Rock Hall's identity crisis: Living in a pop bubble

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

Dear Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: You keep using those words, “rock ’n’ roll.” I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

This year, the Cleveland-based museum inducted six new members from across a range of popular music. Among them: The Notorious B.I.G. and Whitney Houston, two performers that have very little to do with rock ’n’ roll.

And there’s the rub. Words matter. Definitions matter.

What doesn’t matter is the fans’ vote. The “Rock & Roll” Hall of Fame chooses nominees, then allows fans to vote on which ones they find most worthy... and proceeds to ignore the fans’ preferences.

Well, not quite ignore them. Fan votes, taken together, count precisely the same as a single ballot among 500 to 1,000 supposed “experts” who are members of the HOF: In other words, fan preferences count for 0.1% to 0.2% of the decision-making.

Fan favorites snubbed

This year, more than 1 million people voted for the top vote-getter, the Dave Matthews Band. Nearly 900,000 people chose Pat Benatar, who came in second. Neither one was selected for induction. In fact, four of the top five fan choices were all snubbed.

What did they all have in common? They’re all actual rock ’n’ roll performers.

The late Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, was not. He was a rapper. The late Whitney Houston was not. She was a pop singer. Both belong in halls of fame for their respective genres and, I would argue, in a popular music hall of fame. But that’s not what this is – at least, that’s not what it calls itself.

This isn’t about race. There are many artists of color who belong in the rock hall. Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Prince, Ray Charles and dozens of others have been inducted, and deservedly so. But I wouldn’t support Eminem any more than I would Biggie, nor would I back Perry Como or Luciano Pavarotti any more than I would Houston.

Maybe you’re laughing at the Pavarotti reference. But I’d ask this: How is Pavarotti, a very popular performer who could sing rings around most of the people in the Hall, any less deserving than Biggie? That would be like saying Clayton Kershaw is less deserving than Michael Jordan of induction into the Pro FOOTBALL Hall of Fame. As good as they both are and were, neither one belongs.

Rock radio host Eddie Trunk, one of the official voters, lamented this year’s vote by saying, “I actually picked rock acts for the @rockhall... silly me.” Only one of Trunk’s picks, T. Rex, made the cut.

(For the record, three of my five choices – T. Rex, Nine Inch Nails and the Doobie Brothers – got in. I also thought Pat Benatar and Judas Priest were deserving, but unlike Trunk, I don’t have a vote outside the amalgamated fan vote.)

Rock, but not a hard place?

Why include Houston and Biggie while snubbing obvious rock pioneers and mainstays?

The answer is obvious: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wants to have it both ways. It wants to call use the words “Rock & Roll” because they sound edgier, weightier than what the HOF really aspires to be: the “Pop Hall of Fame” or “Music Hall of Fame.” It wants to be all things to all people while pretending to be one very specific thing.

Curiously, this “all people” does not seem to include women, who make up less than 8% of inductees, which makes the Benatar snub even more curious.

The HOF’s “big tent” approach did work in one sense: T. Rex is more than deserving based on its pioneering glam work and its incredible run of ten straight top-5 singles on the U.K. charts – including four No. 1s and four more that hit No. 2.

The Marc Bolan-led band’s 12th place showing (out of 16 nominees) in the fan vote can be attributed to the fact that the only time it even reached the top 50 in the U.S. was with the No. 10 hit “Get It On” in 1971. And let’s face it, that’s a long time ago for a band that only had one legitimate stateside hit. But that doesn’t diminish its trailblazing impact, probably second only to David Bowie, on glam rock, or the fact that T. Rex fandom was the “next big thing” after the Beatles in Britain, where fan reaction was labeled “T. Rexstasy.”

This isn’t the only time music “experts” have forgotten what musical genres mean. Back in 1989, Jethro Tull beat out Metallica for “best hard rock/metal performance” at the Grammys. Jethro Tull is as much a metal band as Depeche Mode is. The absurdity of that choice was rendered even more ironic because Tull seldom gets any love from critics in its actual genre: progressive rock. Though deserving, Tull is not in the “Rock” Hall either.

One other thing worth mentioning: There’s a difference between honoring musicians from an earlier era who paved the way for rock ’n’ roll, such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, and contemporary artists from different genres. To use another sports analogy, it’s the difference between putting 19th century bare-knuckle champion Jem Mace in the Boxing Hall of Fame and inducting MMA standout Connor McGregor.

The way forward  

If the HOF wants to salvage any credibility, it should immediately do two things:

First, decide whether it wants to represent rock or American contemporary music more broadly. If it decides the latter, it should change its name to something like the Contemporary Music Hall of Fame.

Second, it should stop setting fans up for disappointment by holding a popular vote that’s ultimately just for show. Since the Hall itself chooses the nominees, all of them presumably meet its standards. So, what’s the harm in allowing the fans to pick one inductee every year, straight up?

Otherwise, the fans will have every reason to gripe about the selection process every year. But then, maybe that’s what the HOF wants. Controversy is good for marketing, and any publicity is good publicity. That doesn’t make it fair or reasonable.

And as it stands, the Rock HOF’s selection process is neither.

Photo: The author visiting the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.