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Rock the Vote

Who should -- and shouldn't -- be in the Rock Hall? We pick a fight.

By Denise Grollmus 

Ask any Clevelander about the Rock Hall, and be prepared for an onslaught of moaning.

The museum part isn't the problem, they'll say. What's not awesome about gawking at Bowie's glittery unitard, Muddy Waters' axe, or Lennon's journals?

It's the actual Hall of Fame that brings out the bitching.

Many begin with the obligatory gripes about the induction ceremonies being held in New York. "If rich baseball players can go to Cooperstown and football players to Canton, then certainly rock stars can come to Cleveland," says Mike Jordan, former music director at WCSB.

Others contend that five-star banquets at the Waldorf-Astoria run afoul of rock's image as rebel music. "A hall of fame with a black-tie induction ceremony is pretty much the antithesis of what I think about when I listen to someone like the Clash," says Dave Rich, guitarist for Akron pop darlings Houseguest.

And then there is the legion of haters -- those who claim the Hall is a joke, that it ignores invention for commercial success, that it's not much different from a Cape Cod T-shirt shop -- a place for tourists to be relieved of their money. "What does it have to do with me?" asks Gabe Fulvimar, a bartender at the Matinee, who prefers Modest Mouse to Van Halen. "They'll never induct any bands I give a shit about."

But here's the kicker: No matter how intensely music aficionados detest the Hall, no matter how vigorously they denounce it as just another industry gimmick, they don't hesitate to argue about who truly deserves induction. They'll make a federal case for Sonic Youth. They'll bewail the injustice of Kiss' continued omission. And they swear they'll never go downtown again if Bon Jovi is included. Think of it as the musical version of junior high, where you're happy to talk shit about the popular kids, but secretly wish they'd invite you to sit at their lunch table. We all crave validation -- even the rock and roll rebel.

Till now, the 500-member induction committee, an anonymous cadre of critics, historians, and industry types, has had it easy. Inductees have largely been no-brainers culled from the big sellers who revolutionized rock (Elvis, the Beatles, Zeppelin) and the icons of blues, country, and soul that shaped the music's future: Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Booker T. & the MG's.

But as the pool of eligible artists now reaches into the '70s and '80s, the terrain becomes increasingly more difficult to navigate and the arguments more heated. This was the era when the definition of rock became as clear as mud.

Pop artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna replaced Jimi Hendrix and Santana on the Billboard charts. Rock, in its purest guitar/bass/drums configuration, was largely pushed to the fringes, where it regularly reinvented itself: punk, hardcore, metal, glam, alt-rock, grunge. Even Rolling Stone, the Woodstock generation's authority on rock, was now covering everything from hip-hop to synth-pop. People began asking themselves whether rock was really a sound or simply what sits atop the pop charts. No one could agree.

This all makes the Rock Hall's future as sketchy as a Detroit Avenue hooker on meth. The Hall's website claims that one of its goals is "to recognize the contributions of those who have had a significant impact on the evolution, development, and perpetuation of rock and roll." But how will it measure that? By record sales? Innovation? Will there be quotas for gender and race, as well as genres like hip-hop and techno? Or is it just one big popularity contest?

Scene called and asked, but Rock Hall spokeswoman Margaret Thresher didn't have a response. "Good question," she said.

The answer is that without a concrete definition of rock, there is no science to make the induction process flawless. Outside of Nirvana, the next decade doesn't boast many safe picks. Even Madonna will be a controversial inductee, seeing as the pop diva never released a rock record in her entire career.

Then there are the guys who sold out arenas, only to end up on the cheesy VH1 rock docs -- the Poisons and New Kids on the Blocks of the world. No one would claim they were innovative or had any staying power (NKOTB didn't even rawk!). But they defined musical eras and sold gobs 'n' gobs of records (even though they now make up 90 percent of the stock at the Record Exchange).

How will this shadowy induction committee weigh those guys against, say, the Replacements and Dinosaur Jr. -- artists that aren't household names and never graced the cover of Rolling Stone, but created whole new genres and birthed hundreds of new bands?

It's the sorta fight we like to jump into. So here are 10 artists who we think embody the Rock Hall's future induction dilemmas and why.

How did we assemble this noble list, you ask? Well, we figured since the Hall has no guidelines, we didn't need any either. Enjoy!

Judas Priest
Before Judas Priest, there was no such thing as heavy metal. Sure, there was the bombast of Zeppelin and the dark sludge of Sabbath, but the Priest wrote the book on modern metal. In addition to establishing the dress code of leather and studs, the Priest set the standard for guitar virtuosity with its dueling twin leads. Their mechanized onslaught and classical grandeur also severed gritty hard rock from its blues roots, contorting it into something white and very European.

Aside from the innovation, Judas Priest has sold over 38 million albums worldwide. Still, the chances of singer Rob Halford driving his motorcycle into the Rock Hall are as slim as his chaps. Though heavy metal is one of the most popular genres in the world, people other than metalheads see bands like the Priest in only one of two ways. Either they're terrifying devil worshipers, or they're Spinal Tap.

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