And he first articulated rock’s sense of itself, creating a foundation for the music - tied to a better world and the promise of America - that even rock and roll’s bleakest moments tacitly acknowledge.
He decisively introduced real lyric writing to pop music. He is one of the three or four people who laid out one of the original pieces of the rock puzzle. Some bands sold no records and were highly influential others sell so many - and play the PR game in general and suck up to hall folks in particular so well - that they get inducted even though they are highly derivative and blandly attitudinal, don’t write their own songs, base their act almost entirely on the lead singer’s hair, and have not a thing to say.īut enough about Bon Jovi. Maybe you weren’t about songs, per se, but a sound. Perhaps you weren’t the best at something … but you were the first. It’s all based on several sliding scales of relative worth or interest.
The hall execs I spoke to all made this point: Every music fan has his or her opinion when it comes to what makes a great or important artist. 87 and 96, aren’t really significant.įinally, let’s acknowledge that the nominating committee does have a difficult task. Let me know of any mistakes or grievous errors of opinion in the comments or on Twitter Also, remember that, in the real world, the difference between No. There are also some hall of fame side categories, for important country or blues progenitors, or for people like Dick Clark I have not included those in this list. That’s why Stevie Nicks, for example, is ranked where she is her solo career - i.e., aside from her work in Fleetwood Mac, which was great and for which she’s already in the Hall - is marginal, nowhere near worthy of inclusion. Individual inductees with previous careers in bands (Lou Reed, Paul McCartney, etc.) are ranked on the basis of their solo work alone. The hall’s own stated standard goes like this: “Besides demonstrating unquestionable musical excellence and talent, inductees will have had a significant impact on the development, evolution and preservation of rock & roll.” I see what they are getting at, but I don’t think there’s much “musical excellence” in the Ramones, and I don’t think “preservation” should be a consideration at all. That said, for the most part they’ve reached out to find worthy female acts more on that anon. You may disagree, but it’s my list.Īnd, yeah, I know there aren’t enough women - the hall nominating committee is overwhelmingly men and always has been. (There are a few bands I personally like a lot on the bottom half of the list.) I have one further criterion, too: Was their career worthy of being in a hall of fame? There are some acts, a few fairly influential, whom I’ve downgraded, basically for being dinks. In other words, was the act influential? Were they the first? Are they simply brilliant at whatever it is they do? Those to me are considerations that make for a hall of fame band. The rankings below are made on the basis of the appropriateness of each artist’s induction, not their baseline quality or my personal fondness for the artists in question. Along the way we’ll look at the hall’s origins and how it has evolved, with comments from members of the selection committees past and present. The question is, how well has the hall functioned? Has it done its job well, within its ridiculous premise? What follows is a list of all of the regular inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, listed in order from best to worst. There is nothing less rock and roll than a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The idea of a bunch of self-satisfied music-industry fat cats in tuxedos having rock stars assemble for a command performance once a year is precisely the sort of thing rock was created to be the antidote to. There shouldn’t be a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This year’s inductees - the Zombies, Janet Jackson, Radiohead, Roxy Music, the Cure, Def Leppard, and Stevie Nicks - have been added to the list.
It’s been updated (with new interviews with nominating committee members) and revised for this year’s ceremony, which takes place this week at the Barclays Center on March 29. This list was originally published before the 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
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