2011: Slim Pickings

5 Inductees: Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Darlene Love, Tom Waits

Yes: None

Borderline Yes: Alice Cooper, Tom Waits

No: Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Darlene Love

By 2011, the Hall of Fame had been inducting artists of the Rock Era for twenty-five years, but on this silver anniversary the inductees for this year couldn't help but give the impression that the Hall had had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Yes, Neil Diamond had been a pop icon for nearly twice that time, while Alice Cooper enjoyed notoriety among the hard-rock and shock-rock factions. But Dr. John and Tom Waits had always been on the fringe of popular consciousness even if both were respected and influential among musicians and the cognoscenti, while Darlene Love, an archivist's wet dream if no one else's, lurked even more deeply in the historical shadows.

Of the inductees who genuinely deserve enshrinement, Alice Cooper exerted an influence, such as it was, that lasted long after the band's early 1970s heyday, and Waits, plowing his own furrow from the start, eventually accumulated enough recognition and industry respect to nudge him past the gate. But Diamond, despite his stardom, had yearned to be an artist from the start but had always fallen short—think of him as another Billy Joel—while Dr. John and Darlene Love simply do not have the presence or influence to be in the Hall of Fame.

Schlock and Arr: Alice Cooper, Tom Waits

Hardly two candidates for a "separated at birth" speculation, both Alice Cooper, the band and the singer, and Tom Waits sported off-kilter showmanship, Alice Cooper with garish theatricality that almost overshadowed some fairly strong, if conventional, rock chops, while Waits drove his grizzled-beatnik pose through the heart of Saturday night on his way to a burgeoning musical proficiency, albeit one with a distinctive bent. Neither are obvious Hall of Fame candidates, but neither are they gratuitous choices.

Alice Cooper: This is "Alice Cooper" the band that was inducted into the Hall of Fame, although lead singer Vincent Furnier also called himself "Alice Cooper" and subsequently embarked upon his lengthy solo career under that name. That is appropriate as the "Alice Cooper" that deserves to be inducted is the band—although just barely. Despite early encouragement from Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper struck out with its first two albums and appeared headed toward obscurity until it hooked up with producer Bob Ezrin and released its first hit single, "Eighteen," an archetypal youthful cry that ushered in a string of hard-rock hits in the early 1970s that included "Under My Wheels," "Elected," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and "Billion Dollar Babies," although the greatest of them was "School's Out," a roaring, ringing blast with a defiantly droll verse—"We got no class/And we got no principles/And we got no innocence/We can't even think of a word that rhymes!"—hinting at the brains behind the hard rock that showed surprising fealty to bygone styles.

In fact, what earned Alice Cooper its lasting notoriety wasn't its dexterous, if hardly original, music but rather its outlandish showmanship. This band pushed stage theatrics to a new level of garish spectacle. Furnier's early androgyny was embellished with mock-pantomime of torture and execution, a pounding Grand Guignol that delighted fans and outraged parents while exerting an influence on post-punk felt from White Zombie through Gwar. However, it didn't take long for the shtick to lapse into parody, and when Furnier went solo in 1975 he was already experiencing diminishing returns ("Welcome to My Nightmare") although he did develop a balladic touch—despite the potentially scatological title, "Only Women Bleed" was a lot more sensitive than you might expect from the man cavorting onstage with fake blood and a boa constrictor, and who was destined for the gallows at the climax of the show.

Those hard-rock gems from Alice Cooper the band still hold up today, providing the sturdy underpinning for a performance legacy that introduced grandiose showmanship into rock concerts for good. It's a shaky premise for a Hall of Fame induction, but in the history and development of the music, it is still a noteworthy one.

Tom Waits: Coming on like the bastard child of Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits writes and sings as if he's splayed out on Skid Row swilling Thunderbird from a greasy paper bag while gleaning insights from a tattered copy of The Subterraneans as the ghost of Thelonious Monk wafts woozily from a nearby manhole cover. Beginning his career with Elektra in the 1970s, Waits often strained to personify the beatnik wastrel ("The Piano Has Been Drinking") even if a couple of his early songs have gained mass acceptance: The Eagles popularized the wistful "Ol' 55" while Bruce Springsteen embraced "Jersey Girl" hard enough to make listeners think it's one of his.

Waits's first few albums were a search for style and voice, beatnik ("(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night," "The Piano Has Been Drinking"), amphetamine (the huckster-capitalist gem "Step Right Up"), or otherwise ("Ol' 55"). He honed this approach with Foreign Affairs (the noir-by-way-of-Mose Allison "Burma Shave," the noir-as-duet-with-Bette Midler "I Never Talk to Strangers") and Blue Valentine, on which the cover of "Somewhere" (from West Side Story), the sprightly "Whistlin' Past the Graveyard," the surprisingly affecting "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis," and the late-night blues of "Wrong Side of the Road" effectively wedded their musical arrangements to Waits's lyrical ruminations. That trend continued with Heart Attack and Vine ("Jersey Girl," the title song) even if the sentiments seemed familiar.

Waits's move to Island Records started with the superb 1983 set Swordfishtrombones and emphasized his increasing musical complexity; at times he recalled Captain Beefheart ("16 Shells from a Thirty Ought Six," "Gin Soaked Boy"), while the piano instrumental "Rainbirds" echoed Thelonious Monk, although "Frank's Wild Years" was a vintage late-night caffeine ramble, and "Swordfishtrombone" belied its bounce with another hard-bitten tale. Rain Dogs contained "Downtown Train," a big hit for Rod Stewart, while Frank's Wild Years expanded on the song with help from artist wife Kathleen Brennan. Waits's albums became more sporadic as he branched out into film and soundtracks, but like Van Morrison and other icons outside the mainstream, his every action generates interest. A cult figure with some general visibility, Tom Waits is not an obvious choice for the Hall of Fame, but neither is he an unwarranted one.

Too Much Fame or Not Enough: Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Darlene Love

The biggest name here is Neil Diamond, but like Billy Joel's 1999 induction, being a pop superstar is not an automatic ticket to the Hall of Fame, particularly if, like Joel's, Diamond's music rarely cut below the surface sheen. Dr. John has the opposite problem of being a supporting star for decades while enjoying only a brief stint in the popular consciousness. And although Darlene Love might have been held more obscurely than she deserved, that glory period was so brief regardless that it's hard to justify her inclusion.

Neil Diamond: A fixture in pop music since the mid-1960s, singer and songwriter Neil Diamond has yearned for the kind of artistic recognition accorded to his contemporaries from Carole King to Paul Simon to Bob Dylan but despite his best efforts—and Diamond has made extraordinary efforts throughout his career—he has never been more than a competent craftsman, both as a performer and as a songwriter. Granted, Diamond's songs have spawned a fairly broad array of cover versions, from the Monkees ("I'm a Believer") and Deep Purple ("Kentucky Woman") to UB40 ("Red Red Wine") and Urge Overkill ("Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon"), and he has scored a passel of hits on his own. But Diamond's instincts have always been Brill Building, if not Tin Pan Alley—his starring in the hoary 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer epitomizes this tendency—and his catalog has consistently lacked the depth and resonance of the artists to whom he has always aspired.

Diamond got off to a decent enough start with the spare mood of "Solitary Man" and the rollicking "Cherry, Cherry," while the Elmer Gantry manqué "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" feinted toward both sly humor and lyrical substance. But the success of 1969's "Sweet Caroline," his highest-charting hit in the U.S. to date and his first British hit, presaged the soft-rock schlock that would dominate his output in the 1970s ("I Am . . . I Said," "Song Sung Blue," and "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," his duet with Barbra Streisand) although he could still kick out a jaunty gem like "Cracklin' Rosie" every now and then, even if "Forever in Blue Jeans" was one of those finger-snappers that could go either way. He kept his streak going through the early 1980s—both "America" and "Heartlight" found Diamond unafraid to make big statements both social and personal, although the former echoed the ersatz significance of The Jazz Singer, from whose soundtrack it was taken, while the latter was inspired by the overweening sentiment of another film, Steven Spielberg's E.T. ("America" did subsequently develop some cachet when it was included on Clear Channel Communications' hysterically misguided memo of "inappropriate" songs following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.)

By the 1990s, Diamond was coasting on his reputation while charting occasionally with covers of pop and traditional standards, his sought-after artistic acceptance still a mirage. His career is that of the survivor and, were he a professional athlete, that of the compiler, piling up stats because he has managed to hang in there for so long. That's not an insignificant feat, but neither is it a Hall of Fame-worthy one.

Dr. John: Singer, pianist, and songwriter Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John (or Dr. John Creaux, or even Dr. John, the Night Tripper), is by now a part of Rock and Soul Era history, having begun in New Orleans as a studio musician while still a teenager in the late 1950s before lighting out for Los Angeles in the following decade. A disciple of New Orleans piano legend Professor Longhair, whose signature song "Tipitina" he eventually covered, Rebennack developed his Dr. John persona in L.A., and by the late 1960s he had begun releasing a series of psychedelic-gumbo records, especially the 1968 classic Gris-Gris, that were easily among the trippiest in a period of decidedly out-there music—even Roky Erickson and Syd Barrett combined couldn't conceive of anything as grandly, hauntingly bizarre as "I Walk on Gilded Splinters."

In the 1970s, Dr. John even notched a hit single with the funky "Right Place, Wrong Time," which has cropped up on a number of movie soundtracks (including a version by B.B. King and Bonnie Raitt for Air America), while the follow-up "Such a Night," which had just missed the Top 40, gained further exposure when Dr. John performed it for the Band's 1978 valedictory concert film The Last Waltz. But that was the extent of Dr. John's popular peak, even if he has won a number of Grammys starting in 1989 with the nostalgic and traditional musical approach he began emphasizing by the late 1970s. A studio stalwart for most of his career, Dr. John would have been a shoo-in for the Hall's Award for Musical Excellence (formerly the Sidemen) category, but inducting him as a performer is not warranted as his record as a performer is neither strong enough nor long enough to justify such a selection.

Darlene Love: In an ensemble that largely stressed anonymity, singer Darlene Love stood out among producer Phil Spector's Wall of Sound cast of characters thanks to her surging voice with its capacity to convey a range of emotions. Indeed, Love emerged as a solo star on the legendary 1963 Christmas album originally titled A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records. However, the album, which has become arguably the greatest Christmas album by any artists associated with the Rock and Soul Era, sold poorly initially—it was released the same day President John Kennedy was assassinated and thus was overshadowed by that landmark tragedy. Although reissues eventually gave the album its now-exalted status, it seems to echo Love's own fate—and suggests why her induction into the Hall of Fame is problematic.

In addition to the unfortunate timing of the Christmas album's release, Love was also the sometime-lead vocalist for the girl-group the Crystals—she's the lead on their hits "He's a Rebel" and "He's Sure the Boy I Love"—as well as a lead- and backing vocalist for another Spector singing group, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans—she duets with Bobby Sheen on "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah"; thus, Love's accomplishments are partially obscured by Spector's seemingly arbitrary accreditation system. Love is credited as the solo artist on three hits: "A Fine, Fine Boy," "Today I Met the Boy I'm Gonna Marry," and "Wait 'Til My Bobby Gets Home." She gets the spotlight on Christmas Gift with "White Christmas," "Winter Wonderland," and especially "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," which has become her signature song.

After her early-1960s flurry of fame, Love worked as a back-up singer, quit the business to raise a family, and then returned to performing on the nostalgia circuit, which although it remembered her warmly, is hardly enough to push her into the Hall of Fame. Should the Crystals, a borderline candidate and one of the few girl-groups to merit induction, ever be picked for the Hall, including Darlene Love in the selection would be the right action to take.