Well, we’ve come to the last 24 hours or so of voting in the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame “fan vote,” and I thought I’d start expanding my territory, so to speak, into talking more often about things other than politics, by taking a look at this year’s Rock Hall vote – in part because it’s a pretty fascinating class and the decision-making was definitely not easy.
Prefatory Matters
Because it’s early days and in a context that will largely be new to many of my current audience, there are a couple things I should say up front:
- More than anything else, fundamentally in my core I’m a musician. Have been for 45 years now. I don’t mean I’m a hobbyist or I played guitar for five minutes in a high school jazz band, either. Just putting that out there as a pre-emptive ward against the inevitable round of “what makes you think you know anything about any of this” comments from people who might not like what I said about their favorite artist.
- I’m not entirely a fan of the whole idea of a “rock and roll hall of fame.” At its essence rock – and its progenitors in jazz and blues and all the way back – has always been about the very opposite of halls of fame and self-congratulatory flatulence. There are issues with the personalities who control the hall and the preponderance of their favorites alongside the glaring lack of some genuinely deserving artists who just never sucked up hard enough to Jann Wenner. Disappoints me about him; growing up in the 80’s RS was kind of my connection to the authenticity and earnestness of the hippie movements, and watching him calcify into just another institution is a bit painful. That said, it’s a well-known and widely popular way of recognizing people who are important in my life and in many of yours as well, so I’ll appreciate it for being that and not take it too seriously.
- “But that’s not Rock and Roll!” Piss off and take your mother and the horse your gatekeeping ass rode in on with you. THAT’S rock and roll. Dick.
It was a tough ballot this year, which hasn’t always been the case.
My natural inclination based the roots of where and how I came up as a musician would’ve had me picking Iron Maiden over either Zevon or Lauper, but as much as I love Eddie I couldn’t step back and honestly say to myself that I thought Maiden were more important to the business or influential in the world of rock and roll than Lauper or Zevon. In both cases even though I’m not hugely a direct fan of them myself, I’d have to be entirely disconnected to not be aware of their impact among so many artists of whom I am a direct fan, aside from my appreciation for their work.
I feel like Maiden deserves the run, and I may have given them the nod in a different field, but even taking out Zevon and Lauper you’re still putting them against some serious weight, including the Spinners, Missy Elliot, and George Michael.
Without further ado, let’s proceed. I’ve arranged the article to be broken up in pages, this one and then one for each of the fourteen nominees. You can navigate using the menus at the top and bottom of each page as you go through, bit like an image gallery.
Kate Bush
As a matter of personal taste, Kate Bush never really resonated with me and I was only barely aware of her when she was truly contemporary. I’ve since become more aware of and familiar with her influence and work, and of course the recent resurgence in her popularity after her 80’s hit “Running Up That Hill” was used in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things in 2022.
As a matter of objective musical merit as best as such a thing can be determined, I think there’d be a strong argument for her nomination in a weaker field. I suspect the bump in her Q rating that came from the recent exposure in “Stranger Things” may well put her over the top for the nomination in the end, and if so I won’t be very mad about it.
Her work with synthesizers and heavy reliance on multimedia elements in her stage shows long before the word “multimedia” was coined, combined with her uncompromising commitment to maintaining control of her music, unquestionably make her a worthy nominee.
That her work was far more popular and recognized in her native Britain isn’t really relevant; her influence is undeniable as is the respect she’s earned from her peers. Without her you’re missing a big piece of everyone from Enya to Tori Amos to her fellow 2024 Fan Vote contender Cyndi Lauper, to say nothing of male acts like Spandau Ballet and more modern successors such as Lady Gaga. All of these and thousands more – Bjork, the B-52s, on and on – owe Kate Bush some part of their careers large or small. In terms of her “place” in music in terms of history and style, I’d say she’s probably the critical bridge between Yoko Ono and latter-day descendants like Bjork, along with the B52s.
To cap it all off, she holds the one key requirement I think is most critical for defining who we really see as our heroes and laureates: she’s always been herself, unapologetically, come what may, and there’s never been anything rock and roll was more about except maybe sex. (Don’t give me that look, the phrase literally started its life as a euphemism for sex.)
While she didn’t make my vote choices I think she’s a worthy contender. Enjoy her first single, Wuthering Heights.
A Tribe Called Quest
Another artist who I wasn’t super close to at the time, but have come to understand and respect their place in their context in the time since. Tribe were hugely influential and represent a great culmination/intersection of every facet of rock musically, and they helped establish and define and entire group of sub-genres within the rap/hip-hop world through their own work and the establishment of the Native Tongues Collective, a group of artists generally seen as intellectual, often very positive and uplifting, and wildly experimental in their sounds; other artists in the collective included De La Soul, Queen Latifah, the Jungle Brothers, and Monie Love.
From the bigger picture, ultimately they’re also fairly niche and I’m not entirely sure they’re rising above this pack to HOF level. Kind of the rap/hip-hip version of Iron Maiden in my mind, I guess, in terms of where I put them in the pantheon.
That said once again as with Kate Bush you absolutely must take into account the huge impact the band had on the overall sound. Most of the pop-hop stuff that’s hit in the last two decades can audibly trace back to these cats, including everything and everyone from PM Dawn to Pharrell Williams.
In spite of that, I don’t expect them to make a great showing this year but they should be nominated again, preferably directly instead of through the fan vote mechanism. Not only are they well deserving, I was somewhat surprised to find that a ton of the rap and hip-hop acts I was thinking “Tribe, but not…?” are in the hall already, which shows how much I’ve been paying attention. About the only folks I can think of who are eligible, fall within the broad scope of rap & hip-hop, and aren’t already in are Snoop/Death Row and KRS-One/Boogie Down Productions, so yeah. It’s fair time for Tribe, but I feel like they’re just fringe enough they’ll probably wait another 5-10 years before they get the nod in spite of that.
Iron Maiden
I was super tempted to vote for Iron Maiden out of sheer personal bias; my early musical career was filled with them. I was a long-haired white male rock/metal musician in the 80’s, of course I love Maiden. Covering “Run To The Hills” was an absolute requirement to prove you were a “real drummer” in my circle when I was about 14, 15 years old. Unfortunately for them and for my biases, that doesn’t rate them for HOF in this field. Maybe in another, but not this one. So let’s talk about objective merit.
As with our two previous contenders, the first thing that must be acknowledged is the immeasurable influence this band have had on their peers and successors. As one of the unholy trinity of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal along with Judas Priest and Motorhead, they can properly lay claim to the foundational slabs of every modern metal genre. The list of metal classics is ridiculous – Run To The Hills, The Trooper, Die With Your Boots On, Wasted Years, Two Minutes To Midnight, Number Of The Beast, Flight Of Icarus, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner are just the tip of the iceburg.
Another thing Maiden share with several of this year’s class of Fan Vote competitors is they tended to lay in heavy on the literary and historical references – more toward science fiction than the fantasy of Zeppelin or Yes, but no less literary for all of that. The Flight of Icarus, inspired by Roman myth; . While they only borrowed the title and not the themes of Heinlein’s science fiction classic “Stranger In A Strange Land,” they full out based entire songs on historical literary works from Coleridge (“The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”) to Aldous Huxley (“Brave New World”), and ranging everywhere across the landscape from the obscurity of Ramsay Campbell and Cornelius Ryan to the now cliche Frank Herbert and Edgar Allan Poe references and, of course, the obligatory homage to one Aleister Crowley. And Umberto Eco, and Orson Scott Card, and the list is endless and we haven’t even talked about all the historical references.
Iron Maiden are unquestionably a great example of what Led Zeppelin’s frolics through Tolkien hath wrought on the metal landscape, but they’re also just great musicians. Drummer Nicko McBrain was one of the core go-to references for literally every rock drummer who came up in generally my time and context, and Steve Harris’ classic galloping triplet groove (which he doesn’t use as much as you think but is still an immediately recognizable staple of the sound of Iron Maiden) has worn the fingertips of many thousands of bass players aspirant to nubs. The classic-era twin guitar harmony attacks of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith are now joined by Janick Gers, who originally joined the band after Smith departed in 1990. All of this capped off for the majority of their careers by the unearthly voice of the returned Bruce Dickinson, a man not only well and truly ranked with Ronnie James Dio, Robert Plant, Rob Halford, and Chris Cornell as among the all-time legendary high vocals in rock history but so draped with esoteric hobbies from fencing to commercial airline piloting that on close examination he starts looking like one of those legendary historical characters like Nicolas Flamel. You could probably get a fun little conspiracy going that he’s the latest incarnation of the Comte de St. Germain.
In spite of all of this, in this class, they’re just not quite there enough to make the cut. While their impact within metal is unquestionable, they haven’t had such a big influence outside of “their lane” the way so many Hall of Fame artists have, and I also understand their enthusiastic appeal is, in the picture, pretty limited and niche. Plus there are already several NWOBHM bands in the hall.
In the end, this is another band I really feel should get an official, non-fan nomination and induction – and soon, while they can still perform! – in spite of their not quite making the cut on my fan ballot this year. Don’t hold your breath on this one.
Fun little make you feel old point: at the beginning of this video there’s a computer console from ‘the future’ showing a date in 2050. At the time of this writing, the time between this video’s release in 1987 and the present moment is about 36 years.
We’re nine years closer to the future this video depicts than we are to the past in which it was created. Let me grab a handful of Geritol while you enjoy some Wasted Years, and we’ll move on to our next artist…
Warren Zevon
Here we come to the first of my five nominees, and the one that genuinely surprised me the most when I ended up going with him over George Michael, Iron Maiden, The Spinners, etc. The reason why is simply this: Zevon’s music but also the personality that informed it and the circle of musicians he was primarily part of – the Rolling Stone darlings of southern California in the 70’s, Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles and Jackson Browne and that whole circle of people – was a profound influence on all of those acts and hundreds more of similar type, and in being so holds primary responsibility for about a third of the music business in the 70s with resonating cascades still being felt today.
Zevon is my “dark horse” pick for the year, as much for his own work as for the work he inspired among friends and fans from Glenn Frey and Don Henley to REM, his collaborations and songs written for others, and also for his status as a “musician’s musician” or “songwriter’s songwriter” along the lines of Leonard Cohen perhaps, or John Prine, or Randy Newman; an artist you recognize almost more for their influence than for their own work, one who turns up on the lips of the people in your music collection far more often than it does in your actual music collection. His style, too, falls in line with those artists and other contemporaries and colleagues like Prine, Newman, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen – the storyteller and troubadour and slightly-off-average-joe, particularly the way he can pull powerful and poignant moments out of the chaotic banality of day to day life with just a few words and the right chord.
Zevon had and still has a ton of respect from some of the heaviest hitters in the game both musically and “politically” within the business (RS has always been in the tank for him), and of all this year’s nominees I’d expect Zevon to have the best shot if Jann Wenner decides to exercise some kind of power and override the fan vote. No disrespect to Zevon – the mainstream has always sucked – but without a straight nomination I don’t see him getting in on a popular wave. There likely aren’t two hundred thousand people on this planet who could name a Warren Zevon song that isn’t “Werewolves of London,” and there probably aren’t half that many who could bring the tune of one to mind on demand. Not to say he didn’t deserve more mainstream accolades, but it is a popular vote after all.
Still so conflicted about this vote that I started writing this entry arguing against including Zevon before remembering I actually voted for him.
Sheryl Crow
I enjoy Sheryl Crow’s work, and frankly in researching her in more depth for this article I realize I haven’t given her enough credit on one hand, and on the other hand she’s also pretty much everything that “Rock and Roll” shouldn’t be in ways I wasn’t at all aware of (to her credit she wears them well), but in the end the result’s the same.
I was aware going in that she got her start as a very well regarded backup vocalist both live and in-studio (Michael f’n Jackson didn’t duet with amateurs!), but was not aware she’d shipped 50 million albums, nor of quite the range and scope of other artists who have worked with her, so I owe her an apology for that.
I also wasn’t aware of her very Privileged Suburban Middle American Cheerleader Girl™ history (my feelings about which in general principle need no telling to anyone who’s read my more political work), which historically tends to speak poorly to an artist’s authenticity.
In spite of my own biases that really have little to do with her music I don’t mean to put her down. By all accounts she’s an extremely decent and conscious person, clearly a consummate professional, and there’s objectively no question that she is a tremendously skilled and talented singer, musician, and songwriter.
Objectively, Crow is much more deeply appreciated by fellow musicians than by music fans, who will generally be familiar with her radio hits (“All I Wanna Do,” “If It Makes You Happy,” “Every Day Is A Winding Road,” and a pretty decent, mostly note-for-note cover of Bobbie Gentry’s classic “Ode to Billy Joe,” plus maybe her cover of G’n’R’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine” on the soundtrack of Adam Sandler hit “Big Daddy) but not much more. Her distinctive clear, high, smooth tone is as immediately recognizable as McCartney or Ozzy or her former boss Michael J, she puts asses in seats, and she delivers on stage.
In spite of that, though, frankly if it’s time to start inducting early 90’s female rock acts I think Alanis Morissette would be a better choice for authenticity and the personal embrace of the whole “attitude” of rock and roll (which ironically is exactly why she’ll likely never be inducted after walking off last year’s show, citing issues of gender discrimination as the key reason why). I’d love to see L7 get a nod; if you’re really going for the boundary pushers and mold-breakers without trying to get into straight gutter punk or obscure unknowns, Fiona Apple or Sinead O’Connor or P.J. Harvey or Liz Phair are all equally meritorious and were all rising or prominent around the same time. If you want to get serious about it let’s talk Wendy O. Williams.
Plus – and this is where the “music snob” in me really comes out – it’s very relevant to note that every one of the acts I mentioned are to some degree and in classic rock and roll style known for being “difficult.” This generally amounts to people (mostly men) being angry when their expectation of deference and privilege meets a pissed off twenty-four year old woman with tattoos and rage in her eyes who’s absolutely unimpressed with your suit and tie, knows what she wants, is going to get it, and doesn’t care whether you like it…or who decides to use your show to be among the very first people to publicly speak out about sexual abuse by Catholic clergy by ripping up a photo of a much-beloved Pope on live television, creating a huge controversy and effectively ending a very promising career as a pop singer, simply because you believe it’s the morally right thing to do.
THAT, to me, is rock and roll. More Johnny Cash with his middle finger front and center, less Pat Boone covering Little Richard, please and thank you. See Bill Hicks’ remarks on this point for my general feelings on the matter.
Crow on the other hand is just a little too inside baseball, a little too standard-issue, a little too go-along-to-get-along, for me to feel that gritty, rubber-meet-road je nais se quois that, for me, is fundamental to everything that rock and roll really is. Sorry. I really have no dislike for her (in fact I’ve toyed with the idea of covering “If It Makes You Happy” myself, and I’m sure she’d be great fun to just hang and jam with), but in the end I can’t get past the number one filter for me when considering female rock artists in the particular context of their being female, which was best expressed years ago by Crissy Hynde of the Pretenders: “Remember you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not “fuck me,” it’s “fuck you”!” Crow, in spite of being a fairly rare example of a female musician who wasn’t almost or exclusively marketed as a pair of boobs and a furtive aspiration amongst teenage boys, still feels like she falls just a hair too far on the side of “cool kids table” for the 15 year old raging little know it all who hated “poseurs” in me to put her over for this.
I fully recognize that’s likely exactly the reason she’ll get in (and also that it’s not entirely fair of me), if and when she ever does, but that brings us to the whole “really, a rock and roll hall of fame? what’s next, rock against drugs?” conversation and part of the premise of this article is we’re playing along with the core proposition that a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame is a thing that should even be, and that as it is it’s more or less a fair representation of who musicians and fans think are the greatest rock artists of all time, and we’re not gonna go there this time because I’m trying to have fun with this…
The Spinners
Another very close call, and probably the most likely “sixth place” pick for me. For those unfamiliar, The Spinners were a vocal soul group in the 60’s through the early 80’s primarily (although a version of the group continues touring to this day), and represent the bridge between the past of doo-wop style harmony groups like the Drifters, the Platters and of Motown vocal groups such as The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Temptations, and their successors like the Commodores, DeBarge, TLC, Boyz II Men, and even the boy bands from Backstreet to BTS.
I should make it clear that this isn’t merely because the group were influenced by those predecessors and then influenced others; they were part of those predecessors, their history actually beginning in 1954 but their greatest commercial success not happening for another two decades. While their sound became strongly associated with “Philly Soul,” the fact is they hailed from the Detroit suburb of Ferndale and had a pretty heavy disco tinge to their biggest, best-known songs, and ironically spent a big chunk of the first decade and a half of their careers at Motown.
After struggling independently for years and then not really finding great success in a decade at Motown (during which they were often sent to chaperone other artists rather than being used as artists themselves), The Spinners finally hit their groove in 1972 when they signed with Atlantic Records and started working with songwriter Thom Bell, and immediately struck gold with the surprise b-side hit single “I’ll Be Around,” which shot up to number 3 on the Billboard Charts in spite of the fact that it wasn’t supposed to be the song getting airplay – the intended a-side single, “How Could I Let You Get Away,” peaked at 77 – and the group exploded from there to become one of the best known, highest-selling, and truly representatives soul groups of the 1970.
The hits, as I said, exploded after they broke through, and the list is intimidating – “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love,” “One Of A Kind Love Affair,” “Then Came You” (with Dionne Warwick), their last big hits “Cupid” and “Working My Way Back To You” charting in 1980, but probably the song they’re best known for outside of genre fans is their 70’s semi-novelty hit “The Rubberband Man.”
The influence of this band is incalculable, with artists from Bowie and Elton John to Paul Stanley and Tom Morello and Chris Cornell mentioning them as influence and references within their own work. They’re every bit as endemic a part of the world and feelings of the 70’s as were the BeeGees or Styx or Peter Frampton, and they deserve recognition. Unfortunately they’re up against a tremendous class of competitors this year, and with the slate I had in front of me I couldn’t quite get there. If any one of the artists I voted for weren’t on the ballot, The Spinners would likely be my fifth pick…if for no other reason than my vivid memories of watching Wonder Woman and The Muppets do “Rubberband Man.” That’s cultural impact, kids.
Rage Against The Machine
Do I even need to explain this? If the only impact Rage Against The Machine had was mainstreaming rap-metal crossovers with their blistering debut album featuring all-time greats like “Killing In The Name Of…” and “Bombtrack,” they’d be well worthy of this accolade, but the fact is that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What Rage did was to define and energize an entirely new era of activism and speaking truth to power, in which the platitudes and calls for civility and decorum were firmly rejected with a rousing chorus of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” Harnessing the power of the machine to destroy it while also hitting mainstream rock success with radio-friendly-ish stuff like “Guerilla Radio” and “Bulls On Parade,” Rage have used their platform to scream and aggressively demand social justice since their very first video for “Freedom” featured historical information related to imprisoned (and many say unquestionably framed) Chippewa activist Leonard Peltier and bold-faced on-screen calls for his release over a soundtrack of sneering, angry, and entirely well-founded criticisms of the so-called “freest nation on Earth.”
There’s probably not a standard-configuration rock band on the planet today that more successfully perpetuates and typifies the anti-corporate individualism of the hippie era. While it may be difficult to discern musically, thematically there’s a clear, bright connecting line leading directly from Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger through Buffalo Springfield and Ritchie Havens and CSNY directly to Rage, with a side trip through every Angry Young Man from Dee Snider to Chuck D along the way.
All of this, coming out of nowhere like a bullet in the head against a backdrop of lingering jingoism and nationalism related to the cold war, America’s emergence as the world’s “only superpower,” and the broadly popular Operation Desert Shield/Storm. At a time when much of the nation were as mindlessly patriotic as we’ve ever been, Rage stood up with a mirror and gave us no choice but to take a good hard look at ourselves.
That their fans have, over the years, included some incredibly right-wing figures who apparently had no idea what the lyrics were saying who later jumped up to express their disappointment at Rage “becoming political,” is just icing on the cake.
Unquestionably a vote for, and it should’ve happened the day they were eligible. “Freedom.” Yeah, right.
Soundgarden
There simply is no one band more emblematic of the “grunge” sound than Soundgarden. Not to take anything away from their friends in Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, Tad, Eleven, and a host of others, mind you, but for folks of a certain generation and cultural context the word “Seattle” evokes mental imagery not of space needles and coffee but of soaring, unearthly howling vocals delivered over weird tunings and time signatures with a dark twist of fatalistic hope and appreciation of the most obscure types of beauty and power found in the most hopeless and helpless places.
I could, and have, and will, write reams just about singer Chris Cornell, but the entire band are absolute masters of their craft. (Personally I think Cornell should be in as a solo artist too.) Kim Thayil does things with the guitar that nobody but the Jimi/mys would ever understand, an absolute riff monster with zero limits or boundaries to the things he makes his instrument do. Drummer (and huge musical influence on yours truly) Matt Cameron is an absolute perfect rhythmic blend of influences from the obvious and expected Peart and Bonham touches to out-of-left-field funk, jazz, and just plain unclassifiable grooves and fills, and the way his tunes and mixes his drums with nearly no resonance or reverb but still manages to get them to thump as hard as anything Bonham ever did is beyond masterful and definitely changed the way I and many other rock drummers approach the instrument. Finally, longest-serving bassist Ben Shepherd holds down the fort at the bottom end with all the steady pound and drive that great anchors like Michael Anthony and Cliff Williams bring to Van Halen and ACDC, but also with the riffing capabilities of a McCartney or Entwhistle. Plus he’s huge fun to watch on stage.
The band taken as a whole is simply mind-boggling. Effortlessly intertwining influences from metal, jazz, soul, and funk with alternate guitar tunings and weird overlapping time signatures (check out the polyrhythmic base of “Mind Riot,” where the verses have the guitars and vocals in 4/4 with the drums in 3/3, coming back together on the “one” every twelve beats), they didn’t just make music but defined it for a generation, every inch of the way in spite of each member’s intense desire to simply make good music without particular regard for commercial success.
The band’s early breakthrough album BadMotorFinger is rock-solid grunge perfection; I’ve often said that “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” (included below) contains absolutely every element of every great rock-metal tune ever written, flawlessly executed from fade-in to fade-out, and probably represents the pinnacle of the form. Then their followup, Superunknown, with its massive hit “Black Hole Sun” brought psychedelia firmly into the computer age. There is simply no excuse for this band not having been in the hall from the moment they were eligible, and the fact that they largely eschew such honors and pageantry is just another argument in their favor. I’d have voted for them in all five slots if I could.
I would also go on about how great this band is forever, if I could, but instead of that I’ll let you enjoy this masterpiece. I dare you to get through it without at least nodding your head along to the groove. Get headphones, turn it up, and strap in: it simply does not get better.
George Michael
Oh, George Michael, how the years have forced a re-evaluation of you. Back in the day when I was coming up, George was mostly the butt of jokes by anti-establishment comedians like Bill Hicks (who once proposed Michael’s first group Wham! as a possible future contender in the “Let’s Hunt And Kill…” TV game show, right after Billy Ray Cyrus and Rick Astley).
Over time, however, the combination of Michael’s pop appeal and a more matured and developed musical sense elevated him to among the best soul singers of the 90s. Breaking out as a solo act first with the upbeat radio-friendly “Faith,” Michael displayed a great range and depth in deeper cuts (which later rose to prominence), particularly ballads like “Father Figure” and the deeply bluesy “One More Try.”
Michael’s later-career struggles with drugs and fame, including dealing with his bisexuality in public after years of scurrilous speculation, unfortunately tended to overshadow his music in the press, but he quickly evolved into an “old hand” on arena pop stages, collaborating with the usual galaxy of stars (his 1993 collaboration with original artist Elton John on a cover of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” was well-received and very deservedly so) and occasionally stumbling over tabloid scandal until his unfortunate succumbing to what I call “lifestyle poisoning,” in this case an enlarged heart and fatty liver from years of drug and alcohol abuse, at age 53 in 2016.
Because of his association with pop music and the usual workings of that subsection of the business, folks tended to assume Michael was recording songs written by other songwriters but in fact he wrote most of his own material both in Wham! and as a solo artist, and was also a skilled instrumentalist who handled all of the keyboard, bass, and drums on his debut album himself.
Aside from the artistic merits of his talent, Michael was a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights and identity at a time when that was a hugely unpopular and even dangerous thing, choosing to stand and be who he was rather than concede to the pressures of bigotry and hate that dominated the mainstream…again, very much rock and roll by way of attitude, proof the man wasn’t just a performer playing a role.
With all that said, his career just wasn’t quite deep enough or with enough lasting influential impact on the art form as a whole for me to feel like he’s rising to the top two-thirds of this year’s class, so unfortunately I had to pass.
Cyndi Lauper
Our next contestant is another artist who was unfairly judged as shallow and transient because of her pop roots and appeal, but who has proved over time to be a consummate professional with a stunning depth of musical knowledge and dynamics. Cyndi Lauper may simultaneously be the most and least predictable entrant this year. From the moment she broke on the scene as a solo act with her 1983 album “She’s So Unusual” and it’s catchy pop feminist anthem “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” Lauper’s wildly colored hair, thrift-shop-tornado style of dress, and unflinching and uncompromising commitment to being her unique self immediately served as a beacon to disaffected and bored teenagers of the affluent early Reagan Eighties, which eventually led to her emergence as a key advocate against homophobia and for safe sex and research in the early days of the AIDS crisis. (Her cheeky, less mainstream anthem, “She Bop,” was infamously – allegedly, I don’t know that Lauper’s ever confirmed it herself -a narrative about masturbation only nominally hidden behind paper-thin euphemisms. It’s also a pretty nifty bit of early 80’s experimental synth-pop, deceptively simple-sounding; I’ve included it below for you to check for yourself.)
Those who wrote her off as just a flash in the pan pop gimmick were thrown a hard curve when Lauper’s popularity proved much more than transient and her talent and skill proved more than sufficient to the task of validating her positive public reception. Her sophomore album “True Colors” featured a title track of that rare stripe that genuinely earns the title of “instant classic.” (Having it drilled into our heads by a decade of Kodak commercials probably didn’t hurt either!) Over the years her work on everything from Broadway show tunes to jazz standards has continued to delight and amaze, and every step of the way she’s never stopped being her essential self, this “weird little chick from Ohzoan Pawk” with the high squeaky voice, doing her happy colorful best to bring a little fun and beauty into the world and being a wonderful human being by any definition.
As the frosting on the cake, she’s always been extremely vocal and active in her support and advocacy of marginalized groups including the LGBTQ community, abused kids, and more, and again is just one of those rare people that you almost never hear an unkind word about from her peers either publicly or in “green room” chatter.
A nomination well earned, and she’s got my vote.
Missy Elliott
Frankly this is probably my least favorite nominee of this year’s class. Not to say I don’t dig her stuff or hate on her in the least, I just feel like there are a lot of women who have done more, gone further, and helped paved the roads Ms. Elliott started walking in the 90’s who remain unrecognized, like Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, or even Salt-n-Pepa. Worthy of induction? Probably, in the big picture, but I think she’s got some folks to get in line behind.
That said she’s sold forty million albums, was instrumental in the highly influential Swing Mob collective, and brought Timbaland to the world. She’s legit and well due her props. I just think there are better potential nominees reflecting the vital role of female rappers who I’d rather see get the nod first.
Willie Nelson
Is there anyone in the western hemisphere who need to be told who Willie Nelson is or why he deserves to take his spot in the Rock Hall next to his colleagues like Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee?
Nelson would arguably be a reasonable inductee if his career had ended before his first album, having written the staples “Hello Walls” for Faron Young and “Crazy” for Patsy Cline before he was ever taken seriously as a performer by record labels, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the reasons Nelson has likely been overlooked by the Rock Hall for so long is likely that he’s often seen primarily as a country artist, in spite of the fact that critics have been observing that he’s far more than just that for fifty years, particularly after “Always On My Mind” became a hit for Elvis Presley. After hooking up with Waylon Jennings at the Opry in the mid-1960s Nelson embarked on his “outlaw country” journey, refining (or perhaps one would better say “unrefining,” a similar path taken by his contemporaries comedians George Carlin and Richard Pryor around the same time in the mid to late 1960s) his image from blazer-and-tie standard-issue country artists of the early 60s to the rough-riding dusty laid-back rope-smoker we know and love today.
After making the first stab at a country-themed concept album in the mid-70s with “The Red-Headed Stranger,” Nelson’s next release “Stardust” featured a collection of jazz and blues standards including the title track and an extraordinarily well-received cover of “Georgia On my Mind.” Throughout this period, Nelson continued collaborating with Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and other artists, eventually joining those two and Johnny Cash in an extraordinarily successful quartet called The Highwaymen, with whom he’d spend about a decade from the mid-80s to mid-90s among other work.
Included in that “other work” was the creation in 1985 of Farm Aid. Inspired by the 1985 Live Aid concert to help with famine in Ethiopia, Nelson along with John Mellencamp and Neil Young, got together and staged the first Farm Aid concert in late 1985. While organizers initially believed a single show would be enough to get the job done, they admitted later that they had woefully underestimated the complexity and scope of challenges facing American family farmerss, and the show became an irregularly scheduled ongoing event, almost-but-not-quite-annually, and has now been staged thirty-four times in the last thirty-eight years, with the thirty-fifth announced but not yet scheduled for 2023 and set to feature Nelson, Young, and Mellencamp along with current Farm Aid directors Dave Matthews and Margo Price and further acts TBA later this year.
With hundreds of songwriting credits to his name spanning across seven decades and two centuries there are few artists alive or dead who have had a bigger impact on rock and roll, and to this day Nelson remains a fan and performer of rock, recording (as one example) a stellar cover of Pearl Jam’s hit “Just Breathe” with son Lukas in 2012 (included below).
It’s honestly ludicrous that Nelson wasn’t in the hall thirty years ago, and long past time that oversight was corrected. Happy to cast my vote for him.
Joy Division + New Order
This is where I’m going to get in trouble with people, because the truth is this band have never resonated with me, at all, even a little tiny bit. As far as I can tell their most significant contribution to Rock and Roll was that t-shirt. I mean no disrespect to the tragically departed Ian Curtis nor to the rest of the band, I’m sure they’re all competent and exceptional musicians to have the careers they’ve had. But I’ve never heard a song by them that made me want to hear it again or cover it, including “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” and while it may relate more to the way my life has subjectively intersected with their fan base, they seem primarily to me an act whose success is predicated mostly on people who like to impress other people with how edgy and alternative they are by name-checking a 45 year old British punk band.
Good band? Sure, I’ve got nothing against them on that level, just not my style per se. But objectively, listening to their music and looking for the things that I believe make great rock and roll, I just can’t merit the suggestion they belong in the Rock Hall at all. There are dozens of acts more worthy (and I’m not even under consideration so again, I’m not trying to generally crap on them as an act), whose contributions were more clear, substantive, and resonant, and I just don’t feel like putting them in the hall representing the punk wing before bands like X, the Germs, Devo, Bad Brains, MC5, and Black Flag makes a whole lot of sense from a perspective of “what impact did this artist have on music?” The Germs alone ended up squeezing out bits of everything from the GoGo’s (Belinda Carlisle was an early bassist and huge advocate) to Foo Fighters (Germs guitarist Pat Smear famously launched a whole new career as the guitarist for Nirvana and the Foos), and I just don’t hear that much impact musically from JD+NO that to me would rate their inclusion in the Rock Hall over that pedigree among many others.
Even if you set the “punk” aside and focus on the “new wave” elements, there are tons of acts more deserving of a place in the Hall who don’t have one, including seminal influencers like Simple Minds, Brian Eno, Depeche Mode, INXS, the Psychedelic Furs, Madness or The Smiths, just off the top of my head.
Sorry if that hurts feelings but there you have it, I’m sure not all of you think Chris Cornell is the king of all rock either.
Again, I’m not saying the band sucks or even that the fact they don’t resonate with me personally is a meaningful criterion for exclusion. I honestly can’t really stand the Smiths and Morrissey either, never did a thing for me, but I can recognize their influence and talent objectively and wouldn’t object to their inclusion if Morrissey would stop being a drama queen and just play the songs that people love out of respect for the people who love them, that being literally the only reason they weren’t inducted on at least two different occasions (2008 and 2014 if I remember right).
Objectively from decades of listening to other musicians across all genres talk about who they’ve been influenced by there are at least two dozen bands who fit comfortably into this slot and merit it far more, and that means for me there’s a long, long list of folks I want to see in the Hall before I’m interested in voting for Joy Division, New Order, or both separately or together.
The White Stripes
Finally we come to our last entrant, the White Stripes. Of all the bands I didn’t vote for this year, this one made me feel worst. I really enjoy Jack White’s playing and the Stripes stuff. The guy’s got crazy tone for days, just an absolutely insane experimenter with his sounds and production tactices, and I have absolutely zero problem with the idea that the Stripes are a great band and that Jack White is absolutely on a level that it’s completely reasonable to film an entire movie that’s just him, Jimmy Page, and The Edge sitting around shredding and talking about music.
Also in White’s favor (and the band’s by extension) is his obvious depth and sincerity of his love for the art. His intense absorption of influences very much reminds me of watching how the playing of the big British blues guys were influenced by American blues and then turned it around and inside out and learned to find their own blues and bring it out the other side having taken nothing away from nor given any slight their influences. Definitely another of those “musician’s musician” types…
…and that’s part of the problem. In spite of moving some units, to most music fan’s White’s still best known for “Seven Nation Army” and I feel like that’s about it in the minds of most music fans who are aware of him at all. Their loss to be sure, but like I said before, it is a fan vote, and that means a popularity contest, and I just don’t see the Stripes making that cut. Additionally, I feel like in spite of his very forward-thinking approach to his work the broad mainstream impact, either directly through commercial success or indirectly through influence, just doesn’t rise yet to Hall Of Fame levels. If it was a musician’s or guitarist’s hall of fame I’d vote for him without hesitation, but this is a little different animal, and there’s more than just your talent and skill that have to be considered; how many people even know who you are is also important, as is what the average music fan has to say about where you fit in their head. Taking those less-musical points into consideration, and given the field at hand, I couldn’t quite make the stretch this time.
You may also notice that in spite of the nomination being for “The White Stripes,” my remarks have been almost exclusively about Jack White. That’s not because I have any disdain for Meg White nor think poorly of her in any way, I’m just not finding much in my head to say about her one way or the other. She’s a good, steady drummer, but that’s also all – not any huge innovations or weird experimentations with time signatures or cross-genre grooves or anything like that. She seems like good people and I feel almost as bad about not having more to say in her praise and defense as I do about not voting for the band in the first place.
All that said I still didn’t vote for them, but if it’s any consolation, I really do feel bad about it and am happy to apologize to Mr. White in person at any time. (Rumor is he owns a place within ten or fifteen miles of where I sit.)
In Conclusion…
That wraps it up for the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Fan Vote. I hope you’ve found it interesting and informative. Definitely looking forward to hearing what you all think in the comments and on social media. Who did you vote for? Why? What do you think of my votes and reasoning, do I have my tone-deaf head up my butt or should I be getting a phone call from Spin this week? Did you learn anything new, did anything I put out there maybe give you pause for thought? Tell us in the comments and let’s fight about it!
Thanks for reading…and don’t forget to vote!