Lou Carlozo, Longtime journalist. Music producer. Political junkie.
Jackie, this is an excellent question. Here’s my answer:
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It is about as “un-rock” an institution as you can get.
First
off, understand that Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, is the
overlord of this bastion. John Mellencamp once put it like this: “If
Jann likes you, you’re in.” And if he doesn’t?
I
idolized the Monkees growing up. I think they did a ton to influence a
lot of musicians, including rock hall of famers the Sex Pistols, and my
own career as a producer. But Wenner has historically hated the Monkees,
sounding the strident trope that they were never a real band. They were
Hollywood. They didn’t play on their backing tracks, blah blah blah.
Well,
neither did the Drifters—a group that has to date had 60-plus members.
The original Drifters were formed in just as calculated a fashion from
within the music industry by Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records.
And they made the Hall in 1988.
Or:
How about the Bee Gees? As the standard bearers of disco—the very
musical style that pummeled rock into a coma in the 1970s—they were The
Enemy. It’s easier to take Spinal Tap seriously. Open-to-the-hairy-chest
white suits with lapels wider than wings on a 747? Helium inflected
voices? That was rock, eh?
Ask anyone who
grew up as I did, watching rock go on life support, disco rise, and
thanking the lord when punk jump shocked it back to life. Or watched the
Bee Gees piss on The Beatles’ memory, and with much vanity, by making
the “Sgt. Pepper” movie, one of the greatest travesties in musical
cinema.
But hey! The Bee Gees are in the
Hall of Fame, too. And I’ll bet a ton of Bee Gees records were blown up
at Disco Demolition Night in the 1970s.
Rock
and roll was always about being the outsider (Elvis), the rebel (John
Lennon), the reject (Joey Ramone), the loner (Roy Orbison). But at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s a Members Only club with a velvet rope around it. Jann’s Club. The idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the greatest contradiction imaginable. If you’re an outsider, why would you want to be in an insider’s club for outsiders?
Or,
if you like: It is a triumph of nonsense akin to a never-ending,
high-end fashion show featuring $10,000 leather jackets and Vera Wang
dresses specially tailored to be worn by mallard ducks.
Michael
Stipe famously said that if the Monkees were not inducted into the Hall
of Fame, he wouldn’t accept induction either. Nice thought. Never
happened. But here’s the tragedy: The Monkees played the rock script to
the hilt: A made up band (that at least sang its own material) and whose
members then exposed themselves as frauds. This was a big part of why
the Sex Pistols loved them so much. Don’t forget, much of their
formation and rise was calculated by Malcolm MacLaren.
In
fact, Johnny Rotten is about the only one of the hall’s inductees who
got it right, sending a letter in his absence explaining why he hated it
and wouldn’t attend the induction. And of course, it was read to the
banquet attendees with chuckles and what not, not a single person there
sharp enough to get the irony—it was not a show biz stunt or comedy
routine. Rotten was talking about them as clueless, brainless, gutless,
exclusionist bastards.
Chief among these
would be Wenner, a guy who sold out his magazine and its cover long ago
to feature cheesecake pop tarts like Britney Spears, and actually
allowed one issue to feature the face of a Boston Marathon bomber on the
cover—probably because the guy was in his early 20s and had a sexy
kinda pout… You know, the kind that made him look like a member of The
Strokes. Mindless homicide and maiming is sooooooooo rock and roll…
So the next time you’re in Cleveland, try this out:
- Form a band. The louder and angrier the better, but loud is just fine.
- Set up on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame property.
- Just start playing, loud and long.
- Panicky looking man in a well-tailored suit and gold Hall of Fame lapel tie pin walks up: “Well, of course, we’ll need to call the police, son, because this is private property. Oh my. Please! We can’t have anyone disturbing the nice, fat, ticket-bearing Baby Boomers from Suburbia trying to wax nostalgic over their Vietnam War era classics…” (They protested the War. Once. Now they watch Fox News.)
- You are arrested, carted away, and barred from the premises—sued if you try to return.
That is very NOT rock and roll. But it is VERY Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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