The Stooges are a hugely, hugely influential act. If you understand the induction of The Velvet Undeground, then The Stooges shouldn't raise an eyebrow.Miles Davis should have been inducted as an Early Influence. Coltrane as well.My Personal 10:Dave Clark FiveDellsNeil DiamondThe HolliesLittle Anthony & The ImperialsJohn MellencampMoonglowsBonnie RaittPercy SledgeZZ TopGave Darlene Love a free-pass since her work with Phil Spector certainly was innovative and influential, even if her discography as a whole doesn't add up to much. The acts I listed above are ones that are oft-forgotten and barely influential nowadays, if ever (Dave Clark Five, Moonglows, Dells) or simply didn't do anything all that creative (Mellencamp, Raitt, ZZ Top). Sledge is undeniably the worst inductee in The Hall of Fame, a choice that clearly is a step below the rest of the head-scratchers.
My biggest beef with the RRHOF is that it is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... not the Music Hall of Fame. Miles Davis was a jazz artist who happened to influence some rockers. I will cut the Beastie Boys some slack for material like "Sabotage" where they actually played instruments themselves and it rocked, but Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five? I think Run-DMC should also not be in there. Their only connection to rock is doing a rap/rock mashup version of "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith. I am fine with blues, soul and R&B music belonging due to much of the music having rock elements. A lot of those artists also shared stages with rockers or had huge influences on vocal or instrumental stylings. Jann Wenner is
I have no problem with the wide view of what Rock n Roll is. Yes Rap should be included. I have to agree that Percy Sledge and Darlene Love are the top candidates of the Artists who should not be in the Hall of fame but are. I'd throw the Red Hots out the door right behind them.
PickGuru, you raise an excellent point, one that I’ve been asking for some time now: just what exactly is “rock and roll,” anyway? At the very least, I think it should be called the Rock and Soul Hall of Fame, which leads me to . . .
>>I am fine with blues, soul and R&B music belonging due to much of the music having rock elements.
Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? Blues began before rock was a twinkle in anyone’s eye; or as the Muddy Waters song put it, “The Blues Had a Baby and They Called It Rock and Roll.” R&B, arising roughly in the 1940s, is the most direct antecedent to rock, if only because so many R&B singers (LaVern Baker, Big Joe Turner, et al) crossed over into early rock and roll with little effort; just check the similarities between Bill Haley’s version of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” and Turner’s--is Haley’s “rock” because he was white and Turner’s “R&B” because he was black? They both sound like “rock” to me. And soul is coterminous with rock: Both began at around the same time and have been developing concurrently ever since. Hence, “rock and soul.”
To me, this is all Western popular music of the Rock Era, which began in the 1950s. And to borrow from Del Shannon, rock is a “little town flirt”--it'll borrow from any musical form, style, or genre, to the point which we have a plethora of hyphenates (e.g., acid-house, trip-hop, skate-punk, funk-metal, etc.) describing genres, sub-genres, sub-sub-genres, seemingly ad infinitum.
So, to begin to discriminate at this point is ridiculous, such as excluding rap. Along with heavy metal, hip-hop is the biggest musical style on the planet and has been for some time. Rap is popular from Berlin to Beirut to Bangalore to Bangkok, and as an indigenous American style, as is rock, it should be recognized. (By the way, Run-DMC incorporated heavy-metal guitar into “Rock Box” two years before “Walk This Way.”)
I agree that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame shot itself in the foot first with its potentially restrictive name and second with its reluctance to define what it considers to be “rock and roll.” (I suppose, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s recognition of pornography, the Hall will “know it when it sees it.”) These two failings only exacerbate disagreements over which artists are “Hall-worthy”--and our own restrictive tastes and biases don’t help, either.
