rephrase that.

All right, thank you. It’s not that they’re not creative geniuses. It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.

Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as “masters,” the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.

How do you know if you didn’t give them a chance?

Because I read interviews with them. I listen to their music. I mean, look at what Pete Townshend was writing about, or Jagger, or any of them. They were deep things about a particular generation, a particular spirit and a particular attitude about rock ’n’ roll. Not that the others weren’t, but these were the ones that could really articulate it.

Don’t you think it’s actually more to do with your own interests as a fan and a listener than anything particular to the artists? I think the problem is when you start saying things like “they” or “these artists can’t.” Really, it’s a reflection of what you’re interested in more than any ability or inability on the part of these artists, isn’t it?

That was my No. 1 thing. The selection was intuitive. It was what I was interested in. You know, just for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism. Which, I get it. I had a chance to do that. Maybe I’m old-fashioned and I don’t give a [expletive] or whatever. I wish in retrospect I could have interviewed Marvin Gaye. Maybe he’d have been the guy. Maybe Otis Redding, had he lived, would have been the guy.

Wenner may not have "given a fuck," but the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame clearly did. Since 2020, under chairman John Sykes, the Hall of Fame has been trying to repair their "all-boys club" reputation that was forged under Wenner, His comments were clearly incendiary enough for them to sever the last remaining ties to their founder. (The Board vote was reportedly unanimous with the exception of longtime Nominating Committee chairman Jon Landau.)

Wenner's other institution, Rolling Stone, also tried to distance themselves from his comments:

Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner has been ousted from his position on the Board of Directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. The news was announced on Saturday, following an interview with The New York Times, where he made widely criticized comments about Black and female musicians, alongside revealing other questionable editorial decisions.

Wenner is promoting his book, The Masters, which features interviews with influential artists, such as Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, John Lennon, and Bruce Springsteen — none of the artists featured are female or non-white. In the Times interview with Wenner that published on Friday, he said that Black and also female musicians “didn’t articulate at the level” of the white male musicians in his tome.

…

Beyond the controversial comments about the artists that were and were not featured in The Masters, he also revealed during the interview that he allowed interview subjects to edit transcripts of their interviews prior to publication, which is not an accepted editorial practice and Rolling Stone does not allow interviewees to approve transcripts or final copy.

After being fired from the Rock Hall's Board of Directors, Wenner released an apology, “I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences."

Those "badly chosen words" now provide the necessary context for understanding Wenner's legacy at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and beyond.

The good, the bad and the ugly of the 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee announcement:

The Good:

• The inductees! With this ballot it was impossible to make an induction class that wasn't going to be fantastic, but there are some special things about this group: Missy Elliott being the only first ballot black woman and the first female hip hop inductee; The Spinners finally getting over the hump; Rage Against the Machine injecting some much-needed rebelliousness; rewriting George Michael's legacy; honoring Willie Nelson while he's still active; and Sheryl Crow's positivity towards the institution.
• Link Wray's induction! When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame created the "Singles Category" in 2018 to honor significant songs from artists who weren't in the Hall of Fame, it felt like a consolation prize and a sign that those artists wouldn't be nominated as Performers eligible for induction. And up until now, that had held true. After nominations on the main ballot in 2014 and 2018, Link Wray was selected by the renamed "Musical Influence" committee to be a Hall of Famer this year. This opens up the potential for others who had previously been dismissed as candidates because of their Singles Category honor. It's also a direct consequence of the Hall of Fame's expanded use of the Special Categories to make up for oversights on the Performer ballot. The Hall of Fame had already thrown out the original definition of "Early Influence," which was intended to honor pre-rock 'n roll artists, so Link Wray is a natural fit for this category.
• No artists jumped from the Performer ballot to the Special Categories in the same year! This may seem like a minor point, but last year Judas Priest failed to be inducted on the regular ballot for the third time but were named in the Musical Excellence category anyway. That felt a lot like a consolation prize in the minds of fans, and even Rob Halford. LL Cool J's induction was done the same way in 2021. This year, the Rock Hall kept Chaka Khan off of the ballot clearly knowing they were going to induct her no matter what. This is a far better solution and makes the Hall of Fame seem like they aren't insulting artists while they're trying to honor them. Credit goes to new Nominating Committee chairman Rick Krim for the new discipline (assuming he's responsible).
• Another huge induction class! In each year under the direction of chairman John Sykes, the Rock Hall has had at least 13 inductees. In the years just prior to him taking over, classes were usually around seven, which made the backlog grow deeper every year. Whether the new standard of 13 is enough to make a dent in the snub list remains to be seen, but the larger classes have helped tremendously to honor artists who never would have had a chance in the old system.
• The Fan Vote's impact on the results. After last year's Fan Vote top five all got swept into the Hall of Fame, the significance of the results may have been overblown in the minds of fans. Yes, this year's winner got in again, but outside of that, the others in the top five were shut out. This was a similar result to 2020 when the only top five finisher to get in were the Doobie Brothers, and the runaway fan vote winner Dave Matthews Band did not. This year, Cyndi Lauper fans put up an admirable fight for first place, but ultimately finished in second. Similarly, in 2021, Fela Kuti's fans pushed his name to second in the poll. But after the disappointment of him missing out, they completely abandoned voting for him in 2022 so he finished last. If Cyndi Lauper or Warren Zevon return to the ballot next year, we'll see if their fans return with the same passion they had this year.
• Returning to Cleveland in 2024. The Rock Hall confirmed they are recommitting to hosting the induction ceremony in Cleveland every other year, beginning in 2024. Other cities in the rotation like New York and Los Angeles will have to share the "odd" years (L.A. in 2025? Brooklyn in 2027?), not to mention other cities like London and Nashville that John Sykes teased could get into the rotation.

The Bad:

• The inductee announcement. The Rock Hall tweeted on April 30th that the announcement would be made on May 3rd, but with no additional time or information. Since the SiriusXM deal apparently expired, they were silent as well. The Rock Hall finally tweeted a video of LL Cool J reading the names just after 8am Eastern, and directed people to Apple Music 1 to hear the "complete announcement." That show didn't seem to be live and have any of the energy or discussions that existed on SiriusXM.
• The length of the Fan Vote. There's no reason to encourage fans to vote daily for nearly three months for something with such little impact. That's not an argument in favor of increasing the importance of the Fan Vote, but just to decrease the time devoted to it all.

• The metal problem. Anyone who follows the Rock Hall closely knew that Iron Maiden had no shot at being inducted by way of the Performer ballot. The Voting Committee has proven time and time again that unless an artist has had multiple radio-friendly "hits," they're not interested. The Hall of Fame keeps using the Special Categories to address this deficiency in their system, but they may need to provide more guidance to the voters about what they should be rewarding if they want it to actually change. (Go back to explicitly saying it's not about sales and hit records. Remind voters that innovation and influence is critical. These were some of the guiding principles they used to promote, but have clearly strayed away from.)

The Ugly:

• Messy personal histories. Don Cornelius's career is unquestionably worth celebrating, it's just unfortunate his personal life puts a stain on his legacy.

Like any other year, there are plenty of other things to criticize about the induction process, but on the whole, this year has fewer issues than most and has lots of reasons to celebrate.

In recent weeks there has been renewed public interest in the amount of women in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame after influential writer Jessica Hopper, annoyed about the Hall's posts celebrating Women's History Month, tweeted the sobering statistics.

Do they tho? 719 inductees to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, only 61 are women. That's 8.48%. C'mon @rockhall, it's FUCKING GRIM BRO when yr doing worse than women-artists-on-country radio numbers (10%) and women headliners at major music festivals (13%) https://t.co/YvpCvwZ72o

— Jessica Hopper (@jesshopp) March 10, 2023

Hole frontwoman Courtney Love noticed the tweets and wrote a scathing indictment of the institution in an op-ed in The Guardian.

If so few women are being inducted into the Rock Hall, then the nominating committee is broken. If so few Black artists, so few women of colour, are being inducted, then the voting process needs to be overhauled. Music is a lifeforce that is constantly evolving – and they can’t keep up. Shame on HBO for propping up this farce.

If the Rock Hall is not willing to look at the ways it is replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honour what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionised and contributed to popular music – well, then let it go to hell in a handbag.

The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde followed with a public post on Facebook dismissing the institution as "establishment backslapping" and saying she didn't want to be associated with it.

With all of that as context, here are updated graphs showing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's record of inducting women.

First, showing the split among all individuals who have been inducted (all categories):

Next, showing the split between all-male acts versus artists with at least one woman (Performer category only):

Finally, the numbers on the Rock Hall's Nominating Committee over the years:

As a point of reference, out of the 183 inducted members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, 25 are women (13.7%). Full list of the members of the Country Music Hall of Fame can be found at Future Country Legends.

The Country Music Hall of Fame inductees are selected by a secret committee run by the Country Music Association (CMA). It's unknown what the gender split is for those involved.

For more on the subject of Women in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, review our extensive archive on the subject dating back over a decade.

Last month, John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, announced that Jon Landau had stepped down as the head of the Nominating Committee. Landau, in addition to his day job as Bruce Springsteen's manager, had served as chairman or co-chairman of the group since 1994. John Sykes:

Jon [Landau], throughout his nearly 30-year tenure leading the performers nominating committee, has shaped the look and sound of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame we see today. He possesses an incredible mind for music and over the years has consistently updated the committee membership and encouraged the group to keep pace with the evolving sounds that have moved the culture. Jon was an early proponent of the Hall of Fame's recognizing hip-hop as an important driver of the evolution of rock 'n' roll. He notified us after overseeing this year’s ballot that he was stepping down after having delivered yet another group of iconic performers. We will miss him.

After playing such an integral role in the Hall of Fame for the majority of its existence, Landau deserves the same credit for the successes and blame for the failures that the institution itself receives.

John Sykes named his longtime friend, and former MTV co-worker, Rick Krim, the next chairman of the Nominating Committee. Sykes again:

I’ve had the privilege of knowing Rick from our very early days together at MTV and VH1, and I’ve watched him firsthand grow into a gifted talent executive. Rick has a rare combination of knowledge and passion that has made him a valuable member of our nominating committee for 15 years. What makes Rick the perfect person for this position is that, like Jon, he can manage a diverse group of committee members without leading with his own opinion.

So what else do we know about Rick Krim?

• Born in 1959
• From Williamsport, Pennsylvania
• He was an accounting major at Bucknell University
• Worked at MTV between 1982-1994 and VH1 from 2001-2014
• Moved from New York to L.A. in 2015
• Asked to join the Nominating Committee in 2008/2009 because he felt that prog rock wasn't being well represented
• Has publicly expressed support for Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Yes, Genesis, the Doobie Brothers, Radiohead, and Oasis
• He was executive producer of I'm Going to Break Your Heart (Wilco doc), CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story, Meat Loaf's Behind the Music episode, and many VH1 Divas specials
• Co-produces the Rock Hall Induction Ceremony each year

You can find out more about Krim here, here, and here.

So does Krim's prog and metal fandom mean there will be significant changes in the types of artists named on future Rock Hall ballots? Time will tell, but it seems unlikely. John Sykes hand-picked Krim to continue executing his vision, so it's a safe bet that things generally stay the course.

But! If Krim wanted to put his own stamp on the Rock Hall, here are 10 ideas we came up with to get started. Here's hoping we look back on this transition as the dawning of a new age for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction process.

The day the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ballot was announced, Nominating Committee member Alan Light appeared on SiriusXM to explain some of the thinking that went into the choices.

One of the more controversial nominees this year was Lionel Richie as a solo artist instead of Richie's previous group The Commodores. Alan Light explained the dilemma:

"We have kicked around in previous meetings, is it the Commodores, is it Lionel… What’s the right way to handle this? Maybe they’re more the funk band, does Lionel encompass that piece of his history, does that tell that story?

"I was thinking about Lionel.. There’s always that slot at Bonnaroo for the legacy headliner artist. They had McCartney, they had Elton, they had Billy Joel… and Lionel Richie was that slot one year. And I think he may be the only one in that slot that isn’t in the Rock Hall. And when you line him up.. Are you going to argue he’s on the level with Etlon and Billy, well when you put him in front of a crowd like that, it kind of feels like he’s in that altitude. He’s in that game. He’s got that sort of catalog, he’s got those sort of hits. People love him that much."

SIriusXM host Nik Carter also made a strong case for why The Commodores should be in. Alan Light responded:

"This is me speaking, not on the behalf of the committee. The icon of Lionel Richie has outstripped the status of the Commodores. That he is at that level of a familiar, and a celebrated, and a beloved name…I just think he jumped ahead on the line. I will certainly say that he’s got a better shot on the ballot than the Commodores would with the voting body.

"But if you’ve got to place your bets, you’re not putting them both on the ballot, you’ve got to put one on the ballot. I just think between American Idol host, writing “We are the World,” and all of the touchstones, he headlines at Bonnaroo, he’s that sort of a figure. I think it made an impact on people last year seeing the way people responded to Lionel when we saw him at the induction, he inducted Clarence Avant last year, and seeing the way the room and the other artists responded to Lionel Richie left an impact on those of us who were thinking of this stuff.

"You’re putting your chips somewhere, I just think if you’re advocating for him, if you’re advocating for that catalog, I think it’s a lot better shot with his name on that ballot in front of the whole voting body than the Commodores name would be."

Light had also mentioned he was not good at predicting who the voting body favors, but he obviously feels confident about the Nominating Committee's choice. While a Lionel Richie solo induction doesn't technically remove The Commodores from consideration, as we have seen with the Nile Rodgers / Chic situation, it seems likely their future induction chances would drop to almost zero.

Light also addressed the induction chances of the MC5 (6th nomination) and the New York Dolls (3rd nomination):

"It scares me to see the MC5 and the New York Dolls on the ballot. It scares me a little bit to see Duran Duran and Eurythmics on the ballot. Because when you have bands that are seen in a similar sort of lane [that can split votes]."

…

"The Hall of Fame continues to grow the voting body, bring other people into vote, younger people in, diverse voting body and everything else, but the biggest chunk of voters now who get this ballot and have to vote on this ballot are people in the Hall of Fame. People like the surviving members of Little Anthony & the Imperials, they’re like the 28 guys in Chicago, you know, there’s a lot of people getting this ballot, and no disrespect to people who are legendary artists, but who may not really know who the hell the New York Dolls and the MC5 are. And that’s a hurdle to get over. That is a challenge."

Alan Light on the expanded use of the special categories in 2021:

"The Hall was obviously more active, more aggressive in the non-ballot inductions last year. Putting in so many through the Early Influence and Musical Excellence and everybody seemed totally fine. LL went in as a Musical Excellence winner and gave the performance of the night, that’s what everybody walked away talking about and no one was like, “oh, but he didn’t really get in that way, he got in this way.” It was kind of liberating for the Hall to see, maybe we’ve got a freer hand to be able to, with people that have been nominated a bunch but don’t get in but we really think deserve it, to people that are a little more left of center or out of mainstream or whatever it is, I think we’re going to see more people going in through those doors than we have in years past. And I think that’s great, I think it worked great last year and we got a lot of worthy people in. And I wouldn’t be surprised if with some of these acts, like the [New York] Dolls, that ultimately is what ends up happening. I don’t know that that’s going to happen this year, but that wouldn’t surprise me."

Asked which two artists he put on the table at the meeting, Alan Light said he nominated Eminem and Mary J. Blige. On the question of why Eminem and not OutKast, Light responded:

"This was going to be the year that I was going to stand up and bang hard for OutKast, but on the one hand it’s obvious, but Eminem is a force that we cannot underestimate. The guy was the biggest selling artist from 2000-2010 in the world, and the third biggest selling artist between 2010-2020. That is a dominance that is a generational sort of impact. And 16 Grammys, and winning the Oscar for Lose Yourself, the impact across so many not just the rap audience but a rock audience. I said OutKast has got to wait because I don’t want to put those two, again I’m afraid of a split vote. I think it’s too much to say people would vote for OutKast and Eminem as two of their five. I’m still fighting for hip hop. I want to take the wins where I can get them. Like Eminem’s a win. Let’s do that and get him and double back. Because I want to continue to put in the deserving bodies where I see an opportunity to do that."

Two years ago, Light named Carol Kaye as the biggest Rock Hall snub. But despite the expanded use of the special categories, she's still on the outside. Inductees in the special categories should be announced with the performer winners in May.

The New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, and N.P.R. are among the organizations that don't permit their reporters from voting for industry awards, such as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to maintain their independence from the organizations they cover. Receiving an honor like a Rock Hall induction has the ability to "change the trajectory of a performer’s career," so the NY Times takes the stance that "journalists should report the news, not help make it."

From the New York Times policy titled "Ethical Journalism":

This prohibition on taking part in sponsored competitions applies to film festivals or awards in which critics are asked to vote and to such competitions as the Tony Awards, the Heisman Trophy, most valuable player and rookie of the year honors and admission to sports halls of fame. Cooperation of this sort puts the paper’s independence into question.

From the L.A. Times Ethics Guidelines:

The Times, like many other news organizations, does not allow its sportswriters to participate in voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame, college football’s Heisman Trophy and national rankings in college sports, among other areas. Participation in these polls creates possibilities for conflicts of interest. Similar issues arise in the arts when journalists are invited to vote for awards and prizes in film, literature and other fields.

In general, it is inappropriate for reporters to vote for awards and rankings; doing so could reasonably be seen as compromising their objectivity. For critics, whose job is to express opinions on the merits of creative works, awards voting is less troublesome.

Nevertheless, any staff member invited to vote for an award must first receive the permission of the editor or managing editor. This pertains as well to anyone asked to serve as a contest juror or to vote on an award that honors journalism. No staff member who votes for an award — whether in sports, the arts or any other area — may be part of The Times’ news coverage of that award.

Is being among 1000+ voters for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame enough of an honor to sanitize anyone's coverage of the institution? Probably not. How about being one of 30 people on the Nominating Committee? Of course it does.

At a minimum those who participate in the Rock Hall induction process should disclose that fact every time they write about or discuss the Hall of Fame. The Rock Hall itself has never cared about conflicts of interest in their induction process which is why it is critical to have voices who maintain journalistic independence.

For contrast, Rolling Stone has done some admirable reporting about the many controversies at the Grammys the last couple of years, but they have never written critically about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an institution despite its many similar flaws. The Rock Hall, of course, was led for a long time by Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, so the direct ties between the magazine and institution were never exactly a secret, but it's a significant loss when one of the few music journalism outlets still won't objectively cover a major music institution.

Future Rock Legends has provided independent coverage of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame since 2006 and does not receive an official ballot.

With its 2021 class, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame took a significant step in a new direction. The first induction class under chairman of the board John Sykes is notable for many reasons. Some quick thoughts on this year's class:

• The Hall inducted “the most diverse list of Inductees in the history of the organization,” according to the Hall’s own press release.This year has three performer inductees which include at least one woman, the most since 1996. Huge credit to Sykes for making this a priority with the Nominating Committee and then delivering.
• There are 13 artists this year, the Rock Hall’s largest class since 2012, and tied for the fifth largest class ever. With the massive backlog of worthy candidates in all genres and categories, seven inductees per year wasn’t cutting it, so this is an encouraging development.
• Welcome Tina Turner, Carole King, and Dave Grohl to the “Clyde McPhatter Club” for becoming two-time Hall of Fame inductees. That is the most new members added since 1997.
• The Rock Hall has abandoned the idea of a live ceremony (for now). There is inherently tension between the time constraints of an induction ceremony and the number of artists you can properly honor. By adding the even tighter limits of a live HBO ceremony, it apparently became too much for the Rock Hall to accept. Good for them for opting for more inductees and letting the ceremony run long.
• Kraftwerk finally gets in. Having been nominated six times since 2003 and topping a number of lists of the biggest snubs, Kraftwerk just couldn’t get over the hump with the Voting Committee. There was almost universal agreement of their importance, but the Rock Hall’s system was too broken to get them inducted as performers. So after floating the idea last year of expanding the meaning of the “Early Influence” category to include genre pioneers, rather than just pre-rock and roll era artists, the Rock Hall decided to go for it this year, inducting Kraftwerk and Gil Scott-Heron, both of whom released their first recordings in 1970. The Hall’s new definition of the category is so loose as to be meaningless, so the category can be used for anything moving forward.
• With the hip hop backlog quickly getting out of control, the Rock Hall decided it needed LL Cool J out of the way. Like Kraftwerk, the Rock Hall couldn’t find a way to induct him as a performer (his rightful category), so they decided to just induct him in the catch-all Musical Excellence category, which they have been using recently for artists who can’t get in on the performer ballot (Nile Rodgers) or using it to fast track an induction (Ringo Starr). It’s a major indictment of the Rock Hall’s induction system that they have to resort to these tactics to induct seminal artists like LL Cool J.
• Heavy metal gets an acknowledgement with the induction of Randy Rhoads. Metal fans are rightfully frustrated that obvious Hall of Fame-worthy artists like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden get passed over year after year. The induction of guitar legend Rhoads gives metal fans some small hope that the Rock Hall won’t completely abandon the genre.
• The induction categories somehow became more of a mess than they already were. The new descriptions in the press release are a meaningless word salad (more to come on this later). We have been critical of the Hall of Fame’s blurring the category lines since 2009 when Wanda Jackson jumped from the Performer ballot to an Early Influence inductee, but this year has a whole new “f*ck it” attitude emanating from the Rock Hall. Sure, the category distinctions don’t mean much to the casual fan, but this is the equivalent of a football player being enshrined in Canton as a coach, just because he gave an inspiring pre-game speech once.
• What the Rock Hall should have done is alter their system to allow Kraftwerk and LL Cool J to be inducted as performers with a “Nominating Committee Selection” footnote and be done with it. Destroying the meaning of the other categories to wedge in valid performers is completely ridiculous and undermines the reputation of the entire institution. This is undoubtedly John Sykes’s biggest mistake this year.
• After averaging less than two inductees in the “special” categories in recent years, the Rock Hall went all-in this year, with a whopping seven inductees in this class. In a year in which the Rock Hall has focused on diversity, they neglected to include any women among the seven inductees.
• The 2021 tally: 18 men and 7 women (28%). That increases the overall percentage of women in the Rock Hall by 0.5% up to 8.1%.
• If you can ignore the categories and how the artists were selected (which most people do anyway), this is a *fantastic* Rock Hall class that has something for everyone. The induction ceremony has the potential to be an all-time great.
• The Rock Hall now says they have over 1,200 voters, up from about 800 five years ago. For years they have been trying to diversify their Voting Committee, so it seems they are just adding hundreds of voters to dilute the power of their own inductees.
• John Sykes’s quote in the press release about the Hall honoring “artists whose music created the sound of youth culture” is a clunky rewording of the Motown Records motto “The Sound of Young America,” presumably to keep it from being U.S.-centric?

Follow us on Twitter here for the latest Rock & Roll Hall of Fame news and analysis.

In another universe where there isn't an endless backlog, this could be the 2021 Rock Hall ballot — styled after the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. (Illustration by Future Rock Legends)

One of the primary reasons that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame generates so much derision from fans is that there are literally hundreds of artists who can make a Hall of Fame case, but due to the nature of the induction process, will never get a shot on the ballot. The unfairness of the system creates a visceral reaction among casual observers of the Rock Hall who simply can’t understand how legendary artists don't even get a chance after decades of eligibility. Don’t all these artists deserve an opportunity to have their names appear on a Hall of Fame ballot, ideally while they're still alive?

Compare the Rock Hall’s current system, where even once-in-a-generation artists can’t get on the ballot, with the Baseball Hall of Fame induction process where every notable player gets a shot at their first opportunity.

Some quick background: players are eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame five years after they retire. In that first year of eligibility, a six-member Screening Committee adds every reasonable new candidate to the ballot along with all players that met a minimum 5% vote threshold from the previous year. That leads to ballots that typically have anywhere between 25 and 40 names. When the votes come in, marginal candidates quickly fall out of contention for the next year, but others are allowed up to 10 chances to get the 75% approval needed for induction before they fall off the ballot and are left for the Eras Committees to consider (formerly called the Veterans Committee).

The benefits of Baseball's system:

• Every quality candidate gets at least one chance on the ballot.
• A 10-year nomination cap provides enough time to build momentum for those who don’t get in right away, and also provides urgency for the voters when a player’s reaches their final ballot.
• Voters can vote for between 0 and 10 candidates each year, which gives voters plenty of options to give support to all those who deserve it without having to vote strategically.
• A low vote threshold to get back on the ballot allows nominees to get a multiple chances if they get caught in a stacked year.
• Players on the ballot are all from roughly the same era.

All of these attributes stand in stark contrast to the Rock Hall’s system:

• Most quality candidates never get nominated.
• There’s no nomination cap, so voters can endlessly procrastinate voting for certain artists who seem to come up every year.
• Voters are limited to selecting five artists from the ballot which leads people to vote strategically for lesser known candidates over obvious Hall of Famers, which occasionally backfires.
• While some artists get multiple chances on the ballot, many are “one and done,” even after they had never gotten a fair shot at induction because they were nominated in a strong year, or they were pitted against similar artists which split the vote.
• In any given year, voters are forced to compare artists from the 1960s to those up through the 1990s, when the context of their careers could not be more different.
• Nearly every nominated artist is Hall of Fame-worthy, making the voters choices come down to personal preference. Recently, a great induction class can be created by pulling six random artists from the ballot, since they all have their merits.

If the Rock Hall adopted a system like Baseball’s, the image at the top of this post could be the 2021 ballot, with its mix of newly eligible artists and those who have recently missed out. That fantasy ballot has many advantages over a typical Rock Hall ballot:

• Those with Hall of Fame careers clearly stand out from the rest.
• Artists with good careers get a chance at renewed exposure through their Rock Hall nomination.
• Evaluating contemporaries is much easier and a lot more fun to debate.
• It's fair to the artists and their fans.

Could the Rock Hall ever adopt a system like the Baseball Hall of Fame’s? Sure, anything is possible. There is nothing sacred about the current induction process. The Hall of Fame has always had the ability to do whatever it wants and be the type of institution it wants to be. A fair Rock Hall system structured like baseball’s, with the potential for large induction classes, a robust Veteran’s Committee, and a clear and transparent voting process could ultimately lead to a Hall of Fame that doesn't make people so mad.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee will be meeting next month to craft the 2021 ballot. In recent years there has been mounting pressure from artists and critics to induct more women into the Hall of Fame. Let's ask and answer some questions regarding the numbers.

Q: How many women have been inducted into the Rock Hall?

A: Between 1986 and 2020, there have been 923 people inducted into the Hall of Fame, 70 are women (7.6%). The following graph shows how many men and women have been inducted each year.

Q: Aren't those numbers misleading because for a female-fronted band like Blondie, that only counts as one woman and six men?

A: Only 15.4% of inducted artists include at least one woman. On average, the Rock Hall inducts about 1.5 artists with a woman per year versus 8 which are all-men.

Q: What is with the gaps in the chart?

A: No women were inducted in the Rock Hall classes of 1986, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2016.

Q: Greg Harris, the Rock Hall Museum President, said the low numbers are "a reflection of the amount of music that was made in the 50's and 60's, and I think we get more of an explosion of female performers especially in the 80's and 90's." So that must mean the female numbers are trending up?

A: The graphs above certainly don't show any upward trends overall. If you look only at inductees who began after 1980, five out of 23 have a female member (Stevie Nicks solo, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Joan Jett), and all of them began their solo recording careers in the early 80s, which means there is no female representation for artists starting between 1985-1994. The 22% of artists from the 80s and 90s is higher than the overall 15%, but it's hardly an "explosion."

Q: How many women have been inducted twice?

A: In 2019, Stevie Nicks became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock Hall for a second time. Twenty-one men have been inducted twice, and Eric Clapton has been honored three times.

Q: Who decides which artists get inducted?

A: Some quick background on the induction system: The Rock Hall's process of determining its honorees begins with an appointed Nominating Committee consisting of roughly 30 members (artists, label executives, writers). That committee meets once per year and develops the performer ballot, which then gets sent to the 1000+ member Voting Committee, consisting of all living Hall of Famers plus an undisclosed list of others in the music industry (again, artists, writers, industry people). The five to seven artists who receive the most votes get inducted.

The Rock Hall has historically been secretive about who is on the Nominating Committee (and they still won't provide the list when asked), but we have been listing it on Future Rock Legends for years. While the Rock Hall argues that it's lack of women inductees is just a reflection of the gender imbalance in rock history, there is no such justification for allowing a system that they fully control to continue to have a gender imbalance such as this:

When you look at the above graph, which shows that just 11% of Nominating Committee members have been women over the years, it's hard not to think that the system has been rotten from the start, especially when some men in the group were abusers of women (or were apologists for it). Look at how overwhelming the numbers were between 1999-2006, and then scroll back up and look at how many women were inducted during that era:

The slow and steady gains in recent years looks positive, but it hasn't been enough to move the needle on the ballot or with the inductees. Just three women were nominated last year, and only Whitney Houston was inducted.

It should also be mentioned here that of the 74 people who have been listed as committee members which make selections in the Non-Performer, Early Influence and Sidemen categories, only three have been women (4%).

What should the Rock Hall do about any of this?

Well, if they don't do anything, it will be more of the same, despite Jann Wenner's insistence that in 20 years people will be complaining too many women are getting inducted. The 2020 class added twenty men to the Voting Committee and zero women, which just exacerbates the imbalance in the system.

A better option would be to listen to Rock Hall critics like Evelyn McDonnell. In her piece about the issue titled The Manhandling of Rock 'N' Roll History, she outlined three steps the Rock Hall needs to do to begin to right the ship:

1. Flood the nominating committee and voting membership with more women.
2. Reduce the voting power of members inducted as players in bands
3. Nominate a shit ton of all-female bands next year.

This will be the first induction class under the new leadership of John Sykes, who took over as Chairman of the Board for the Rock Hall Foundation at the beginning of 2020. While Sykes inherits the Rock Hall's dismal record of nominating and inducting women, he can't be expected to correct 35 years of gender imbalance overnight, as the Hall of Fame's history has already been written. What Sykes does have full control over and can correct immediately is the gross inequity of the induction system itself. If Jon Landau, the Nominating Committee's chair, won't diversify his membership this year, he should be removed from his post. He has had 22 years at the helm and has clearly failed to bring equity of opportunity to the process, even after critical outcry.

The Nominating Committee is just one piece of the puzzle that needs to be fixed. It's safe to assume that the gender split of the Voting Committee is also heavily titled towards men. McDonnell's suggestion to dilute the voting power of bands is a great idea and should be implemented for the class of 2021. Combine that with a fresh look at the non-inductee voters to make sure there is a true diversity of voices casting ballots.

The Rock Hall has been predominantly run by white, male, baby boomers for its first 35 years. They built a museum and a cultural institution that tells the story of rock and roll as they experienced it, but it's an incomplete history. It's long past due to start a new chapter born from an equitable system.

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.

• 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.

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.

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?

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.

On an episode of the "Who Cares About the Rock Hall?" podcast, current and former Nominating Committee members Seymour Stein, Bob Merlis and Andy Paley lamented that dozens of 50's and 60's artists like The Clovers, Connie Francis and Ivory Joe Hunter still hadn't been inducted into the Rock Hall. When SEYMOUR STEIN, one of the four most powerful people in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's history, can't seem to even get those artists on the ballot after 33 years, what does that say about the system?

At the other end of the musical spectrum, last year the Rock Hall failed to induct Radiohead, a singular artist who stand head and shoulders above their peers. The Rock Hall Voting Committee either were too out of touch to recognize their significance (bad), or assumed they would get in so they didn't spend one of their five votes on them (worse). Either reason illustrates fundamental problems that the Rock Hall refuses to address.

This year, artists with undeniably Hall of Fame-worthy careers such as Outkast and Beck couldn’t even get nominated, and it seems like they weren’t even seriously considered. Imagine the Baseball Hall of Fame not finding room on its ballot for Derek Jeter in his first year of eligibility. It’s ridiculous. Getting inducted into the Rock Hall is great, but becoming a first ballot Hall of Famer is special. Exceptional artists of every generation should be inducted on the first ballot and get the honor of that distinction, but because the list of worthy candidates is so long, the Nominating Committee feels an obligation to try to keeping correcting past mistakes and in the process creates brand new ones.

Those are just a few of the symptoms of this arbitrary and broken system that everyone seems to complain about on the inside and the outside. Many of these problems are created by the induction process:

• The Nominating Committee selects an arbitrary number of nominees each year.
• Voters can only select up to five artists from the ballot, even if they feel more are worthy. This leads to voters who will try to vote strategically rather than based on qualifications. Seriously, why is this rule in place? Why not let people vote for everyone they feel is worthy?
• The yearly cap on inductees has put the Rock Hall hopelessly behind. Ideally, the Snub List wouldn't grow every year, but it does.
• The bulk of the Voting Committee membership is made up of Hall of Famers who tend to vote for their peers rather than those they have influenced.
• Every Hall of Famer gets a vote, but does it make sense that Parliament-Funkadelic members once had 16 times the voting power of a solo inductee?
• There are no term limits for the Nominating Committee or Voting Committee.
• There is a general impression (even on the NomCom) that the HBO broadcasts of the induction ceremony cause smaller induction classes with more populist artists.
• There is no official criteria provided by the Rock Hall to judge artists by. Each nominator and voter brings their own personal definition as to what constitutes a Hall of Famer. (On that Rock Hall podcast, Andy Paley kept emphasizing the Fame part in the name, even though the Rock Hall has previously made it clear that shouldn't be used as a qualification.)
• A large segment of the Voting Committee doesn’t believe that non-traditional “rock” artists should be inducted at all, despite the fact that the Rock Hall has always tried to include all branches of the rock and roll tree.
• Nearly every sub genre of rock and roll is underrepresented in the Hall of Fame. Prog, metal, hip hop, punk, R&B, pop, electronic, new wave, post punk, alternative.... it goes on forever.
• The Rock Hall Museum has an incentive to favor artists who do well in popularity polls rather than by their merits.
• The Nominating Committee has traditionally had a predominantly white male composition.
• Nominating Committee members are not required to recuse themselves when dealing with artists with which they have a financial relationship.
• The Rock Hall has honored marginal artists for questionable reasons which has significantly lowered the bar for induction, creating more confusion about what constitutes a Hall of Fame career.
• There’s no eligibility sunset, so the same old artists get considered every. single. year, and it feels like they win some sort of lottery when they randomly get pulled out from the hat and make the ballot.

This is just a short list of issues that the Rock Hall fails to deal with year after year. The men in charge of the process (Jann Wenner, Jon Landau and Joel Peresman) have been happy to maintain the status quo as the integrity of the Rock Hall continues to erode. Even when the Rock Hall tries something new (the Fan Poll, the Singles Category), they find a way to screw it up.

It’s clear that the Rock Hall needs new leadership to start fixing these problems, but apparently their complacency extends to the highest levels.

In many ways, Questlove is the ideal Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee member. He has a rich, personal appreciation of a broad spectrum of musical genres, knows musical history, has worked with a hundreds of the best artists of all time, and is in tune with (and been a part of) the last quarter century of music. Last November, Questlove was asked by Gold Derby's Zach Laws about his experience on the Nominating Committee and he shared some of his thoughts and frustrations about the "interesting and amazing" process he calls, "the musical recreation of Twelve Angry Men." Some highlights:

• Questlove advocated for Bill Withers in 2015 and got him nominated (and ultimately inducted). He thinks part of the reason Withers was overlooked for so long is because his name is at the end of the alphabet and people don’t have the patience to work through to the end of the list.
• Questlove mentioned that there have been occasions where he'll say a name, and people in the room won't know that they aren't already in the Hall of Fame. “A lot of times I’ll sit on the board and I’ll say a name, and they’ll be like ‘Todd Rundgren's not in the Hall of Fame?’”
• Questlove shared the moment at the 2013 meeting when KISS was finally nominated, thanks to a passionate speech from Tom Morello: "The star of that board room is Tom Morello. I'm grateful and so fortunate to have been within two feet of him when he gave that KISS speech. It was so damn inspirational, even Jann Wenner was going to bust out into Pomp and Circumstance.”
• Questlove compares the process to Washington political lobbying. He talks about making deals with Stevie Van Zandt before the meeting to help each other get artists on the ballot (trading a J. Geils Band vote for a Janet Jackson vote, for example).
• Questlove believes there should be more women in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
• Sometimes it’s the biggest names that have the hardest time getting attention. Questlove talks about discussions at last year’s meeting and how Radiohead almost got forgotten. “Radiohead was so obvious that it was almost like, I'm sure he'll mention it, or she'll mention it. Radiohead was the last name mentioned after a 3-hour process.”
• Questlove, like Chubby Checker, believes “people should get their roses while they're living.”
• ”It's such a narrow process to get through those doors... I wish there was a process that would allow at least 7 to 9 members per year. Because there are a lot of names on there that will get passed up and passed up and passed up. But I love the politics of it all. That's the fun part.”

• Alan Light personally used his two picks to advocate for Janet Jackson and The Cure, and got both on the ballot.
• Light felt that Janet Jackson deserved one more chance on the ballot this year because of increased exposure as a result of her tour and other awards.
• The Nominating Committee has been rotating through The Cure, The Smiths and Depeche Mode on recent ballots, but Light felt the time was right to give The Cure another chance because of their 40th anniversary shows and other publicity.
• When asked why Judas Priest wasn’t nominated again after doing well in the fan poll last year, Light revealed that they had done “horrendously” in the actual Voting Committee tally, so they decided to shift the focus to Def Leppard.
• Majewski mentioned that the Nominating Committee now has 30 members -- 23 men and seven women (up from six last year). Light said there were 28 people in the room this year (Seymour Stein was calling in from L.A., as revealed on the Who Cares About the Rock Hall? podcast.)
• Light stressed that the Nominating Committee crafts the ballot in a way where they try not to nominate artists who are in a similar lane, so as not to split the vote.
• Alan Light regarding the Stevie Nicks nomination: ”In the Nominating room, Pat Benatar came up, Cyndi Lauper came up, The Go-Go's came up and the Eurythmics were in this conversation, and not that it comes down to this, but the women in the room really did start to coalesce around Stevie and push things that way out of the mix that was there. That was the one that --and it's silly to say that women are one piece of what's here-- when it's women of the 80s, I don't think you put Pat, Cyndi and Stevie on a ballot together in the same way that you don't put The Cure, The Smiths and Depeche on the ballot together. It was actually the women in the committee who sort of led the focus to Stevie out of that list.”
• Alan Light said that Dave Grohl was responsible for getting Devo nominated this year and Paul Shaffer is behind The Zombies appearances on the ballot.
• Light admitted that the Nominating Committee did in fact take the Rock Hall Museum’s Voice Your Choice visitor poll into account when considering the nominees. Stevie Nicks and Def Leppard were the top two leaders all summer and both were nominated. Rock Hall Foundation President Joel Peresman for some reason tried to deny the poll’s influence to the Plain Dealer, "The new in-museum voting system does not factor into the nomination process as the members of the nominating committee aren't made aware of that. And we rely on their independent thinking, which in this case happened to match up.”
• Light mentioned that David Fricke has previously advocated for The Guess Who and that Stevie Van Zandt tries to nominate Procol Harum every year.
• Rock Hall Museum President Greg Harris and Rock Hall VP of Education and Visitor Engagement Jason Hanley both joined the show to discuss the nominees. Each separately mentioned how cool it was that Stevie Nicks would become the first woman to be a multiple inductee.
• Despite having written a book about him, Light didn’t think Jeff Buckley should be inducted into the Rock Hall.

• Although the criteria for nomination is vague, Trakin personally valued influence, originality and success
• Trakin believes there should be a Veteran’s Committee
• The Rock Hall holds the annual nomination meeting in New York, so members who don’t live there have to pay for their travel (the Rock Hall doesn’t allow participation via conference call). Trakin revealed that the manager for Hall & Oates paid for his travel expenses from L.A. knowing that Trakin would advocate for them at the meeting. (More on this below.)
• Trakin said The Replacements have a lot of enemies in the music industry, which may hurt their chances of getting nominated again
• Although he’s not on the Nominating Committee, Irving Azoff is a powerful force in the process and he may have helped his client Bon Jovi get in this year
• Trakin suggested that the Doobie Brothers may also benefit from having signed with Azoff Music, and could appear on the ballot soon
• Trakin personally nominated and advocated Blondie and Hall & Oates, but also supported the New York Dolls
• Trakin felt Atlantic Records artists had an advantage especially when Ahmet Ertegun was alive
• Although he never nominated them, Trakin discussed the lasting influence of Suicide and feels they deserve to be inducted
• Some members of the Nominating Committee use visual aids like PowerPoint in their presentations for particular artists
• It is Trakin’s opinion that Radiohead didn’t get inducted this year due to their unwillingness to attend the ceremony
• Trakin argues for more transparency in the process and that the fan poll should be worth more than a single vote (he mentioned 10%)
• Trakin said that Jann Wenner is the biggest culprit of holding personal grudges against artists

By far, the most surprising revelation of the interview was Trakin’s willingness to admit that the manager of Hall & Oates paid for his way to New York so he could advocate for the duo in the Nominating Committee meeting. Trakin’s advocacy certainly seems genuine, but this type of pay-to-play transaction only gives Rock Hall critics who say the system is hopelessly corrupt even more ammunition. If Trakin is allowed (or at least not prohibited) to accept a free trip to New York in exchange for a nomination, what other types of payments are happening behind the scenes?

The Nominating Committee is filled with agents, managers, record executives, and artists, who all stand to profit from a Rock Hall nomination for those they represent, so in a system like that why wouldn’t a writer like Trakin find a way to benefit too? The Rock Hall leaders have never addressed these obvious conflicts of interest, and until they do, anyone associated with the Nominating Committee deserves to have their motives questioned with every ballot and induction.

If you want to think about a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame without feeling like you have to take a shower afterwards, check out the unsullied Rock Hall Revisited and Projected classes devised by the readers of Future Rock Legends.

Just down the road stands the world’s leading institution celebrating the history of rock and roll. We stand here to honor the careers of musicians whose incredible work helped shape that story. But we all know the history of music can be changed by just one song, one record. In three minutes we suddenly enter a new direction, a movement, or a style. Experiencing that three minute song results in a personal revelation, an epiphany that significantly changes our lives. This year we are introducing a new category to the Rock Hall. We’re calling it the “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Singles” as a recognition of the excellence of singles that changed rock & roll -- kind of a Rock Hall jukebox. The records are by artists not in the Rock Hall. Which is not to say these artists will never be in the Rock Hall, but just that they are not in the Rock Hall at this moment.

• Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats - "Rocket 88" (1951)
• Link Wray & His Ray Men - "Rumble" (1958)
• Chubby Checker - "The Twist" (1960)
• The Kingsmen - "Louie Louie" (1963)
• Procol Harum - "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967)
• Steppenwolf - "Born to Be Wild" (1968)

At first blush, this appears to be a new backdoor into the Rock Hall for artists who can’t get over the hump with the voters. The Rock Hall used similar methods to bypass their own Voting Committee to induct Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “5” Royales, Freddie King, and Wanda Jackson as Early Influences, after they had each been on the ballot as Performers. Unlike Early Influence inductees, the newly honored Singles artists are still not Hall of Famers, so they could theoretically still be nominated, but it sure feels like the Rock Hall is trying to clear out some names from their growing backlog of candidates. We would be shocked to see any of these artists on the ballot next year.

At this point, there are still many more questions than answers, since the Rock Hall has yet to acknowledge this award on its website or in a press release. When they do provide some information, perhaps they can answer these questions:

1. Why was this announced as a surprise at the ceremony? Wouldn’t announcing it in advance provide more exposure for these songs and artists?
2. Were the honored artists and their families invited to the Induction Ceremony? Chubby Checker has been extremely vocal about his absence from the Hall of Fame, so it’s odd he wasn’t at the ceremony.
3. Will songs be honored annually, or is this a one-time award?
4. Will the artists honored in this category become members of the Voting Committee like other inductees?
5. Who is on the committee that picked the first songs?
6. How will these songs be recognized at the Museum? Will they be listed next to the other 2018 inductees on the signature wall?
7. What are the eligibility rules for this category? Does a song have to be older than 25 years?

All of the honored songs are part of the Rock Hall’s 2004 list of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll,” so it seems likely that future inducted singles will come from this list. There are over 220 songs left on that list from non-Hall of Famers, so it will take decades for them to honor them all if they continue with the category.

If we had to guess, Steven Van Zandt created this category out of his frustration that many seminal artists have little chance of ever being inducted, and he wanted to do something, anything, to honor them before it’s too late. While the intentions may be pure, the execution was ham-fisted at best. Not inviting the artists and their families to the ceremony, or even notifying them of the honor in advance, just seems sloppy and inconsiderate. The Rock Hall itself has created this situation by limiting the number of inductees to five or six per year while simultaneously lowering the bar by inducting marginal candidates. That generates even more artists who can genuinely be considered snubs who will never be inducted at the current pace.

There are lots of ways to address these problems, but the Rock Hall never seems willing to experiment with their induction system beyond force inducting artists into categories in which they don’t belong.

Despite the perceived acrimony, the Hall of Fame has actually had a pretty good run of artist participation in the induction ceremonies lately. You have to go back to 2006 when the Sex Pistols wrote the “piss stain” letter and rejected the honor that there was this level of total indifference from an inductee. Since then, there have been a few artists who have stayed home, like Andrew Loog Oldham (2014), Axl Rose (2012), and most of Van Halen (2007), but there is usually at least a portion of the band there to collect the trophies and play some songs, even if they’re doing it more for the fans than the Hall of Fame itself.

Radiohead don’t seem to care about any of it. Earlier this year, Andy Greene from Rolling Stone got these great quotes from the band about the Rock Hall:

Phil Selway: "It's a bit like having the free bus pass in the UK when you reach a certain age. Blimey. Have we got to that point? God knows [if we'll go]. We'd have to sit down and talk about it, but it's probably not at the top of my list of things to do. But who knows? I don't know.”

Jonny Greenwood: "I don't care. Maybe it's a cultural thing that I really don't understand. I mean, from the outside it looks like ... it's quite a self-regarding profession anyway. And anything that heightens that just makes me feel even more uncomfortable.”

Ed O'Brien: "I don't want to be rude about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because for a lot of people it means something, but culturally I don't understand it. I think it might be a quintessential American thing. Brits are not very good at slapping ourselves on the back. It seems very show-biz and I'm not very show-biz. We haven't even been asked. I don't want to be rude. But if you ask me what I'd rather be doing that night, I'd rather be sitting at home in front of the fire or going to a gig. I realized years ago that I didn't like award ceremonies. You walk in there and you feel self-conscious. It's just really uncomfortable. Wherever there is media there seem to be a real level of bullshit. It just feels non-authentic to us.”

Thom Yorke: "It wouldn't be the first place ... don't ask me things like that. I always put my foot in my mouth.”

Colin Greenwood: "I'd be grateful if we got in. Look at the other people that have been inducted. I don't know if everyone else will go though. It might be me just doing bass versions of everything like, 'Come on, you know this one!' I'd have to play the bass part to 'Creep' five times.”

So what options does the Rock Hall have, assuming Radiohead gets the necessary votes for induction?

1. The remote trophy presentation: You’ve probably seen something similar on other award shows, where the artist is shown receiving their trophy via satellite and maybe does a song from the concert. With Radiohead performing in Argentina the night of the ceremony (two hours ahead of Cleveland), this is technically feasible, but it seems like a long shot, especially after the band rep’s terse statement of, “They’re not attending.”
2. Make the best of it: Treat Radiohead’s induction similar to the way they have with others who wouldn’t perform (Madonna, Black Sabbath) and put together a tribute performance (“Creep”, of course) that would at least provide some content for HBO to work with.
3. The bare minimum: The Rock Hall would show the inductee video, have someone make a speech, then accept the award on Radiohead’s behalf and just skip the tribute performance.
4. The deferral: If the Rock Hall believes this year’s absence was just an unfortunate conflict and have been assured that Radiohead will have a change of heart and agree to participate in the future, they could basically defer their induction a year or two.
5. The blackball: The Hall of Fame could simply ignore them and move on with other artists who aren’t so resistant to the idea of being inducted.

So what will the Rock Hall do when they inductees are announced next week? Our guess is they will go ahead and induct them with the bare minimum option. The Rock Hall would likely prefer to get their induction out of the way now rather than go through this humiliation again.

McCartney:"I said, 'Let me see what I can do. And I talked to Bruce and I talked to Dave Grohl, and they both said he should be in."

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) March 25, 2015

Soon after the 2017 Rock Hall ballot was announced, Perry Ferrell revealed that Grohl told him he was responsible for getting Jane’s Addiction nominated. That led us to speculate that the Bad Brains nomination had Grohl’s fingerprints all over it as well.

So now Dave Grohl gets credit for getting @JanesAddiction on the ballot. It also seems likely that he was involved in the Bad Brains nom too

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) October 19, 2016

Yesterday, Rolling Stone published a story about Bad Brains where H.R. confirmed that it was indeed Grohl that pushed their case.

As with other newly added Nominating Committee members such as Tom Morello and Questlove, Grohl was immediately successful in getting his picks directly on to the ballot (Nominating Committee members supposedly put forward two names each). Fresh voices seem to carry a lot of weight with the Committee, so Grohl may be most successful early in his tenure. With his experience on the Sonic Highways documentary series, he’s sure to have a long list of artists he wants to join him in the Hall of Fame.

Dave Grohl: "If anyone deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s Lemmy." Motörhead -- eligible since '02. http://bit.ly/6UErki

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) January 6, 2010

The chances we will see artists like Motörhead, Minor Threat, Pixies or Fugazi on future ballots just went way up.

Keirstead followed up that work with “The Jam Part II - Long Live Rock & Roll” which continued the project showing the following decades of rock stars (with a slightly more Canadian bias).

For many rock fans, this is what the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame should represent (even if it happens to be almost entirely white). If the Rock Hall also saw it that way, they might even have a chance to induct most of those people. But that’s not the way the Hall of Fame wants to represent rock and roll. They choose a far more ambitious path -- to include many of the different branches that sprung from the roots of rock and roll, including disco, electronic music, pop, and most controversially, hip hop. That makes their task exponentially more difficult. It’s hard enough to properly honor and represent the most important artists of one genre, but to try to capture the essence of popular music from the past half-century becomes an impossible task. There will inevitably be important artists who get left behind which leaves fans of all genres eternally frustrated. The current format of inducting just five artists per year does a huge disservice to their mission “to celebrate the musicians who founded, changed and revolutionized rock & roll,” when their definition of rock and roll includes an ever-expanding number of artists and genres. The Rock Hall has created an intractable problem.

The whole process is unpleasant. The whole process needs to be changed from the top to the bottom. It doesn’t need to be this hard. There is nothing fancy going on out there that requires all of this stuff.

They need to get their legal work straight. They need to respect the artists they say they’re honoring, which they don’t. I don’t have any of my paperwork signed, I have no licensing agreements with these people. They’re trying to steal footage. They’re trying to make me indemnify them.

When they told me I was inducted they said, “You can have two tickets - one for your wife and one for yourself. Want another one? It’s $10,000 - sorry that’s the way it goes.” I said, “I’m playing here. What about my band? What about their wives?” They make this so unpleasant.

They came this close - [publicist asks Miller to wrap it up]

No, we’re not going to wrap this up - I’m going to wrap you up. You go sit down over there and learn something. Here’s what you need to know. This is how close this whole show came to not happening because of the way the artists are actually being treated right now. So I’ll wrap it up.

In a separate interview with AP, Miller had further thoughts:

It wasn’t very overwhelming. It was kind of like a lazy kind of night with a bunch of fat cats at the dinner table.

It’s not a real pleasant experience, to tell you the truth. The reason it isn’t is because they make it so difficult for the artists. I think it’s time for the people running this to turn it over to new people, because it doesn’t need to be this difficult.

I don’t know why I was nominated for this, because i’ve said this about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 30 years and I don’t get along with the people who run it. When I found out about it, I felt like I was in a bullshit reality TV show.

Miller also said, "My fans take it seriously. I really didn't want to show up... You tell me what the hell is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and what does it do besides talk about itself and sell postcards?”

Some of Miller’s criticism of the institution came out during his eight minute acceptance speech on stage:

And to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I’d thank you for your hard work on behalf of all musicians. And I encourage you to keep expanding your vision. To be more inclusive of women and to be more transparent with your dealings with the public. And most importantly, to do much more to provide music in our schools.

If you follow the dealings of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, none of this is news. We have been documenting the Rock Hall’s issues with women, transparency and treatment of artists for years.

The @Rock_Hall seems to have the unique ability to simultaneously honor and an insult an artist's career. #DeepPurple #GNR #KISS #Heart

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) December 22, 2015

Artists have been complaining about the Rock Hall for decades too. In 1997, Neil Young boycotted the ceremony for similar reasons that Steve Miller outlined above:

Young, who was inducted as a member of Buffalo Springfield, boycotted the performance because of a dispute with the rock hall over its refusal to provide him with enough free tickets to bring his family to the $1,500-a-plate dinner.

In a letter to the rock hall, VH1, Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun and his Buffalo Springfield bandmates, Young also said he was upset with the rock hall's decision to sell broadcast rights to VH1, feeling that featuring the ceremony on TV commercialized and cheapened it.

”The VH1 Hall of Fame presentation has nothing to do with the spirit of rock 'n' roll," wrote Young. "It has everything to do with making money. Inductees are severely limited in the amount of guests they can bring. They are forced to be on a TV show, for which they are not paid.”

Let’s also not forget the Sex Pistols letter.

What makes Steve Miller’s statements so important is that he decided to step on the neck of the Rock Hall on the night he was being inducted. Usually any bad feelings get pushed to the side on a night filled with so much positive energy from your peers and fans, but Miller knew that his words would carry the most impact at that moment.

The question now is, will this actually change anything? The Rock Hall has been mismanaging artist relations for years, which has led to numerous lost opportunities for induction ceremony reunions (including two this year alone). When will the Rock Hall board wake up and realize that this isn’t working on nearly every level? The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s primary responsibilities are running the induction process, organizing the induction ceremonies and raising money. How much more failure in each of these areas is the Rock Hall willing to endure?

Steve Miller said, “I think it’s time for the people running this to turn it over to new people, because it doesn’t need to be this difficult.” We agree.

As the stars converge and the hype builds for the 31st Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Brooklyn tonight, it's important not to lose sight of an inescapable fact: By any measure, the Rock Hall is an American institution with a tarnished public image. Sad to say, but it's lost hearts and minds. When tickets for your annual watershed gala event are going on StubHub for $12, and the simulcast of said event at the museum isn't sold out, well, those are bad omens.

There's an acute public perception problem here, and the reasons go beyond why your favorite band isn't in the hall yet; in fact, let's please put those reflexive, tiresome, moody blues to rest for now. In considering the Rock Hall gestalt, there are two entities that feed off each other. First there's the museum in Cleveland, which opened in 1995 and is an exceptionally-curated music fan pilgrimage. Secondly and most significantly, there is the organization that spearheaded the museum, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, NYC-based and formed in 1983 by the late Ahmet Ertegun, Jann Wenner, Seymour Stein, Jon Landau, and others to recognize achievement in popular music.

That mission sounds simple enough. In fact, the early years, marked by the privately-held induction ceremonies at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, were a relatively non-controversial, celebratory breeze. Elvis! Chuck Berry! Bob Dylan! Aretha! The Beatles! But as decades have gone on, and as Wenner has dubiously claimed "all the no-brainers" are inducted, it seems that myriad issues have cropped up that threaten to irrevocably damage the very idea of "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." These issues include, but are not necessarily limited to, transparency, communication, gender equality, credibility, common sense, and conflicts of interest:

• Transparency - Most people that follow the hall closely, as well as casual observers/everyday rock fans, get a sense that most major Rock Hall decisions are being made behind closed doors. This is a non-profit that is driven by donations, but the institution seems to act with impunity and zero accountability. Does anyone on the outside, let alone donors, know what's going on? Sure, financial numbers get disclosed.  But missing is the basic information that would actually matter to the populist masses the Hall is purportedly courting to buy memberships and tickets to the museum/induction ceremonies. The most corrective measure the Hall could take toward transparency would be to disclose the vote counts that decide who gets inducted. A press release is issued, and news outlets and social media are abuzz on announcement day, but it seems no one truly questions the results. (Does anyone truly believe that Steve Miller got more votes than Janet Jackson? That's not to take sides in support of either, but most fan polls outside the Rock Hall's bot-corrupted fan vote had Janet well ahead, and you'd think there would be at least some parallel).
• Communication - The fact that most people believed that N.W.A. would perform at the induction ceremony tonight, only to be highly disappointed yesterday when they saw Ice Cube's interview in the New York Times saying they weren't performing due to disagreements with the organizers, is a prime example of the Rock Hall dropping the ball when it comes to communication. How long was this known? It certainly wasn't in the Hall's best interest to disclose that fact. Going broader in terms of the 2016 ceremony, why are there only five performer inductees this year? Previous years have had quite a few more. A sixth slot could have gone to a deserving artist like Yes. Again, there are no real answers from the Hall, just speculation across the board that maybe they're trying to shorten what have been admittedly long ceremonies.
• Gender Equality - There's not a single female inductee this year, not even a single announced presenter tonight that is female. Furthermore, per the essential Rock Hall resource Future Rock Legends (futurerocklegends.com), "Of the 547 Rock Hall voters we have on our unofficial list, 9.3% are women." Expanding the voting body to include more women is urgent, crucial, and ridiculously overdue. 
• Credibility - The Hall-run, official fan vote for the 2016 induction class was an abject disaster. Overtaken by bots and registering an inhuman 160,905,154 votes, it's exhibit A for the Hall to come up with a more secure, credible fan voting system. (And yes, Chicago fans, the point is taken that you are passionate, and that you voted a bunch. But you didn't vote 37 million times, as the official Rock Hall fan vote would have us believe.) This needs to be fixed before the next set of nominees is announced.
• Common Sense - When choosing which band members to induct (or not induct at all, as in tonight's Steve Miller "sans Band" scenario), the committees apparently need to do more research, consult the bands, and use some common sense. In the case of Deep Purple, vocalist Red Evans is being inducted, but bassist Nick Simper was excluded, which is confounding as they played on the same records and were in the band at the same time. Yet every drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was inducted? Inconsistency at best.
• Conflicts of Interest - The late Bert Berns is being given the Ahmet Ertegun Award for Lifetime Achievement tonight, an honor that is apparently determined not by voting but via the unilateral decision of a nomination committee. Steven Van Zandt and Paul Shaffer are producing a Broadway musical about Bert Berns, and they are both on such a committee. The red flags being raised here, justifiably so, are conflicts of interest, and the overarching sense that the Rock Hall insiders are just going to do whatever they want. Berns, a storied '60s producer, record man and songwriter, has accomplishments that have more than earned him this honor, but it's too bad his induction has this shadow of impropriety over it. 

In closing, the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten, upon learning of his band's induction, fired off a burning missive to the Hall in 1996, calling it a "piss stain." He added, "Your anonymous as judges but your still music industry people (sic)." Maybe Rotten's was among the first hearts and minds lost.

That doesn't mean the Rock Hall can't course-correct and win back those that still believe in a credible, well-executed, and balanced recognition of musical achievement. Fixing these issues isn't just the right thing to do; it may even secure the Rock Hall's long-term future.

by Eric Layton -- originally posted on E-Rockracy on 4/8/2016

The 13 members who were let go:

We list the 28 survivors on our Nominating Committee page, and it should also be noted that they did not add any new members to add a fresh perspective.

It seems unlikely there would be another major change in the Committee this year unless there is disruption in the leadership of the Rock Hall Foundation.

1. This year’s performer class includes only five artists, down from the six that have been inducted in recent years. Given the backlog of deserving artists, why the reduction?
2. Was the number of inductees reduced to shorten the length of the induction ceremony?
3. If so, why did you schedule the induction ceremony at Barclays Center the day before a hockey game? The last time the ceremony was at Barclays, you had to cancel the end of show jam session because of the curfew.
4. Regarding the inducted members of Deep Purple, can you explain the rationale for how vocalist Rod Evans can be inducted but bassist Nick Simper is not, despite being in the band during the same era (1968-1969) and performing on the same albums?
5. We have our theories, but can you explain why Steve Miller has been inducted solo, with no one else from the Steve Miller Band?
6. Do bands with a complicated membership history have a disadvantage in getting nominated or inducted?
7. Who were the “experts” you used to determine which members of the inducted artists got in?
8. The official fan poll effectively ended on October 15th after you instituted limits to protect against volume voters (human or otherwise). Why was the fan poll created with no protective measures in the first place?
9. When it was determined that the fan poll had fatal flaws, why wasn’t the poll scrapped in favor of a new, secure poll?
10. Why did you create a poll with unlimited voting (that has almost zero impact on the actual results) that takes advantage of fans’ passions for their favorite artists by wasting their time?
11. Did the fan poll last year have similar unusual voting activity?
12. It has been reported that the Voting Committee was expanded this year. How many new voters were added? How many of the new voters are women? (Of the dozen or so new voters we have seen, none are women.)
13. One of the new voters this year is Howard Stern Show producer Gary Dell’Abate (aka Baba Booey). What are the qualifications for becoming an official voter?
14. Speaking of women, of the 25 people inducted in the Class of 2016, zero are women. Do you feel the Rock Hall has a gender diversity problem? If so, how do you plan to address it?
15. Some of the members of the Nominating Committee have recently complained that the Voting Committee isn’t knowledgable enough about the broad history of rock and roll, and ignores the clear wishes of the Nominating Committee (Chic is example #1). Are there plans to change the composition of the electorate (most of whom are Rock Hall inductees) that would be more in line with the Nominating Committee’s views of rock and roll?
16. Speaking of voters, how many of the over 800 ballots were actually returned this year?
17. Who counted the votes and will you release the voting totals?
18. Official ballots were due from voters on December 15th, but it seems clear that the inductees were determined and notified prior to the voting deadline. Given the reported low return rate of ballots, how could you be sure late ballots wouldn’t change the results?
19. Only inductees in the “performer” category were revealed. When will inductees in the other categories be announced?
20. The induction ceremony locations were previously going to be on three year cycles between New York, Cleveland and Los Angeles. This year was to be an L.A. year. Why was the L.A. ceremony scrapped? Are there currently plans to return to L.A.?

If you have additional questions about the Rock Hall process that go beyond the usual “why isn’t [my favorite artist] in the Rock Hall?”, leave them in the comments.

2008 Ballot

2009 Ballot

2010 Ballot

2011 Ballot

2012 Ballot

2013 Ballot

2014 Ballot

A complete look at the 2014 ballot at LinkWray.com.

2015 Ballot

2016 Ballot

Notorious KISS antagonist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee member Dave Marsh, recently gave an interview to L.A. Radio Sessions, in which he revealed many of his frustrations with the induction process. A portion of the interview was posted on YouTube. Here is our transcript, lightly edited for clarity:

LA Radio Sessions: Let’s talk a little about the procedure, because people forget from year to year. I hear all these wide accusations that it’s all a Rolling Stone magazine Hall of Fame and this and that.

Dave Marsh: I’ve been on the Nominating Committee for more than 20 years and Jann wouldn’t have me in the magazine if I had a gun to his head. And I probably wouldn’t be in the magazine if you had a gun to my head! There are a couple of people from Rolling Stone, as there should be, in every version of the Committee, which did change shape and get a little smaller this year.

LA Radio Sessions: Can we talk about that at all?

Dave Marsh: There was a perception that it was too big and we were spending a lot of time just naming names and then voting on them and not having enough of a discussion. And the whole process… it’s actually... this is one of those moments where it’s unfair to a given individual who everybody, or almost everybody, slams all the time, because it was his perception. But that’s not anybody’s business outside of the Committee, so I can’t talk about it. I think that’s a broad enough hint. [Ed. Note: he is surely talking about Jann Wenner]

Whether you want to go out to dinner with somebody or not is irrelevant if they perceive something and help you make it better. And this is a slightly different approach and I think it’s a much better ballot than the last couple of years. Last year had a very good result off a relatively weak ballot, I think. This year, it’s much more difficult for the voters to make a mistake. And before we go any farther, let me say this, ok? This is… this is a hard thing to say, because I have a real commitment to this institution. And I think it was a wise and important thing to create it. But. The fact of the matter is, it is the only hall of fame in the world that convenes a group of experts to make its ballot and then gives the voting over to people who know less than a smidgen as much as the people who are in that room. It’s an insipid process. It really is.

That’s not the first time a Nominating Committee member has criticized the choices of the Voters, the majority of whom are Hall of Famers. Marsh seems to think that this year’s ballot is deep enough that no matter who the voters choose, it will be a solid induction class.

Dave Marsh: The first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame classes, the first couple years, there were 10, 15 people that got in… What were you going to do, say “yes” to Chuck Berry and “no” to Buddy Holly? But it’s not like there isn’t still the wealth of… some of the people are more obscure and some of the people are more controversial... and keeping the tent as big as it needs to be is a continuing problem. But in the end, doing it five people a year is just completely frustrating. And it takes something that could be really, really great. And because they pay for the event with the TV show, I guess, I’ve never been able to figure it out on any other basis, that tail wags that dog every year.

This is a startlingly frank admission from a member of the Nominating Committee, acknowledging the influence the Rock Hall’s television partners (currently HBO) have over the process.

Dave Marsh: It’s kind of heartbreaking because… one of the things that happens is simple. People die. Darlene [Love] could have died without getting in the Hall of Fame. This has been such a holocaustal year for great musicians dying, that’s really foremost in my mind. Everybody is getting older. It’s not just those early British invasion bands who have turned 70, hell, the early British invasion bands are worrying about 80! It’s a few years off, but it’s going to happen. If you were born in ‘38 or ‘39 it’s gonna happen. Sam Moore will be 80 this year. So you’re going to start losing people that you shouldn’t lose without honoring them while they’re alive. And the longer you wait, the fewer people who actually remember how great something was.

And I’ll just use, because they’re on the ballot, and because it’s been an ongoing conversation, and because it’s the strangest area where the Hall of Fame’s inductees are weak… is hard rock bands. And the notion that Deep Purple [Ed. Note: keyboardist Jon Lord died in 2012], who are a great band by any definition of rock and roll. They made record after record. I know I took them for granted for way too long. And there’s a bunch of people like that, whether it’s somebody whose style is pretty much forgotten and discarded, like Marc Bolan, who is not on the ballot, and to the best of my knowledge has never been on the ballot, but who was the spirit of rock and roll. I would say in historical terms, one of the luckiest things that ever happened to David Bowie was Marc Bolan’s car crash. I don’t mean that to say anything mean about David exactly, but Marc was just something extraordinarily special. And when you’ve got a process that won’t even let you get around to that fact, because there are other even bigger problems that have to be addressed... It’s frustrating. Not because anybody wants it to be frustrating.

Then you got the whole problem… this is something for which radio needs to be taken to task, and particularly the genuinely evil Lee Abrams period. This continuing confusion about what the relationship between white rock and black rock ought to be, or is. And make no mistake, you have to talk about it like that, they have the same root. And they travelled at some points, and the paths have diverged quite extremely, and then again they always come back together. The musicians always know what the connection is. You never have any trouble explaining that to a musician, or at least not a musician who is worth talking to. So these are the all the limits within which that ballot got created.

I say this partly because I’m tired of pretending a whole bunch of things… it’s the Cream magazine person in me that wants to say, hey, there’s right, there’s wrong. Yes, we will never agree with anything the way we all agreed on Elvis. Yes, the same thing should be true of James Brown, and it never will be. And that we need to reckon with. We also need to reckon with the fact that people think they know the history of rock and roll, and I will tell you right now, 750 people are going to get this ballot, there are not 750 people in the world, on the surface of the earth, who can adequately comprehend what has happened since 1955. It’s just simply, you know… God knows, if you stick me in with a bunch of electronic acts, or those brit-pop things from the Duran Duran period, or there’s all kinds of nooks and crannies or sometimes rivers, that missed me.

LA Radio Sessions: Right, of course. Missed all of us.

Dave Marsh: I remember talking to Jon Landau, who is one of the original rock critics who is still alive that I’m closest to, and him saying to me at a certain point, “You know, it’s all going to be different now.” And we were up to about 1966 or 1967. And I thought about it as a person who didn’t much care for what came out of San Francisco, give or take Sly and Creedence. And yeah, it’s going to be different, we’re not going to agree the way we used to. And that’s what he was thinking about too. So when we talk, yes I’m on the Nominating Committee, no, I’m not a person who agrees with everything the Nominating Committee does, or with all the ways in which it’s compelled to do its job, but at the same time, I’m very proud to be part of it. And the institution, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is not a bad idea, it’s a very good one. Because somebody needs to do this. And we need always to be criticizing ourselves and each other and having people outside the process doing the same thing.

The only thing I can add to that is that I believe this to such a point that after about six months I realized that I should have been been supporting KISS getting into the Hall of Fame all along, for the simple reason that now all those idiots have to shut the f**k up about it. [laughter] I went, “Oh, really? This all dies down? I should have voted for them!”

It’s always fascinating when Nominating Committee members speak on the record about the induction process. It is nice to hear that they can be as frustrated with the system as their critics, but it also seems clear that any major changes will have to come from the top.

On Friday, June 19th, Ed Christman from Billboard broke the story that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has let go many long-serving members of its Nominating Committee. So, what do we know so far?

Q: How many people from the Nominating Committee were let go?
A: The Billboard article’s headline says “at least 16 nominating members” were dismissed, but in the article, it is framed more as speculation from sources that “as many as 16 of the 42” members are gone. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chuck Yarborough spoke to an ousted member who says the letter from Jon Landau stated the Rock Hall intended “to reduce the size of the committee by a third” to allow for “more flexibility in terms of discussion.” Reducing the Committee by a third would bring it down to about 28 members.

Q: Who was let go?
A: Billboard lists four names: “veteran A&R executive Joe McEwen, a blues and R&B expert; Greg Geller, a label executive specializing in reissues; Arthur Levy, a senior writer at a number of major record labels; and Bob Merlis, one of the industry's most renowned publicists who is now independent but was at Warner Bros. Records from the early 1970s through the 1990s.” Former L.A. Times critic Bob Hilburn confirmed on Twitter that he was dismissed as well. (Roger Friedman reports that Joe Levy was also let go, but it seems possible he mixed him up with Arthur Levy.)

Q: Who is still on the Committee?
There are a lot of question marks here, but Billboard confirms that Landau, Questlove, Cliff Burnstein and Seymour Stein are still involved. It’s probably safe to assume that Museum president Greg Harris is still in. Robbie Robertson, Rick Krim, Paul Shaffer and Rob Light are all deeply involved in the Induction Ceremonies each year. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say. Hopefully more names will be confirmed soon. Here is a full list of Nominating Committee members over the last 30 years.

Q: Why did the Rock Hall target the experts on the Early Rock and R&B Influencers subcommittee?
A: Billboard frames a lot of their story around the idea that the Rock Hall “wiped out more than half of the Hall's Early Rock and R&B Influencers subcommittee.” It’s true that four of the seven members on that committee were let go, but that leaves at least 10 other members who were potentially on other subcommittees that are now gone too. As of five years ago, there were three subcommittees: one on progressive rock and heavy metal; one on hip-hop; and one on early rock and rollers and rhythm & blues.

Q: So what does this mean for future ballots? Will early rock and R&B influencers be ignored?
A: Anymore than they already are? At this point it’s impossible to say. McEwen, Geller, Levy and Merlis aren’t the only people well versed in those eras. All of them had been serving on the Nominating Committee for over 24 years. If their recommendations hadn’t been fully reflected on the ballot by now, perhaps it’s time for others to have a chance to sway the overall Committee. We have evidence in recent years that new members are more effective in getting artists onto the ballot.

Q: Does this have anything to do with artists inducted as “Early Influences”?
A: Not directly. Those artists are chosen by a separate committee. The Rock Hall hasn’t named a true “Early Influence” inductee since 2000. The three since then (Wanda Jackson, Freddie King and the “5’ Royales) were all artists who had been previously nominated on the Performer ballot.

Q: Why did the Rock Hall let go of those specific people?
A: Billboard: “But some Hall of Fame watchers worry that this latest move by Landau and Jann Wenner -- widely seen as the dominating figures in the Hall -- is meant to reduce the focus on the pioneers so that going forward the Hall can focus on artists who came to the fore in the 1980s and soon the 1990s, who might still have more cache with mainstream music fans and HBO, which broadcasts the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's show.”

Ever since HBO got involved, we have been speculating about how this may affect the inductions (more stars, bigger names).

Yarborough: “Is this really a move to get younger meat in the seats, or rather, younger rockphiles through the turnstiles, so to speak? Well, I believe it is, just by the evidence in our own back yard. . . What scares me is that it seems the history of rock 'n' roll is going to take a huge hit in exchange for pandering – yes, I said pandering – to the younger masses.”

Roger Friedman believes Jann Wenner may move the eligibility date for artists down to 20 years: “Replacing nominators with younger people who have no attachment or feel for rock origins, and moving up the eligibility means Wenner can continue to skip over acts he doesn’t like and move on to more recent stars.” More Friedman: “There’s also a theory that Wenner will now try to force in groups like Journey or Kansas so that the HBO show turns into 80s nostalgia.” (C’mon Roger, Jann Wenner forcing in Journey and Kansas? Are you insane?)

Before removing his tweets, Rob Tannenbaum speculated that the Nominating Committee cuts were potentially in retaliation for members speaking to him for his recent Rock Hall story.

Some less conspiratorial theories: Maybe these Nominating Committee members didn’t participate or couldn’t make it to the meetings. Maybe they pushed the same names year after year. Maybe they aren’t familiar with some of the more recently eligible artists.

Is any of this true? At this point, we just don’t know. Perhaps Jon Landau will speak to Billboard as he promised on Friday.

Q: Billboard, Yarborough and Friedman all paint this move as a negative for the Rock Hall. But is it really a bad thing to shuffle the deck once per decade?
A: We have long been advocates of term limits for Nominating Committee members. Each person brings their own expertise and experience to the table, but after 10 years, it’s probably time to change the dynamic in the room. Hopefully Landau and Wenner invite new people to the meeting and don’t just try to lock it down to existing members. Ideally, this would create a ballot full of previously overlooked artists who had never had a chance to be inducted before.

Q: Sound great, but will this really change anything?
A: After the 2006 inductions, the Nominating Committee went from a bloated 72 members down to 31. So how did this affect the 2007 ballot? The biggest change was the number of nominees, which dropped to nine, down from sixteen.* But of the nine nominees in 2007, six had been nominated the previous year. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

So, when the nominees get announced in October, don’t expect a ballot full of Def Leppards, Weird Als and Grandfunk Railroads. Any changes will be gradual and cautious, just like they have always been.

* - It would be interesting if the ballot contracts to only nine or ten names again to basically force the Voting Committee to induct who the Nominating Committee wants (*cough* Chic *cough*).

Obviously this gesture didn’t sway the powers that be at the Rock Hall. Thirteen years later and Checker still hasn’t even been on the ballot for induction. Needless to say, there’s no statue of him in front of the Museum in Cleveland either.

In 2012, a more wistful Checker spoke to Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle about not getting the same exposure as some of his peers.

”I have only one regret in my whole life," he says. "This is my greatest regret - that my music is not being played and more people aren't seeing Chubby Checker. That's very painful for me. Many nights I have tears in my eyes about that. While I'm praying to God and thanking him for all the good things, I ask, 'Why don't they play my music? Did I do something wrong? Is there something about it?’

”It's not just any music - the No. 1 song in the world, the only song to be No. 1 twice - why don't they play my music? It's so painful. Why isn't Chubby getting his music played like the rest of the white boys?”

Now 72, Checker was asked about the Rock Hall again last month (after taking a break from suing HP):

”I don't want to get in there when I'm 85 years old. I'll tell them to drop dead, so you better do it quick while I'm still smiling. If you put me in when I'm too old to make a living, then it's no good for me to be in there. The Rolling Stones, they're in there. The Beastie Boys are in there, they're young. Hall and Oates were just in there and they're still making money.”

At the 2014 Induction Ceremony, Daryl Hall spoke up for Chubby Checker and other Philadelphia artists (Todd Rundgren, the Stylistics, the Delfonics, the Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Len Barry) who have been snubbed by the Rock Hall. Philadelphia DJ Jerry Blavat also recently noted many Philadelphia artists who deserve induction.

”Absolutely, Chubby belongs in there. But there are so many artists that belong in it," he said. Blavat thinks it's a shame Checker and other great Philadelphia rock pioneers, such as Frankie Avalon, Fabian and Bobby Rydell - are continually snubbed.

Blavat blames rock and roll Hall of Fame co-founder Jann Wenner for so many rock pioneers being overlooked while modern artists who had less of an impact on the music are honored.

”He knows nothing about rock and roll except past 1965. It took me forever to get Little Anthony and the Imperials and Darlene Love in there," Blavat said. "Everything is political.”

Last year, Philadelphia natives Questlove and Greg Harris joined the Rock Hall Nominating Committee. Questlove openly campaigned for Hall & Oates, so perhaps he and Harris will continue to champion other Philadelphia artists in the future.

Update: Chubby Checker alleges racism is keeping him out.

Mark Andes (bass) and Dennis Carmassi (drums) were members of Heart from 1982 through 1993, during the band’s renaissance period when they had a string of hit singles. When the Rock Hall inducted Heart last year, they chose to only recognize the original 1970s lineup, so Andes and Carmassi were not inducted.

Andes and Carmassi claim that although Heart's most public members, Ann and Nancy Wilson, asked the [Rock Hall] foundation to correct its mistake and include the two members in the 2013 induction, it refused without giving a reason. The Hall of Fame, however, proceeded to use images and videos of Andes and Carmassi and the songs they performed to promote Heart’s induction, the pair says.

When their fans around the world congratulated the two after seeing their images and songs used by the Hall of Fame, Andes and Carmassi say they were humiliated by having to inform their fans and peers that they were inexplicably not chosen for induction.

The pair is not asking the Hall of Fame to induct them but is suing it for portraying them in a false light, misappropriating their name and likeness, and for defamation.

“Defendants knowingly and maliciously communicated to the public by implication that plaintiffs were not valuable members of the band Heart when it failed to induct them, but concomitantly used plaintiffs' images and song performances to promote the band's nomination and induction,” the complaint said.

Andes and Carmassi say they wrote a letter to the Hall of Fame in January 2013, asking why they were excluded and pointed out that its biography for Heart extensively references Heart's success in the 1980s, including its four Grammy nominations, to which they contributed heavily.

The Hall of Fame's CEO [Joel Peresman] responded the following day, defending the decision and ignoring the fact that the Hall of Fame was using the band's success with Andes and Carmassi, the artists say.

The pair has also brought additional counts of injurious falsehood and equitable relief.

The duo is seeking compensatory damages for all losses, treble damages on all trademark claims, punitive damages and exemplary damages.

The issue of which band members get inducted into the Hall of Fame has been an ongoing source of controversy for the institution. The 2014 inductions cast a bright light on the issue when the Rock Hall decided that only the original members of Kiss were being honored, which led to the band opting not to perform at the ceremony. In response to the 2014 controversy, Joel Peresman told USA Today that the Rock Hall will change when they announce which members are being included.

"Going forward, we'll be more clear-cut from the beginning and more public about who's being inducted," Peresman says. "(The next time) we announce the nominees, we'll make sure to say, 'Here are the people being nominated.' “

The lawyer for Mark Andes in both cases is Francis Malofiy of Francis Alexander LLC.

Rock Hall Foundation President and CEO Joel Peresman emerged the shadowy back rooms of the Hall of Fame today to defend the selection process for which band lineups actually get inducted. Peresman spoke to Billboard primarily about the controversy surrounding the induction of just the original lineup of Kiss.

Peresman says that the decision about who to induct from any band is made by the Rock Hall's nominating committee as well as an adjunct group of "scholars and historians" familiar with specific inductees and genres. "This isn't chemistry or physics; it's not an exact science," Peresman acknowledges. "Sometimes there's an entire body of work up until (the artists) are inducted, other times it's a specific period of time that established the band as who they are.”

Examples of bands where most, if not all, of the past and current band members got inducted is much shorter: Red Hot Chili Peppers*, Metallica** and Paul Stanley’s favorite example, the Grateful Dead.

Peresman went on to talk about the decision to only induct the original lineup:

”With Kiss there wasn't one person here who didn't agree that the reason Kiss was nominated and is being inducted was because of what was established in the 70s with Ace (Frehley), with Peter (Criss), with Paul and Gene (Simmons). That's what put them on that map.”

Peresman adds that Kiss "is a unique situation where you have artists who wear makeup as part of what the band's about," but the Rock Hall felt that the later members -- including current guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer, who are wearing Frehley and Criss' makeup, respectively -- "are fine musicians who...basically have the same makeup and are the same characters that Ace and Peter started. It's not like they created these other characters with different makeup and playing different songs. They took the persona of characters that were created by Ace and Peter."

Paul Stanley from Kiss doesn’t accept that explanation. He correctly points out there have been many inconsistencies in the induction “rules.”

Nevertheless, Stanley says Kiss feels that honoring the other six musicians who have played in the band is "a very valid argument considering that there are people who played on multi-platinum albums and played for millions of people and were very important for the continuation of the band. And clearly when you've got a busload of Grateful Dead (members) who have been inducted and guys in the Chili Peppers who nobody knows who they are because they played on the very earliest albums are inducted...The list goes on and on of the inconsistencies. Now, I'm not pointing fingers at any of those people, but I'm certainly pointing a finger at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The only consistencies are inconsistencies and the rules clearly are there are no rules because the criteria for how and who gets in is purely based upon a personal like or dislike. And when I feel we're being treated unfairly, I have issues with that.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame continues to attempt to restore its questionable credibility and glimpses behind the facade with nonsense and half truths.

The truth is Joel Peresman and the rest of the decision makers refused to consider the induction of ANY former KISS members and specifically the late Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick who were both in the band through multi platinum albums and worldwide tours and DIDN'T wear makeup.

There is no getting around the reality that the Hall of Fame's favoritism and preferential treatment towards artists they like goes as far as ASKING the Grateful Dead how many members THEY wanted the hall to induct and following their directive while also including a songwriter who was never in the actual band.

Let's just accept the truth as it is and move on.

If the Rock Hall had used the strict “significant era” methodology for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (as they are with Nirvana and Kiss this year), they likely would have only inducted Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Hillel Slovak, John Frusciante and Chad Smith. Early drummers Jack Irons and Cliff Martinez probably wouldn’t have been inducted nor would current guitarist (and youngest Hall of Famer) Josh Klinghoffer.

It’s hard to justify special treatment given to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the light of the all of the examples of smaller lineup inductions. The Chili Peppers first few albums are not more significant than Nirvana’s first album. The Chili Peppers most recent album is not more significant than Dio-era Sabbath or even Chinese Democracy. This is the precedent that Joel Peresman has established which will continue to anger future Hall of Fame bands as well (Pearl Jam will be an interesting one to watch in three years).

Unfortunately, Peresman didn’t address the recent news that Chad Channing was not being inducted with Nirvana or why Channing had to receive the news via second hand text message four months after the inductees were announced. Peresman also didn’t offer any details about the fast-approaching Induction Ceremony except for, "We have other artists, other inductees showing up and performing when they can.” In related news, there are 3400 tickets available for the ceremony on StubHub, with prices starting below face value.

* - It should be noted that the Rock Hall did not include guitarists Jack Sherman and Dave Navarro, who was with the band for five years during their superstar years.

** - Bassist Robert Trujillo had been with Metallica for five years and one album when he was inducted in 2009. It is also worth noting that Nominating Committee member Cliff Burnstein manages both RHCP and Metallica, so it is possible he may have had a direct hand in selecting which members were honored.

Chad Channing, the band’s former drummer who played on Bleach, had been led to believe that he was being inducted with the band as well. Unfortunately that is not the case. Channing passed along to Radio.com this text message that the Rock Hall sent to Nirvana’s management today :

Can you tell whoever looks after Chad Channing that he isn’t being inducted…  It is just Dave, Krist and Kurt.

So how did we get here, where four months after the inductees were announced, that a text message from the Rock Hall is the only confirmation of which band members from Nirvana are actually being inducted?

Ever since Nirvana was nominated in October, there has been speculation as to which members might be honored. Both Chad Channing and Pat Smear appeared on important Nirvana albums so it would not have been a surprise if they were included, especially given the record of previous inductions (see the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a recent comparable example).

So why is the Rock Hall intentionally withholding that information?

Tom Lane relayed a story from former Nominating Committee member Jeff Tamarkin, where in 1994 the Grateful Dead told the Hall of Fame that “all or none” would be inducted, so the Rock Hall gave in and put in all 12 members. Knowing that the Rock Hall has been flexible on this issue, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons tried to negotiate getting additional Kiss members in this year by using their induction ceremony performance as leverage. The Rock Hall has thus far called their bluff and is moving ahead without a performance by the band, and disappointing fans in the process.

By drawing a hard line with Kiss, there is now a bright spotlight on the Rock Hall’s process for choosing which members get inducted. As with most controversial issues with the Rock Hall, they would be more respected if they were open, straightforward and consistent with their rules. Right now, as we have seen with Chad Channing, it’s the opposite of all of those things.

Future Rock Legends has learned that ex-Nirvana drummer, Chad Channing, will be inducted with the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 10th. Channing will be included with Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl and the late Kurt Cobain.

Channing was in Nirvana for two years surrounding the release of their debut album Bleach, but was replaced by Grohl during the recordings of Nevermind.

Chad Channing says he will be in Brooklyn for the Induction Ceremony, but has no plans to perform.

There is often controversy over which band members actually get their names on the Hall of Fame wall in Cleveland. The Rock Hall makes the decision, but doesn’t have any stated criteria for how they make the rulings or have any consistency from band to band or year to year. Look no further than fellow-2014 inductees Kiss to find bitterness and hard feelings over the decision.*

One could infer from their recent decisions that the Rock Hall tends to honor only the band members who were involved in (what they consider to be) significant recordings, although there are exceptions to that vague criteria as well.**

* - Only the original four members of Kiss are being inducted. Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons decided not to perform at the Induction Ceremony because of the Rock Hall’s decision to exclude additional current and former members of Kiss.

** - Just last year, John Rutsey, who like Chad Channing, only played on a debut album, was NOT inducted with Rush.

We have previously written about the ridiculousness of the 50% rule here, here, here and here (4 years ago!).

The fact that the Rock Hall had left that requirement on their website for so long (and repeated it often) just shows their general indifference to the rules of induction, which ends up generating a lot of skepticism about the process. The Rock Hall doesn’t use an independent accounting firm to tally the votes like most major award organizations do (the Grammys), and never makes the voting results public (like the Baseball Hall of Fame does).

The Rock Hall has picked up a tool that Rolling Stone magazine has utilized for years: The Beatles = $$$ (the Beatles have been on the cover 30 times over the years). So, the Rock Hall decided that this was the year they would finally induct the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, in the Non-Performer category, thereby injecting some ultimate boomer nostalgia into the festivities without even having to put Ringo on the ballot. Could they coax Paul McCartney into inducting Epstein and even performing a song or two? It’s certainly possible.

The Rock Hall didn’t stop with the Fab Four. Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones former manager, is also being inducted as a Non-Performer. (The Stones pop up on the cover of Rolling Stone regularly too -- Mick has appeared 30 times.) Will the Stones perform? You can bet they’ll be invited. Even if they won’t, the Rock Hall will be able to pull together some big names to perform a couple classic songs.

And finally, the Rock Hall decided to play one more huge card it had in its deck: finally inducting the E Street Band in the Musical Excellence category. It has been 15 years since the Rock Hall honored Bruce solo (on Rolling Stone 24 times), so this gives the Hall a great excuse to get the entire group on a stage close to home.

It appears that the Rock Hall is using the categories in which it has full control to guarantee a successful induction ceremony and HBO broadcast. The Non-Performer and Musical Excellence inductees are named by special committees and are not subject to a vote, so the Rock Hall literally could have picked any year to honor these Hall of Famers (all well deserving). So, why this year? The Rock Hall traditionally signs three year deals with its media partners, and this is the third year HBO has the broadcast rights. It seems possible that the Rock Hall decided to go all out this year to set themselves up for their next media deal. Also worth noting is that Brooklyn’s Barclays Center has a seating capacity of 19,000*, by far the largest venue they have ever tried to fill for an induction ceremony. Even with all of the Rush fans last year**, the Rock Hall had a hard time selling all of the expensive seats in the 7,100 seat Nokia Theatre in LA, so they want to maximize the number of headliners this year. They didn’t want to put the success of the show solely in the hands of a potential KISS reunion, a Nirvana performance without Kurt, or a Linda Ronstadt no-show. By including the Beatles, Stones, and Bruce, they put themselves in a can’t-lose situation no matter which performers the Voting Committee selected.

Joel Peresman confirmed that the induction ceremonies will now be on a three city rotation: New York (2014, 2017, 2020, etc.), Cleveland (2015, 2018, 2021, etc.) and Los Angeles (2016, 2019, 2022, etc.). It will be difficult for future events to top the 2014 Ceremony for sheer star power, but look at the future eligibility dates and start making plans.

* - The capacity of Barclays for the induction ceremony will end up being approximately 2,000 less than a typical concert because of all of the VIP table seating on the floor.

** - Let’s face it, even if you’re a die-hard fan of an inductee, it’s tough to shell out $350+ to see a short speech and two or three songs. This year, the Rock Hall is making that easier to swallow by including additional artists almost everyone loves. This is only the fourth ceremony that has been open to the public, so the Rock Hall is probably still trying to figure out how much they can charge for these things. The 2013 Los Angeles ceremony was considerably more expensive than either of the Cleveland ceremonies in 2009 and 2012.

*** - This year’s ceremony still won’t rival the Rock Hall’s 25th Anniversary Concert from Madison Square Garden. Check out the lineup and set lists for that one.

**** - Read also last year’s take on HBO’s involvement, still as relevant as ever.

Glad to have @questlove join the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee and the hiphop subcommittee.

— Touré (@Toure) September 21, 2013

The addition of Questlove is not entirely unexpected. Questlove is a music history scholar and became friendly with the Rock Hall when he orchestrated the Beastie Boys tribute performance at the 2012 Induction Ceremony, making him a natural fit on the Nominating Committee, as we suggested six months ago.

Here's a prediction:@Questlove will be on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee before the Roots get inducted (eligible 2018).

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) March 6, 2013

Update: Last year, Questlove put together a top 50 hip hop songs of all time list for Rolling Stone.

For Rush, obviously Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart are being honored. John Rutsey, who was the drummer on Rush’s debut album, is not being inducted.

Only the original 70’s era members of Heart are getting in, despite the band’s continued success in the ensuing decades with other members. The inductees are Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Roger Fisher, Steve Fossen, Howard Leese and Michael DeRosier.

Only four members of first ballot Hall of Famers Public Enemy are being inducted -- Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and Terminator X. The Bomb Squad, the influential production team behind PE’s sound, are not included, nor is current and longtime member, DJ Lord.

Deciding which members of Hall of Fame groups to induct is often a sensitive and complicated issue, especially for bands that have been around for decades with multiple lineup changes. The Rock Hall doesn’t publish any criteria for how they determine which members to induct, likely because it gets handled on a case by case basis (for example, see 2012 for all sorts of strange contradictions).

The good, the bad and the ugly of the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee announcement:

The Good:

• Quincy Jones was finally inducted into the Rock Hall. Whatever history there may or may not have been between Jones and the Rock Hall was set aside to do the right thing.
• Public Enemy getting inducted on the first ballot. It may have seemed like a foregone conclusion, but the Rock Hall sometimes whiffs on these no-brainers.
• Rush getting its first nomination and promptly getting ushered into the Hall of Fame, like they should have been there all along.
• The death of the blackball. Will the inductions of Rush and Jones, and the nomination of Deep Purple, put to rest all of the conspiracy theories about a blacklist?
• No back door inductions. The Rock Hall shouldn’t get credit for not doing something absurd, but we should at least acknowledge that all of the inductees are in their proper categories this year.
• Keeping the induction ceremonies open to the public. Let’s hope this is a permanent change and that New York will get an induction ceremony at Madison Square Garden next year.
• Involving Flea in the induction announcement. It’s a great idea to make a bigger deal out of the Hall of Fame induction process by including enthusiastic Hall of Famers like Flea.
• The predictions. Maybe the Rock Hall is getting a little more predictable, but fellow Rock Hall expert, Tom Lane, nailed all six performer inductees back on October 25th. Amazing. Our predictions are here.

The Bad:

• The snubs. Let’s face it, the Rock Hall could have easily inducted 12 of the 15 nominees. It’s great that the Rock Hall is now inducting six performers instead of the usual five, but the back log of snubbed artists keeps getting longer and longer.
• The ballot rules. Why does the Rock Hall let its Voting Committee only vote for five names when there are going to be six inductees?
• The Rock Hall completely neglected the Early Influence and Musical Excellence categories this year. This is puzzling, since there are still plenty of deserving candidates.
• Speaking of Early Influences, the Rock Hall still hasn’t set up a “Veteran’s Committee” or “Pioneer’s Committee” to properly address the pre-Elvis era. This should be a no-brainer for the Hall of Fame since no one would be opposed to this.
• There likely won’t be a live stream available of the induction ceremony since HBO holds the rights to the edited broadcast. The Rock Hall was ahead of the curve on this back in 2007, but they have given in to their broadcast partners.

The Ugly:

• The comments on the Rock Hall’s Facebook posts.
• The Rock Hall’s handling of the announcement press event. No live video of the announcement? Are you serious?
• Rolling Stone infuriating every other publication by jumping the gun on the announcement embargo.
• The official fan poll. Joel Peresman announced that there were over 500,000 votes from the public, but that only counted as a single ballot among the 600 cast (or is it 500?).
• The 50% “rule.” The Rock Hall still has on its website that inductees are required to appear on at least 50% of the ballots to be inducted. This is demonstrably false.

Like any other year, there are things to criticize about the inductees, but on the whole, this year will be seen as a positive step for the Rock Hall.

Be sure to listen to this segment from NPR where we had the chance to discuss the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating process.

• 2013: “The definition of ‘rock and roll’ means different things to different people, but as broad as the classifications may be, they all share a common love of the music. This year we again proudly put forth a fantastic array of groups and artists that span the entire genre that is ‘rock and roll’.”
• 2012: “The 2012 Nominees embody the broad scope of what ‘rock and roll’ means. From vocal groups to hip hop, from singer-songwriters to hard rocking artists, this group represents the spirit of what we celebrate at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
• 2012: “We are pleased to announce this year’s Hall of Fame inductees, who represent the broad spectrum of artists that define rock and roll.”
• 2011: “We believe our nominating committee has put forth a list of artists that truly represent the wide variety of music that defines rock and roll.”
• 2011: “We are pleased to welcome these artists and executives into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They truly represent the variety of people that have defined and continue to influence music and the business of Rock and Roll.”
• 2010: “We are very happy to present this year’s inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as they represent a great cross-section of artists that define the broad spectrum and history of rock and roll and people that have contributed immeasurably to our business.”
• 2009: “This year’s class of inductees truly represents what the Hall of Fame is all about. From classic artists that began their careers in the 50’s and 60’s to those that have defined the modern sound of rock and roll. These artists demonstrate the rich diversity of rock and roll itself.  We are proud to honor these artists and celebrate their contribution to rock and roll’s place in our culture.”
• 2008: "The 2008 inductees are trailblazers -- all unique and influential in their genres. From poetry to pop, these five acts demonstrate the rich diversity of rock and roll itself. We are proud to honor these artists and celebrate their contribution to rock and roll's place in our culture.”
• 2007: "We couldn’t be more proud to honor this unique, diverse group of rockers, rappers, singers and poets. This is what rock and roll is all about.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has never been just for “rock” artists and it’s not going to change its stripes now.

Q: Doesn’t the Rock Hall have any rules for induction?
A: Yes and no. For years now, this is what the Rock Hall claims is the criteria for induction (emphasis ours):

Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first record. Criteria include the influence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll.

The Foundation’s nominating committee selects nominees each year in the Performer category. Ballots are then sent to an international voting body of more than 600 artists, historians and members of the music industry. Those performers who receive the highest number of votes - and more than 50 percent of the vote - are inducted. The Foundation generally inducts five to seven performers each year.

Seems clear enough, right? The only problem is that the 50% criteria cannot be possibly be enforced when you predetermine the number of inductees.

Q: Why is that?
A: For example, there were 12 nominees for the 2010 inductions and they decided ahead of time there would be five inductees. Mathematically, it’s possible for none of the nominees to receive greater than 50% of the vote. So how can you have a rule requiring a certain percentage of the vote when you’re going to induct exactly five anyway? The 50% rule was meaningless then, and is likely meaningless now.

Q: Why is the rule meaningless now? They haven’t predetermined the number of inductees this year.
A: Take a look at our mock poll, which mimics the Rock Hall’s ballot process. Currently only three artists are polling above 50%. In a year as diverse as this, where there are only a couple of overwhelming favorites to be inducted, it’s very likely there will only be a few artists who appear on the majority of ballots, if any.

Q: So, if no artist gets over 50% of the vote, will the Rock Hall just cancel the induction ceremony?
A: Of course they won’t. HBO has a show to put on. That’s why the 50% rule is completely meaningless and should be removed from their website.

Q: If the only rule the Rock Hall has for induction is meaningless, then what rules do they follow?
A: Um… At this point, the best answer is that there are no rules.

Q: Why did they stop predetermining the number of inductees? That seemed like a reasonable rule if you ignored the 50% requirement.
A: Now that there are no rules to pretend to adhere to, the Rock Hall and HBO can induct as many or as few artists as they want to so they have an acceptable broadcast. For example, if the top five vote-getters turn out to be Procol Harum, Albert King, Donna Summer, The Marvelettes and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, would HBO be happy about an event where so many of the inductees were dead or unknown to a huge part of their audience? And let’s say Rush or N.W.A came in sixth. Isn’t it an easy decision to just go ahead and induct six or seven artists for the benefit of the TV show? Having no rules gives the Rock Hall a lot of flexibility.

Q: Who gets to vote anyway?
A: All 423 living Hall of Famers get a ballot. It’s unknown who the rest of the Voting Committee is, with the exception of a few nice people who go public with their ballots.

Q: But the fans get to vote this year!
A: Indeed they do, but it’s mostly a symbolic gesture from the Rock Hall. The top five vote-getters from the official online poll will be recorded on just one of the 600+ ballots and added to the total.

Q: Are the ballots cast anonymously? Who counts the votes?
A: The ballots are not anonymous. Joel Peresman, the Rock Hall President & CEO, admitted in an interview that they look to see who certain artists voted for, which could influence future nominations. As for who counts the votes, we’re assuming it’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation itself. Most award shows use an independent accounting firm to tally the votes to avoid accusations of impropriety.

Q: How many of the 600+ ballots actually get filled out and returned?
A: We don’t know, but would love to find out. We would also like to know the average number of artists voted for on each ballot. You can vote for a maximum of five, but some people vote for fewer than that. Unlike the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Rock Hall has never released any voting statistics.

Q: Didn’t voters used to have to rank their votes in order of preference?
A: Indeed they did, but it was never known why. The Rock Hall dropped that requirement a few years ago.

Q: When will the inductees be announced?
A: Last year, ballots were due December 5th and the inductees were announced on December 7th. As you can see above, this year’s ballots are due December 3rd, so the inductees should be announced shortly thereafter.

The Rock Hall also announced that HBO will be broadcasting the 2013 induction ceremony. HBO and the Rock Hall began their relationship in 2009 with two star-studded 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame fundraising concerts which were held at Madison Square Garden. The show was enough of a success that after Fuse’s broadcast rights expired in 2011, the Rock Hall signed an agreement with HBO to broadcast the 2012 induction ceremony, and now the 2013 broadcast.

One thing in common with all three of the HBO / Rock Hall events so far, is that the concerts have been in large venues, filled with rock fans. There is a very different energy to the induction ceremonies when there are fans screaming, cheering, and booing (sorry, Axl) for the inductees. The broadcasts from the private Waldorf-Astoria events have always seemed awkward on television, especially the performances in front of the (usually) seated tuxedoed crowd. On the other hand, HBO’s broadcasts have captured the electricity of the events, much of which has been provided by the fans. For 2013, it would appear HBO isn’t interested in rocking the boat, preferring to broadcast a rock concert, rather than a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria.

But why Los Angeles? First, this allows the Rock Hall to tap into West Coast philanthropists that may not make it to New York events. Secondly, there is a rich talent pool to draw from to be in the induction ceremony, as either presenters or performers.

HBO’s first induction ceremony this year was packed with big names as presenters and performers. They took full advantage of six performer inductees, the most since 2004, plus all of the backing groups which were part of a special induction. HBO also benefitted from a young-demographic-friendly slate of inductees, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns N’ Roses and the Beastie Boys. Green Day even had the unprecedented honor of opening the show with one of their own songs, even though they weren’t being inducted. This all made for great television. It’s unclear how successful the show was ratings-wise, but the ceremony was rebroadcast often throughout the summer.

Assuming the induction ceremony moves back to New York for 2014 (Nirvana!), HBO will likely want use a venue like Radio City Music Hall rather than going back to a hotel ballroom, with significant performance limitations (sets, lighting, cameras, etc.). We’re going to bet that we have seen the last of the old Waldorf, at least as long as HBO is involved.

Things are a little cramped at the Waldorf induction ceremonies

Cleveland’s Public Auditorium is old, but large enough for a professional production.

LA’s Nokia Theatre is a modern venue built for big-time televised events.

* - We’re assuming the Rock Hall will make tickets available to the general public as they did in Cleveland in 2009 and 2012, since the Nokia Theatre has a seating capacity of 7,100, but that hasn’t been announced (Cleveland’s Public Auditorium held roughly 5,000 fans). We’re also assuming tickets won’t be the $50 bargain that they were in Cleveland. For example, ticket prices for the American Music Awards range from $95 to $2200.

** - So what is driving the decision to move the induction ceremony away from its home in New York at the cozy (and invite-only) Waldorf-Astoria? Selling dozens of $30,000 to $100,000 tables at the New York induction ceremony has traditionally been the primary fundraiser for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. With the music industry in the tank, perhaps the money just isn’t there anymore.

*** - The Rock Hall has long relied on selling the TV rights of the induction ceremonies to partners such as VH1 and VH1 Classic (pre-2009), and more recently Fuse (2009-2011) and now HBO (2012-2013). Lately, the Rock Hall hasn’t been interested in broadcasting the Induction Ceremony live on the internet. Let’s hope they reconsider.

We were inspired to delve into this further after reading this recent tweet:

Are you kidding me? Only 4% of the inductees @rock_hall are women??! What can be done about that? #Cleveland

— Folk 'N Great Music(@FolkNGreat) August 26, 2012

Some additional data points:

• Of the 186 performers inducted, 31 include at least one woman (16.7%).
• There are 98 duos and groups that have been inducted in the performer category, accounting for 494 of the inductees. Of these, there are 36 women from 19 groups.
• Of the 88 individuals inducted in the performer category, there are 12 women (13.6%).
• There are no women in the “Clyde McPhatter Club” -- Hall of Famers inducted multiple times.
• In 1986, 1992, 2001, 2003 and 2004, no women were inducted.

It’s difficult to find a similar institution to compare to the Rock Hall. (For example, the Baseball Hall of Fame only has one woman inductee!) Another music industry benchmark might be the Grammy Awards. Their marquee award, Album of the Year, has included a woman 31% of the time (17 out of 54). This issue isn’t exclusive to music. In the U.S., only 5% of the art on display at museums is made by women.

After all of the “Women Who Rock” publicity last year, many of us thought that might inspire a more female-centric 2012 induction ballot. When the finalists were announced, five of the fifteen were women, a relatively high percentage by Rock Hall standards. But after the voting, and when it was all said and done, out of the 69 trophies handed out at the Induction Ceremony in Cleveland this year, just two went to women.

* - We haven’t been able to fully document all of the inducted members of Early Influence groups. This may be where the discrepancy lies between our total number of inductees. The Rock Hall lists 681 and we counted 685. The percentages of women remain largely unaffected either way.

See also: Heart wants to break into the “brotherhood”

Let’s take a close look at what Rose wrote and what he might be trying to say between the lines.

To: The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Guns N' Roses Fans and Whom It May Concern,

When the nominations for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame were first announced I had mixed emotions but, in an effort to be positive, wanting to make the most of things for the fans and with their enthusiasm, I was honored, excited and hoped that somehow this would be a good thing. Of course I realized as things stood, if Guns N' Roses were to be inducted it'd be somewhat of a complicated or awkward situation.

Since then we've listened to fans, talked with members of the board of the Hall Of Fame, communicated with and read various public comments and jabs from former members of Guns N' Roses, had discussions with the president of the Hall Of Fame, read various press (some legit, some contrived) and read other artists' comments weighing in publicly on Guns and the Hall with their thoughts.

Under the circumstances I feel we've been polite, courteous, and open to an amicable solution in our efforts to work something out. Taking into consideration the history of Guns N' Roses, those who plan to attend along with those the Hall for reasons of their own, have chosen to include in "our" induction (that for the record are decisions I don't agree with, support or feel the Hall has any right to make), and how (albeit no easy task) those involved with the Hall have handled things... no offense meant to anyone but the Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony doesn't appear to be somewhere I'm actually wanted or respected.

Axl has a BIG problem with the fact that the Rock Hall decided, apparently without his input, which members of Guns N’ Roses got inducted. The Rock Hall chose to induct the original five members, plus Matt Sorum and Dizzy Reed. With the exception of Reed, none of those guys are still with the band, and Axl appears to feel his current lineup should be included as well. And why shouldn’t he? All he had to do was look at fellow 2012 inductees, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to see that new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer is somehow getting inducted after just three years as an official member of the band (under the Trujillo precedent). Axl has worked with a bunch of different people since the mid-nineties, but there are members of the current GNR that he has worked with for over a decade now. The Rock Hall has recently been taking a much more inclusive stance with inductees, so why shouldn’t they be inducted? Oddly enough, the Rock Hall may have been waffling on this issue. They hadn’t publicly released the inducted members list, and only updated the Guns N’ Roses bio on their website this week to make it official. They could have changed their mind without having to backtrack.

Axl may have also had a problem negotiating the performance aspect of the induction ceremony. Don’t forget that when Van Halen was inducted in 2007, the negotiations about the song selection caused David Lee Roth to stay home. Rock Hall president Joel Peresman said this about the incident,“"We made every effort and the decision not to come was solely his, not ours."”Hmm… Expect a similar statement from the Rock Hall about Axl Rose to surface soon.

For the record, I would not begrudge anyone from Guns their accomplishments or recognition for such. Neither I or anyone in my camp has made any requests or demands of the Hall Of Fame. It's their show not mine.

Axl makes it clear here that he wasn’t trying to keep Slash or anyone out of the Hall of Fame.

That said, I won't be attending The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Induction 2012 Ceremony and I respectfully decline my induction as a member of Guns N' Roses to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

I strongly request that I not be inducted in absentia and please know that no one is authorized nor may anyone be permitted to accept any induction for me or speak on my behalf. Neither former members, label representatives nor the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame should imply whether directly, indirectly or by omission that I am included in any purported induction of "Guns N' Roses”.

Boom. There have been plenty of artists over the years who haven’t shown up to the Induction Ceremony (most infamously, the Sex Pistols), but this is the first time an artist has actually declined the induction. It appears that the Rock Hall is going to ignore Rose’s request and induct him anyway. The glass has already been etched on the Hall of Fame wall in the museum.

This decision is personal. This letter is to help clarify things from my and my camp's perspective. Neither is meant to offend, attack or condemn. Though unfortunately I'm sure there will be those who take offense (God knows how long I'll have to contend with the fallout), I certainly don't intend to disappoint anyone, especially the fans, with this decision. Since the announcement of the nomination we've actively sought out a solution to what, with all things considered, appears to be a no win, at least for me, "damned if I do, damned if I don't" scenario all the way around.

In regard to a reunion of any kind of either the Appetite or Illusion lineups, I've publicly made myself more than clear. Nothing's changed.

Yup, Axl really does hate Slash.

The only reason, at this point, under the circumstances, in my opinion whether under the guise of "for the fans" or whatever justification of the moment, for anyone to continue to ask, suggest or demand a reunion are misguided attempts to distract from our efforts with our current lineup of myself, Dizzy Reed, Tommy Stinson, Frank Ferrer, Richard Fortus, Chris Pitman, Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal and DJ Ashba. 

Again, sticking up for his current band.

Izzy came out with us a few times back in '06 and I invited him to join us at our LA Forum show last year. Steven was at our show at the Hard Rock, later in '06 in Las Vegas, where I invited him to our after-party and was rewarded with his subsequent interviews filled with reunion lies. Lesson learned. Duff joined us in 2010 and again in '11 along with his band, Loaded, opening in Seattle and Vancouver. For me, with the exception of Izzy or Duff joining us on stage if they were so inclined somewhere in the future for a song or two, that's enough.

There's a seemingly endless amount of revisionism and fantasies out there for the sake of self-promotion and business opportunities masking the actual realities. Until every single one of those generating from or originating with the earlier lineups has been brought out in the light, there isn't room to consider a conversation let alone a reunion.

Is Axl waiting for an apology? Do Slash and Steven Adler even know what they would be apologizing for at this point?

Maybe if it were you it'd be different. Maybe you'd do it for this reason or that. Peace, whatever. I love our band now. We're there for each other when the going get's rough. We love our fans and work to give them every ounce of energy and heart we can.

So let sleeping dogs lie or lying dogs sleep or whatever. Time to move on. People get divorced. Life doesn't owe you your own personal happy ending especially at another's, or in this case several others', expense.

No, fans aren’t owed anything. But it’s easy to see a giant missed opportunity and wish it were different.

But hey if ya gotta then maybe we can get the "no show, grandstanding, publicity stunt, disrespectful, he doesn't care about the fans" crap out of the way as quickly as we can and let's move on. No one's taking the ball and going home. Don't get it twisted. For more than a decade and a half we've endured the double standards, the greed of this industry and the ever present seemingly limitless supply of wannabes and unscrupulous, irresponsible media types. Not to imply anything in this particular circumstance, but from my perspective in regard to both the Hall and a reunion, the ball's never been in our court.

”It’s not me, it’s you.”

In closing, regardless of this decision and as hard to believe or as ironic as it may seem, I'd like to sincerely thank the board for their nomination and their votes for Guns' induction. More importantly I'd like to thank the fans for being there over the years, making any success we've had possible and for enjoying and supporting Guns N' Roses music.

I wish the Hall a great show, congratulations to all the other artists being inducted and to our fans we look forward to seeing you on tour!!

Sincerely,

Axl Rose

P.S. RIP Armand, Long Live ABC III

Guns N’ Roses fans were indeed hoping for a reunion, even it was extremely unlikely. Even the original five were never going to perform together at the ceremony, it would have been cool to at least see them on stage together to accept their award. Clearly, Axl Rose didn’t see it that way. Hey, it’s his legacy, he can do what he wants with it.

So, how will the Rock Hall handle the sticky situation of a GNR induction now? We know that Green Day will be doing the induction speech, but what about a performance? We don’t see Green Day covering GNR like they did for the Ramones. Our theory is that now that Axl is out of the way, Slash, Duff and Steven Adler can perform with Kid Rock on vocals. (Supposedly, Kid Rock and Axl are on the outs, so maybe Kid Rock won’t mind pissing off his old friend.) What else is Kid Rock going to do at the ceremony if he’s not doing some GNR songs? We’ll all find out on Saturday night.

In addition to Josh Klinghoffer, the other Red Hot Chili Peppers being inducted are: current members Anthony Kiedis, Flea (Michael Balzary) and Chad Smith; former guitarists John Frusciante and Hillel Slovak; and former drummers Jack Irons and Cliff Martinez.

Notably absent are former members Dave Navarro and Jack Sherman, each of whom were the featured guitarist on one album.

Although it may seem premature to induct Klinghoffer with the band after having only appeared on one album, it’s quite possible he could be with the band for years to come. In that case, it would be unfortunate if he was not included with the band in the Hall of Fame. It’s probably better for the Rock Hall to err on the side of inducting more people rather than few, although you do risk having extraneous Hall of Famers if things don’t work out. For example, what if the Rock Hall had inducted Van Halen during the brief Gary Cherone era? In hindsight that would have been a bit embarrassing. (No one has ever been kicked out of the Rock Hall.)

For some unknown reason, the Rock Hall continues to treat these decisions as classified information. They still haven’t publicly released which members are being inducted for Guns N’ Roses (Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff, Adler, Sorum and Reed), RHCP and the Small/Faces (Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, Kenney Jones, Rod Stewart and Ron Wood). And don’t expect to hear why Dave Navarro wasn’t inducted with the band, even though he spent five years with the band and appeared on a hit album with three hit singles. How much of that decision was the Rock Hall’s, and how much was the band’s? We’ll probably never know. Someone from the Rock Hall should stand up and defend these borderline decisions.

• Blue Caps (Gene Vincent)
• The Comets (Bill Haley)
• The Crickets (Buddy Holly)
• Famous Flames (James Brown)
• Midnighters (Hank Ballard)
• Miracles (Smokey Robinson)

In each of these cases, the backing group failed to get into the Hall of Fame at the same time as their frontman - sometimes causing a great deal of controversy. The Hall of Fame's failure to induct the Miracles along with Smokey Robinson in 1987 caused a particularly large uproar. Hall of Fame rules state that artists are eligible for induction 25 years after their debut release. At the time, Robinson had been a solo artist for only 14 years.

The newly announced honorees were not nominated on the latest Rock Hall ballot. Instead, they were designated by a special committee.

"There was a lot of discussion about this," said committee member Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

"There had always been conversations about why the groups weren't included when the lead singers were inducted," Stewart said.

”Very honestly, nobody could really answer that question -- it was so long ago. . . . We decided we'd sit down as an organization and look at that. This is the result.

"You're looking at some of the lynchpins between rockabilly and vocal-harmony and straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. It speaks to when this music took off. It's a great statement about the early years.”

. . .

As for other groups that were not inducted alongside their frontmen -- Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, for example -- Stewart said they might have a shot at getting in someday as recipients of the Rock Hall's Award for Musical Excellence.

"The great thing is that the organization recognizes that it needs to look at the process from time to time, and look at the results," Stewart said.

”If there are things that we think need to be modified or changed, then that's what we do."

Congratulations to the members of these groups (and their families) who are finally getting the recognition from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame they deserve. A shout-out also goes to the community members of Future Rock Legends who have been banging the drum on this issue for so long (especially Bill G. and Roy).

More to come...

Uber-Springsteen fan Gary Dell’abate brings up the fact that the E Street Band isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Bruce. Van Zandt doesn’t personally feel snubbed, but he feels Clarence Clemons, Max Weinberg and the rest of the band deserve to be honored. What Van Zandt fails to mention in the interview is the fact that he is one of the key people responsible for making those Hall of Fame selections! Not only is Van Zandt on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee, who come up with the ballot each year, he is also one of eight members on the sub-committee which selects the Musical Excellence Award winners each year, the category in which the E Street Band would likely qualify. All of that goes unmentioned by Van Zandt as he tried to defend Howard’s claim that the Hall of Fame is a joke. Van Zandt only said he was a supporter of the Rock Hall.

Listen to the rest of the Rock Hall talk in the next section.

On December 19th, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President & CEO, Joel Peresman, sat down with outspoken Rock Hall critic Eddie Trunk for a long radio interview. Here are some (paraphrased) revelations from the chat:

• Joel Peresman is not a member of either the Nominating Committee nor the Voting Committee. When Trunk repeatedly asked about famous Rock Hall snubs Rush, Kiss, and Deep Purple, Peresman agreed they should be in, but there was nothing he could do about it.
• Peresman’s involvement in the induction process is limited to administering the process and counting the votes. He claims he has no power to change the members of the Nominating Committee or change the induction process. Peresman implied the process is controlled exclusively by the Nominating Committee chairman (and Bruce Springsteen’s manager), Jon Landau. Peresman also downplayed Jann Wenner’s role in the process.
• Even if Peresman did have the ability to change the process, he wouldn’t do much. The only changes he mentioned were potentially expanding the 600+ member Voting Committee to include more young voters. When pressed about giving the fans a vote, he thought that was a possibility, but the fan preferences would only be a small part of the voting tally, similar to the Heisman Trophy system, where fans get one vote out of 926. Peresman said there was no way the fans would be able effect the nominating process. Peresman also brushed off the suggestion of term limits for the Nominating Committee members, or the possibility of releasing vote totals.
• Eddie Trunk continually pressed Peresman about the process, asking if there are so many obvious artists who should be inducted, or at least nominated, isn’t that a symptom of a broken system? Peresman admitted there are many deserving artists, but he feels the system is basically fine.
• Eddie Trunk asked Peresman about a rumor that he had heard directly from a Nominating Committee member, that as a condition of a Kiss induction, the band demanded some sort of financial compensation. Peresman flatly denied the rumor. Kiss was nominated in 2010, but did not get inducted.
• Peresman said the reason they don’t make the Nominating Committee members public, is because the members don’t to be hassled by fans. Peresman doesn’t have a problem with members acknowledging they are on the committee if they choose. (Of course, we have listed all of the members on our website now for years.)
• VH1 honcho, and Nominating Committee member, Rick Krim, called into the show to discuss the process. Krim acknowledged that this year was his third on the committee, and that he has pushed for Rush each year. He also has lobbied for Chicago, Yes, and Heart.
• Krim admitted he was unaware of how the nominating process worked the first year he joined. He also claims he had never heard of Wanda Jackson when her name came up at the meeting, but was quickly convinced she was deserving of induction. Jackson was inducted in 2009, and Krim was not listed as being on the Committee that year. (As Tom Lane mentioned on Twitter, “Shouldn't a Rock Hall NomCom member know about all genres of music, from the early days of Rock (and pre-Rock) to today's music? I say yes.” )
• Joel Peresman discussed that an artist’s influence on other artists was the primary criteria for the Rock Hall. He admitted to studying the returned ballots from the Voting Committee to see who past inductees voted for. He used the example of looking at Bono’s ballot to see who was important to him. He implied this could influence who gets nominated again.
• A caller asked Peresman about why the Small Faces and Faces were nominated together when they were two different bands with distinct sounds. Peresman admitted that individually they probably wouldn’t have been nominated, but it “made sense” to put them together on the ballot. (Sorry, Mr. Peresman, but that makes NO sense.)
• Eddie Trunk asked about the status of a potential Guns N’ Roses reunion at the induction ceremony. Peresman said he had heard from representatives of all five original members that they would be there. Slash later issued a denial on Twitter, “For the record, I didn't RSVP, or in any way commit to attending the RRHF. I don't appreciate people putting words in my mouth.”

Freddie King was one of the 15 performer nominees for the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction class. His name was on the ballot right between Joan Jett and Laura Nyro. His name was occupying one of the spaces on that ballot that dozens of other artists have been trying to be a part of for so many years and have been left out. You don’t think Deep Purple fans might have liked to see their name on the ballot there? They’ve never been nominated. Johnny Burnette & the Rock N Roll Trio? Nope. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Judas Priest. We could go on. The complaining wouldn’t be so loud if these artists ever even had a chance.

So why would the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee waste a space on the ballot for an artist who was going to be inducted as an Early Influence anyway? (More on that in a second.) What does that say to the Voting Committee members who used one of their five precious votes on someone who was already in? Are you kidding? Don’t you think most voters would have liked to use that vote somewhere else? We bet War, the Spinners or Donna Summer would have liked those extra votes.

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The Rock Hall did the exact same thing three years ago with Wanda Jackson.

The reason the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is so maddening to some of us is not because of who is in and who is out (that’s an entirely different discussion). It’s that the Rock Hall doesn’t even respect a defined process for induction. What other institution makes things up on the fly the way the Rock Hall does? Maybe the People’s Choice awards? Say what you want about the snubs of the Baseball or Football Halls of Fame (or even the Oscars), but you can’t say they don’t follow a set criteria and rules for induction.

Since 2005, the Rock Hall has honored five performer inductees every year. Since voters could choose up to five artists on their ballot, there was a logical symmetry between the ballot and the number of inductees. But this year, even though voters could still choose only five names, the Rock Hall decides to induct six artists. Why? Was it because one of the inductees is deceased (Laura Nyro)? No, they only inducted five in 2006 when Miles Davis was posthumously honored. So why are they inducting six this year? It feels like the system is being manipulated for some unstated reasons. The Rock Hall is certainly at liberty to change the rules, but does it need to be in the middle of the game?

And then there’s the issue of inducting Freddie King as an “Early Influence” -- an issue that came up the last time this happened with Wanda Jackson. The Rock Hall’s definition of the category from their website: “Artists whose music predated rock and roll but had an impact on the evolution of rock and roll and inspired rock’s leading artists.” The key part of that definition is that the music “predates rock and roll.” The rest of the definition applies to all Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. Both Freddie King and Wanda Jackson’s important works did not predate rock and roll by any definition. Wanda Jackson was a contemporary of Elvis. Freddie King had most of his hits in the ’60s. So, again, has the criteria changed?

And while we’re discussing the ballot, why were the Small Faces and the Faces nominated together? Yes, they overlapped band members, but so have many other bands over the years. We joked about this on Twitter when the nominations came out, but are we going to see joint Rage Against the Machine / Audioslave nominations? Pearl Jam / Mother Love Bone? Should Guns N’ Roses have waited to be nominated with Velvet Revolver? These are ridiculous examples, but the Small Faces / Faces has now set a precedent for this kind of thing. Bizarre. (Maybe the Baseball Hall of Fame will combine the stats of all of the Molina brothers and put them in the Hall of Fame together.)

Look, when you call yourself a “Hall of Fame,” that means something. It should be something for artists to aspire to achieve. It should deserve respect from fans. But you can’t continue to erode people’s confidence in the institution by bending the rules and looking the other way when there are obvious conflicts of interest without causing damage to your institution. Take a longer view of things. The Hall of Fame should become even more important as music becomes less of a communal experience.

We’re already looking at artists eligible for the 2037 induction ceremony. Will anyone still care?

**The Chili Peppers were also nominated two years ago (prior to Burnstein’s involvement with the Rock Hall) and are clearly strong Hall of Fame candidates, and it’s unknown if Burnstein was directly involved in getting the band on the ballot this year.

This is not a new problem for the Rock Hall Foundation, and they likely don’t see it as an issue. They have been facing accusations of bias since the Rock Hall’s birth and have never taken any steps to remove that perception.

If the Rock Hall wants to get serious about improving its perception with the public, we have some suggestions to improve the induction process:

1. Term limits for Nominating Committee members (5-7 years). The prospect of new voices on the Committee would give hope for neglected artists.
2. Allow the Nominating Committee members to speak about the process publicly.
3. Publish rules for the nominating process and include something to address conflicts of interest.
4. Make the list of Voting Committee members public.
5. Hire an independent accounting firm to handle the vote counting like every other reputable awards show does.
6. Publish complete voting statistics. We understand you don’t want to hurt artists’ feelings, but they will survive. It should be an honor just to be in the discussion for the Hall of Fame.
7. Find a way to engage the fans. There are lots of ways to do this, but a simple way would be to create a fan vote for the last ballot position from four choices you provide. We don’t want the Rock Hall to turn into the Hard Rock Café anymore than you do.
8. Stop being so secretive. You should have publicized the fact that Cliff Burnstein is now on the Nominating Committee. Be proud of who you are and what you are creating.

Meet Cliff Burnstein, the newest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominating Committee member. [Although the Rock Hall doesn’t publicize the members of the committee, Tom Lane recently learned from Dave Marsh that Burnstein had become a member this year.]

A few facts about Mr. Burnstein:

• He was born in ~1948.
• He co-founded Q Prime Management with Peter Mensch in 1982.
• He is most well known for being the longtime manager of Metallica. [Lars Ulrich tells the story of meeting Cliff Burnstein here.]
• One of his current clients are the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who happen to be a 2012 nominee. [Don’t forget it was Flea who inducted Metallica in 2009.]
• Others on his current client list include Muse, Silversun Pickups, The Mars Volta, Gillian Welch, Josh Groban and Cage The Elephant.
• He used to manage snubbed artists Rush and Def Leppard (among many others).
• Q Prime is associated with Mom + Pop Records, an independent label with artists such as Metric, Neon Indian and Sleigh Bells.
• He is a generous philanthropist.
• According to Dave Marsh, Burnstein nominated The Spinners for the Rock Hall this year.
• He is allegedly being impersonated by criminals who scam female escorts out of thousands of dollars (?!!?!)

Cliff Burnstein is unquestionably qualified to help shape the Rock Hall and he should be a positive addition to the Nominating Committee.

Thanks for your comments. We receive literally thousands of emails every year like yours about hundreds of different artists. Consequently, part of this communication is a standard response as to how the induction process works. First of all, the only reason that Duran Duran have not been inducted is that they did not get enough votes to date to make the final ballot. OR, upon making the ballot, they did not get enough votes. There are no conspiracies and no one has veto power.

Please remember the following: Everyone personalizes everything about rock and roll when they are brought into the circle of discussion. This is another way of saying that many fans believe that their opinion is uniquely compelling and definitive. Without metrics (see below), the definition of "rock and roll," who is or was important, and who should be inducted is incredibly subjective.

As a result, our Nominating and Voting Committees are replete with Inductees (in fact, they are the largest bloc of voters). Someone has to decide, so we built our Voting Committee around the most qualified group possible: the living Inductees, which number around 400 at this time. Thus, folks like Bruce, Metallica, Clapton, Ozzy, Prince and the others are the difference makers. You may disagree, but being an Inductee makes a pretty good case for being the ones who choose.

With that overview, here’s how the process works. Nomination and induction into the Hall of Fame is not about popularity, records sales, which label the group is on, or anything other than the process below. Unlike baseball, football, basketball or hockey, statistics are not relevant. To be eligible for induction as an artist (as a performer, composer, or musician) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the artist must have released a record, in the generally accepted sense of that phrase, at least 25 years prior to the year of induction; and have demonstrated unquestionable musical excellence. We shall consider factors such as an artist’s musical influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work, innovation and superiority in style and technique, but musical excellence shall be the essential qualification for induction.

Like it or not, the evaluation of these factors is highly subjective and can only be answered by the votes of our nominators and voters. In addition, even if an artist meets the influence/impact/innovation test, it doesn’t mean that they get inducted automatically. They still need to get the support of both Committees.

The entire nomination and induction process is coordinated by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in New York City. Artists can be inducted in four categories: Performer, Early Influence, Non-Performer and Side-Men. The latter three are evaluated and decided by separate committees for each category.

Unlike the other three categories, the selection of Performers is a two-step process.

It begins with a Nominating Committee consisting of a diverse panel of living inductees, journalists, historians, noted musicians, industry heads, etc. In turn, those nominated are sent to a Voting Committee of about 600 people (all living inductees, journalists, historians, music industry management, musicians, etc.) around the world who vote. That said, candidates are reviewed and discussed relative to their impact, innovation and influence on this music that we broadly define as rock and roll. Gold records, number one hits, and million sellers are not appropriate standards for evaluation. Those receiving the highest number of votes and more than 50% of the votes cast are inducted into the Hall. Usually, this means five to seven new performing members each year.

Having said all this, I believe that all worthy candidates will be inducted, just not always when they or their fans deem timely. This phenomenon is not unique to us. The sports halls of fame have had many great stars that do not get inducted in their early years of eligibility or for many years to come.

Peace & Soul,

Rock & Roll!

Terry Stewart

President

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Pearl Jam bought a table at the ceremony so they could watch The Stooges finally get inducted after being nominated eight times. Some quotes from Eddie Vedder:

"The Stooges are exactly what the Hall of Fame needs more of... [They are] the true embodiment of rock & roll... One can only hope that the voting committee starts boning up on their Black Flag, X, Sonic Youth and Fugazi to keep it going in the right direction... Iggy's speech was right on. Appreciative, but delivered with the back of his hand. If it hadn't taken so many years, Ron Asheton would've been there."

Vedder has his eye towards the future of the Rock Hall, hoping the bands that influenced him will get inducted before he does (Pearl Jam is first eligible for the 2017 induction ceremony). Vedder also calls out the Rock Hall's 500+ member voting committee which consists of people in the music industry, including the past inductees. And this is where the generational rub comes to a head. In this same Rolling Stone article, it casually mentions that the members of Genesis "had barely heard Phish's music" when they were told Phish would be inducting them at the ceremony. These same members of Genesis are now Rock Hall voters. This isn't to suggest that the members of Genesis aren't qualified to vote for the Rock Hall, it's just that they apparently don't connect with a later generation of artists, even one as huge as Phish. And unlike the Nominating Committee, which at least attempts to get younger by occasionally adding new members, the Voting Committee will always be dominated with aging rock stars who likely prefer their peers and influences rather than their followers.

The new idea is to change the charter so that it only takes 20 years to get in. That would move up a lot of acts on the ballot that are more current and carry some name value, which would be good for TV rights. Believe it or not, the following would then be eligible for the 2011 ceremony: Guns N’ Roses, Green Day, Public Enemy, Nirvana, Kid Rock and Smashing Pumpkins. Also a possibility right away: Keith Richards as a solo artist.

If the Rock Hall chooses to change the rules next year, it could potentially create the best ballot the voters have seen in many years. It would also make it much more challenging for often-nominated-but-never-inducted artists such as Chic and Joe Tex to get in.

Friedman correctly reported months ago that David Geffen would be inducted this year as a Non-Performer, so clearly Friedman has sources close to the Rock Hall's power players. In this report, Friedman's sources say that Wenner is only "considering" this rule change, so it's certainly not a done deal. It seems to us that the decision may not be finalized until this summer just before the Nominating Committee meets to determine the 2011 ballot. Stay tuned. In the meantime, we'll be preparing to update our database of eligibility dates...

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Nominating Committee – a diverse group made up of about 30 rock and roll experts, including music executives, music journalists, historians and even a couple of musicians – met in New York City this past Wednesday to compile the ballot for the next Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee election.

Each member of the [Nominating Committee] can suggest up to three potential nominees. In addition, there are three subcommittees – one on progressive rock and heavy metal, one on hip-hop and one on early rock and rollers and rhythm & blues – that convene prior to the big meeting and suggest potential nominees in those categories.

The big question here is why is the Rock Hall lumping together prog rock and heavy metal? What do they have in common other than the fact they're both underrepresented in the Hall of Fame? It's possible that the genre subcommittee members are fluent in both metal and prog, so they're just combined into one, but that still seems strange. Metallica filled this slot on the ballot last year, leaving the prog rock selection, Yes, without a nomination. Perhaps that changes this year.

Henke also divulges new criteria for becoming a Hall of Famer:

The only official eligibility requirement is that an artist must have released his or her first record at least 25 years ago. Beyond that, the committee evaluates the influence an artist has had on rock and roll, the longevity of the artist’s career and the overall importance. Unlike sports halls of fame, where one can point to the statistics an athlete compiled over the course of his career, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not based on numbers. In fact, record sales play a very small role in determining who is nominated. As a result, it’s all very subjective. And all of the members of the Nominating Committee are very passionate about their suggestions.

Henke continues with more news about this year's ballot:

This year the committee members discussed a very wide range of artists – from those whose careers began in the Fifties to some who are still very active. Overall, more than 50 potential nominees were discussed and debated. Then a ballot listing all of the artists was distributed and each member got to vote for their top 15 artists. That vote determined who will go on the ballot, which is then distributed to the Hall of Fame’s voters – a group that includes all living inductees, as well as various executives, journalists, historians and the like. In the end, 12 artists made the ballot, and five will ultimately be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I can’t say who the nominees are, but I was very happy with the results – it’s a very diverse group of artists in terms of musical styles, eras, etc. But stay tuned – the nominees’ names will be made public soon.

Look for the official announcement of the nominees to happen within the next couple of weeks.

Q: Who's doing your induction speech? Don't you get to choose?

A: We thought the artist would have that option. We found out in these special categories - see, I'm in "early influence" - the people that head up these various categories are the ones who choose who's the presenter for each artist, so I put in my request for who I wanted. Elvis Costello was the first one who became an advocate for me. He wrote a rather stinging letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but anyway he and Bruce Springsteen have spoken out for me.

NHOR : I don't see [MTV] as being that interested in music anyway anymore for the most part...

SL : No, but it's just ironic because we were the 4th video ever played on MTV when they first started. We were there from the beginning. And they just shit on us. We also were the only band in history to turn down being on the cover of Rolling Stone. We told Jann Wenner to stick it up his ass.

NHOR : I guess that answers the question on whether or not Toto will ever be in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame...

SL : We were never getting in anyway. It's amazing some of the people they're letting in now, and the people who have been left out. They put Patti Smith in there but not Deep Purple? What's the first song every kid learns how to play?

NHOR : "Smoke On The Water"...

SL : And they're not in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame? The glaring omissions...Yes, Genesis...they don't like prog rock. They don't like anybody who has any chops, basically. All of the people who SHOULD have been in there were in the first couple years. It's not like the baseball hall of fame, where it's based on stats. If you have the stats, they don't have to like you. You deserve to be in there based on what you brought to the table. But I'm not going to get too much into it, because ultimately it's a boring conversation. You know what? I've got awards. I've got two houses full of gold records. I've got to start taking them down because it starts becoming ridiculous, like my own personal mausoleum. I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool to be in there, but at the same time, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has lost its cool because of the glaring omissions. Alice Cooper's not in there? They were the first theatrical band out there. When I was in junior high school, I went from 8th grade until 9th grade listening to 'School's Out.'

I could make up my own hall of fame that would have more credibility. It's also like Rolling Stone's 'Top 100 Guitar Players', where they leave anybody out who has any chops. Somebody even wrote a letter to them, "How come Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Lukather etc. aren't on there, and Kurt Cobain is?" Kurt Cobain was a great songwriter, but a great guitar player? I don't think so. Eddie Van Halen at #78? Gimme a break. (Laughs)

I'm just happy to have a job. I'm a musician, not a rock star. Anybody can be a rock star, apparently. It's manufactured, hyped, and that's how you become a rock star. But if you can really play, then people are actually threatened by you.

Founding member of Grand Funk Railroad, Mark Farner, had some strong words to say about his band's exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a recent chat with Nightwatcher's House of Rock Interviews:

NHOR : What do you feel at this point are the chances of Grand Funk Railroad ever getting into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame? Why do you think the band isn't in there already?

MF : I think it's political. I think it's because we haven't obtained the brown ring around the mouth from kissing somebody's hind end. That's not who I am. I'm not going to bow to that god. It's only important to me at all for the fans, for the sake of the fans. From that viewpoint, yes. Because it is something which is supposed to be representative, but it's the same thing as where the Congress of the United States is supposed to be representative of us by coining and controlling the money. But that ain't happening either.

On Dave Marsh's weekly Sirius XM show, "Kick Out The Jams", he picked 5 names he would be voting for on this year's ballot:  Chic, War, Jeff Beck, Stooges, and Run DMC.

Marsh also said that this year's ballot was "flawless" and made a remark about how he opposed the Beastie Boys getting into the Hall.

He also said that he wouldn't vote for Metallica because they are going to get in anyway. 

Four out of Marsh's five selections are currently leading Future Rock Hall's 2009 ballot, so he may have a chance to see many of his choices inducted in Cleveland on April 4, 2009.

Thanks, Tom. Check out Tom's top snubbed artists here.

NHOR : Alice was quoted earlier this year as saying he kind of likes the idea of being blackballed from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Do you think Alice really thinks that, and would you agree with his comments, that it's more of an honor not to be in there than to actually be in there?

NS : Well, I know a little bit about the politics around the hall, so I'm not really at liberty to say anything about that. I think whatever he thinks are his thoughts and opinions. I would like to be in there, but the way I look at it the true band Alice Cooper pissed people off way back then, and apparently we are still doing it. When you think of the things we started then, there's a whole vein of music which didn't exist before us. Everybody from Kiss all the way up to Marilyn Manson. All the bands in between in that vein were one way or another inspired by Alice Cooper. I read, and hear things from people all the way up to this day all the time, that they wouldn't be playing an instrument if it weren't for us.

Steve Vai, the first album he ever learned from beginning to end was 'Love It To Death'. A lot of great musicians, and just that whole vein of music, the shock rock thing, or whatever you want to call it was brought upon by us. And to totally ignore that, and pass it over year after year just surprises me, that's all. My spin on it is if we're blackballed, who needs 'em anyway. I look at it as we're still ruffling feathers after all this time. Somewhere, somebody doesn't set easy with us. But you know what? When we were with Warner Brothers, they were ready to cancel our contract after every single album. We had to renegotiate after every single one. They kept thinking it was a fluke. The only ones who believed in us were us and Shep Gordon, our manager. That was it, and our fans. We had to cut a demo for 'Love It To Death'. It was always a fight and a struggle for us. So the fact that somewhere somebody doesn't like us, that's fine with me. (Laughs)

NHOR : Well, let's face it Neal, the Alice Cooper Band was never one of Rolling Stone Magazine's darlings, which seems to be a criteria to being inducted...

NS : I always said that, the magazine's not called, "Alice Cooper", it's called "Rolling Stone". And bearing in mind with what you just brought up, and I'm not going to elaborate on it much more, but we're talking about that whole San Francisco area there. Which does have a lot of influence on what goes on with the Hall. It's all politics, and there's nothing wrong with The Talking Heads, but when I saw that they got in I said, "You've got to be kidding me". I know they had a couple of hit songs but I can't even really tell you what they are. The Alice Cooper 'Greatest Hits' album is really a greatest hits album. How many records did they sell? I don't know.

I think they should start up a Shock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The Hall Of Fame's cool, I've been there, and it's got some great stuff. The majority of the people who are in there certainly deserve to be in there and it's cool for the fans. And the other question is, if it happens, are they going to put Alice in by himself, or the whole band? That would be the biggest kick in the head for us, if they'd put Alice in by himself. Actually, I've had a couple people I've talked to from the Hall in New York, and they've said, "Believe me, everybody knows the original band was THE band".

NHOR : Do you think that Alice would actually accept an induction without the rest of the original band being voted in as well?

NS : He didn't have any problem accepting the Alice Cooper star on Hollywood Boulevard, did he? He actually had the balls to tell me, "I actually thought of you guys". You thought about us? Gimme a break. We used to walk up and down that street starving every day, day after day, thinking someday we'd have our name there, and it gets there and you're by yourself. That's awful nice you thought about us. I think it's great that it's there, but sometimes it's better to say nothing than to say something that stupid. That band was put together through the blood, sweat and tears of 5 people. Each one of them deserves 100% credit, not just one getting 500% of the credit. That's the reason Dennis is writing a book and I'm writing a book. It's just a factual documentation of what we went through.

Stein, an avowed "doo-wop fanatic" who identifies heavily with the music of his youth, feels like there's "quite a bit of catch-up to do." He cites the Hollies, Brenda Lee, Conway Twitty, Gene Pitney, Percy Sledge, Chuck Willis and panoply of doo-wop acts such as the Five Satins ("In the Still of the Night") and the Penguins ("Earth Angel") as acts that should be full-fledged inductees. "I don't want to forget artists from the '50 and '60s, but not at the expense of worthwhile artists from the '70s," he said. "I don't want to sound like George Bush, but I don't want to see anyone left behind. But I really mean it, hence the difference."

Stein goes on to make a prediction, that is laughable in hindsight:

Stein does not predict that any artist, whether in 2001 or in future years, will ever sail into the hall the first year they are eligible, the way, say, the Beatles did in 1988, or Bruce Springsteen did in 1999. He cited a random selection of artists, from James Taylor to Earth, Wind & Fire to Gene Vincent to Parliament-Funkadelic to Joni Mitchell to the Bee Gees to the Velvet Underground, who waited a few, or many, years for induction.

Stein and Van Zandt have been rather candid about their biases in favor of the music of their youth. At some point, don't you have to close the book on that chapter in rock and roll history and start recognizing some of the gaping holes in later periods? How many groups from the 50's and 60's still need to be inducted before the award is completely stripped of its prestige?

As a way to keep a fresh perspective on the Rock Hall, perhaps there should be term limits for the Nominating Committee members. There is little doubt that each of the members, past and present, have been qualified to help shape the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But you can imagine what happens when the same group meets year after year: At the committee meeting, the member nominates a few artists, they get tossed around and ultimately get rejected or put on the ballot. The next year, the committee member tries again with the same names that didn't make it, and tries to wear down the other members into submission. A five year term limit would allow committee members ample opportunity to advocate for their favorite artists, but wouldn't let them stay so long that their perspective gets outdated.

So, are term limits a good idea? Is five years the right amount of time? Let's hear it in the comments.

Rock Band

Van Zandt has already let it be known that he will be pushing for more '60s bands to be inducted into the Rock Hall next year. But these statements leave the impression that he will actively oppose bands who incorporated electronic music into their sound during the '80s (or even beyond). Not exactly what the Rock Hall was hoping for when it restructured the Nominating Committee two years ago.

Thanks, Casper.

Hilburn... will recount his personal ties with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, John Fogerty, Prince, Kurt Cobain, Stevie Wonder, Ice Cube, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Jack White, and Eminem.

Whether or not Levy remains on the Rock Hall Nominating Committee after leaving Jann Wenner's nest remains to be seen.

The Nominating Committee has gradually become more and more controlling over the process -- up through 2005, there would routinely be 15 or 16 names on the final ballot, but it was reduced it to just nine artists last year. The Voting Committee now has fewer names to consider, and they're often ones they have seen many times before. It's likely there are many voters who would love the chance to decide between Alice Cooper and Tom Waits; The Monkees and Devo; or Genesis and Roxy Music, but they haven't been given that opportunity due to the more restricted ballot.

Why not give the voters more choice? After all, the Voting Committee has succeeded in rejecting only 31 names in 22 years. They should be given the chance to reject many more.

From paying special interest to the nomination process over the past few years, I've been able to draw several conclusions about the selection process.

If you have any insight or theories of your own, please share.

THINGS THAT WILL WORK IN YOUR FAVOR

1. Being a larger than life figure.
The Rock Hall wants to grab headlines, and will need to fill seats and get ratings from the ceremony. Madonna is an enduring pop culture phenomenon, and can be seen as the home run, marquee talent. Only Michael Jackson is really comparable here.

2. Being critically acclaimed AND commercially successful.
Critics and the masses are two distinct camps. If you have favor with both, your chances are excellent. Beastie Boys have sold very well over the course their career--Licensed to Ill was the top-selling rap album of the 80's, and check the wikipedia entry for its accolades. Paul's Boutique, huge critical favorite. Ill Communication topped the charts.

3. Continued success and longevity.
Just because your band is still together, doesn't mean it's relevant. If you've been in the game for decades, and get radio airplay with artists 20 years younger, you have a great chance. Avoid being labeled a nostalgia act.

4. Survival in the face of changing tastes.
Grunge destroyed hair metal. Bands like U2 and R.E.M. adapted and even elevated their careers. Survive cultural sea changes.

5. Have friends in high places.
If you're buddies with Jann Wenner, Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen or Dave Marsh, you will probably get in.

6. Be old.
The selections are made by crusty dinosaurs. Sonic Youth didn't stand a chance with this committee.

7. Affirmative Action.
The nominating committee will always select several black candidates of wildly varying qualifications. Soul, Blues, R&B, Funk clearly have favor over some guitar-based, predominantly white sub-genres.

THINGS THAT WON'T WORK IN YOUR FAVOR

1. Being prog, hard rock or metal.
Clearly these are not committee favorites. Much of the artists classified as such are boring, pretentious, overly indulgent, or polarizing. Still, many others are great. But it doesn't really matter.

2. Lots of filler.
If you have several essential recordings, but lots of misfires, your legacy will be watered down. Concise and impactful careers, and consistenly good artists will be viewed more highly than low-percentage hitters (3 strikeouts for every home run).

3. Confusing history.
Deep Purple probably has 30 current and former members, denoting by Mach I, II, III, IV, V etc. You do you nominate, who do you exclude? Nobody, it makes your head hurt just thinking about it.

4. Being overtly commercial at the expense of your art.
Bon Jovi and Journey, you lowest common denominator power balladeers, you don't stand a chance.

5. Enemies in high places.
Jann Wenner hates the Monkees. So they won't get in. Dave Marsh hates Kiss, so they won't get in either.

Can anyone think of any others?

As expected, the Nominating Committee contains a selection of rock critics and historians, music industry insiders, current and former Rolling Stone writers, and a few musicians. What is perhaps noteworthy about the list is that four of the 32 members come from a strong hip hop background (Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five became the first ever rap group inducted into the Rock Hall in 2007). And if that weren't evidence enough that the Rock Hall has officially opened its doors to rap, Jay-Z is on the Rock Hall Board of Directors.

Notable for his absence from the list is Rolling Stone editor and publisher Jann Wenner, who is the Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.

In the past 15 years, the Rock Hall has enshrined 97 performers, while the Baseball Hall admitted only 22 players. A key reason is the way voting is conducted.

To make it to Cooperstown, N.Y., a baseball player must get at least 75 percent of the votes, cast by writers who have covered the sport for at least 10 years. To get into Cleveland's Rock Hall, an act needs only 50 percent of the votes.

More than 600 music industry experts (including me) receive ballots -- and don't ask me what the criteria is to be a voter. Moreover, vote totals are not announced, unlike the Baseball Hall, which discloses the results from its 575 or so ballots.

While baseball players can be weighed statistically, a potential Rock Hall of Famer is supposed to be measured by "the influence and significance of the artist's contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock 'n' roll." That's totally subjective, which explains why such lesser acts as the Dells and Percy Sledge are in, and John Mellencamp and Luther Vandross are not.

The rock nominees are chosen by a committee of music-business insiders that, in the past, has included legendary producer Phil Spector, Best Buy exec Gary Arnold and Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn. Their choices often reek of elitism. Stars who have never even made the ballot include Neil Diamond, Kiss, the Moody Blues, the Doobie Brothers, Hall & Oates, Journey, Steve Miller Band, Genesis, Linda Ronstadt, Rush, Yes, Heart, Peter Frampton, Jimmy Buffett and Alice Cooper. That sounds like a Classic Rock Hall of Fame right there.

Are there any other voters who want to step out of the shadows to either support or criticize the process? Contact us.

Ahmet was a founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, as well as chairman of its governing foundation. In recognition of his contributions to popular music, he was himself elected to the Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Museum’s main exhibition hall in Cleveland bears his name.

Nomination and induction into the Hall of Fame is not about popularity, records sales, which label the group is on, or anything other than the process below. The love for, the evaluation of, and the impact of any artist are subjective questions to be answered by the nominators and the voters. Unlike baseball, football, basketball or hockey, statistics are not relevant. Please read below:

The entire nomination and induction process is coordinated by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in New York City. Individuals can be inducted in four categories: Performer, Early Influence, Non-Performer and Side-Men. The only formal criteria for the performance category is that an artist has to have had their first record 25 years ago. That said, candidates are reviewed and discussed relative to their impact on this music that we broadly call rock and roll. The innovation and influence of these artists is also critical. Gold records, number one hits, and million sellers are really not appropriate standards for evaluation.

The formal selection of Performers begins with an extensive panel of journalists, historians, previous inductees, noted musicians, industry heads, etc. In turn, those nominated are sent to a committee of more than 800 people around the world (journalists, historians, music industry management, all previous inductees, musicians, etc.) who vote. Those receiving the highest number of votes and more than 50% of the votes cast are inducted into the Hall. Usually, this means five to seven new performing members each year. So you can see the road to being inducted is an arduous one and for the most part, removed from the realm of influences or politics.

Halls of Fame [could be] restructured like pyramids. We'll assign each elected player to a level, with the shakiest picks (the Phil Rizzuto types) on the first floor; solid guys (the Terry Bradshaw types) on the second; no-brainers (the Wade Boggs types) on the third; defining superstars (the Tom Seaver types) on the fourth; and the pantheon guys (The Babe, MJ and the like) in the penthouse.

I once pitched this idea in a column about the Baseball Hall of Fame, but why couldn't every sport adopt it? Imagine how fun the voting would be. And how cool the buildings would look. And the goosebumps you'd get as you climbed to the next level.

What exactly is rock and roll? Having spent many years as a member of the Hall of Fame nominating committee (a position I no longer hold), I can tell you that endless hours have been devoted to this question, and it has never been definitively answered. Some critics — most notably the English writer Charlie Gillett, in his groundbreaking 1970 book, "The Sound of the City" — have argued that rock and roll is, if not "dead," at least historically complete, and now a part of the past.

During my second year on the committee, I received a petition signed by 5000 fans of the Moody Blues requesting that the group be considered for nomination. Personally I am not much of a fan, and neither, apparently, was anyone else on the committee (at least no one who would admit it). Still, I felt they were a legitimate contender for the nomination and that it was my duty to present the petition since so many people had taken a lot of time to put it together. I plunked it down on the conference table to a great roar of laughter from the assembled bigshots.

Jon Landau, Springsteen's manager, asked me if I personally was a fan of theirs. 'Not really,' I said. 'End of discussion,' he said.

On the other hand, I saw how Atlantic Records artists were routinely placed into nomination with no discussion at all, due to the large concentration of Atlantic executives on the committee. I saw how so-called critical favorites were placed into nomination while artists that were massively popular in their time were brushed off. I saw how certain pioneering artists of the 50s and early 60s were shunned because there needed to be more name power on the list, resulting in 70s superstars getting in before the people who made it possible for them. Some of those pioneers still aren't in today — but Queen is.

I was finally kicked off the committee after writing a guest editorial for Billboard in which I criticized the Hall for its insider ways.

Almost ten years later nothing has changed.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation is no place for the light of heart, that's for sure. The latest scandal involves 20-year chief Suzan Evans, the loyal administrator who despite much criticism has carried out Jann Wenner's whims without fail.

Now Evans has been rudely disposed by Wenner and replaced by an executive from Clear Channel Communications. So much for loyalty. But then again, Wenner is famous for hiring and firing magazine editors all the time. It's a wonder he took this long to dump Evans.

"Jann Wenner is a terrible person," says a foundation insider. "Suzan is very upset."