2012: Modern Acknowledgement, Classic Over-Representation

6 Inductees: The Beastie Boys, Donovan, Guns 'N Roses, Laura Nyro, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Small Faces/Faces

Yes: The Beastie Boys, Guns 'N Roses

Borderline Yes: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Small Faces/Faces

No: Donovan, Laura Nyro

By the time the Hall inducted the six artists for 2012, the dividing line between classic rock and modern rock had been sharply drawn. (In 2012, six acts were retroactively inducted into the Hall; they are discussed in the separate section below.) The three artists from the modern (post-punk) period—the Beastie Boys, Guns 'N Roses, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers—are among the most significant names since the mid-1980s, and although the Chili Peppers have never been truly accomplished musically, their pioneering fusion of styles transcended their artistic limitations. On the other hand, the Beastie Boys quickly transcended what could have been novelty status to emerge as one of the more considered musical forces in the last three decades, while Guns 'N Roses, which burst forth as one of the most explosive hard-rock acts of any time, deftly, even slyly, straddled the line between classic and modern rock.

However, the three (or is that four?) artists from the classic period—Donovan, Laura Nyro, and Small Faces/Faces—continue the Hall's persistent backfilling with ever-diminishing returns. Donovan may be emblematic of his day—but how many more folk-rock and psychedelic-rock acts not already inducted are truly worthy of the Hall? Nyro is problematic because she may indeed belong in the Hall—but as was done with Carole King and as should have been done with Isaac Hayes, as a non-performer. And unless Small Faces and Faces are linked by a common rhythm section into a unified package, neither act had the impact and influence individually to make the Hall.

Latitude and Attitude: The Beastie Boys, Guns N' Roses

Both the Beastie Boys and Guns 'N Roses exploded into prominence in the 1980s, and while GNR self-destructed fairly soon afterward, the Beasties kept it alive into the 21st century. The Beasties made a genuine effort to merge hard rock with hip-hop, not simply using one to flavor the other, and although it may not have been wholly successful it was innovative and influential. Guns 'N Roses combined a classic hard-rock approach with contemporary attitude to forge a new template for a hard-rock band, and had been expanding its musical range even in the relatively short time it was together.

The Beastie Boys: Not merely showing that white boys could rap, the Beastie Boys more significantly effected a union of rock and rap that echoes Sly Stone's wedding of rock and soul a generation previously—it was a hybrid that softened the distinctions between the two forms even as it heralded an exciting new direction. Not that the Beasties' 1986 debut album Licensed to Ill, released after a handful of nondescript singles, necessarily suggested such a momentous event as it remains one of the greatest adolescent boasts of the Rock and Soul Era. Producer Rick Rubin channeled the (somewhat privileged) urban attitudes of MCs Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "MCA" Yauch, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz into a series of brash, often hilarious vignettes—"Girls," "Paul Revere," the rock-hard "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn," and the sophomore anthem "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)"—that sampled everything from AC/DC, Kool and the Gang, Led Zeppelin, and War to the 1960s sitcoms Green Acres and Mister Ed.

Which makes the band's next album, Paul's Boutique, all the more remarkable because its lyrical and musical sophistication, including a burgeoning social conscience, underlined the Beasties' ambition to develop a viable rock-rap merger and not merely use elements of one to garnish the other. That approach didn't spell commercial success—only "Hey Ladies" showed significant singles action—and Check Your Head, despite the compelling "So What'cha Want," offered tired, cliché efforts instead ("Gratitude," "Pass the Mic"). However, 1994's Ill Communication announced the Boys' maturation in no small measure, from the sinewy funk of "Root Down" to the stripped-down exhortations of "Sure Shot"—although the rap-metal crunch of "Sabotage" became a Beasties touchstone, thanks in part to its 1970s-crime-drama-inspired music video directed by Spike Jonze.

Indeed, by the time of Hello Nasty (1998), the Beastie Boys had achieved their synthesis (for example, "Intergalactic" could fall into hip-hop or electronica space), although as popular music entered the 21st century, it had absorbed so many stylistic influences that trying to delineate or categorize much of it could become a fool's errand. And even if a newer track such as "Ch- Check It Out" harkens back to old-school approaches, another one, "An Open Letter to NYC," informed by post-9/11 realities, suggests that the inclusive, cosmopolitan approach the Beastie Boys had been trying to establish was finally here. That's a long way from the snickering silliness of "Brass Monkey," but that path led eventually—and unreservedly—to Cleveland.

Guns 'N Roses: Once you strip away the charisma and the controversy, the balls and the bluster, what is most remarkable about Guns 'N Roses is how it upheld the classic-rock tradition while updating it for contemporary sensibilities. The specter of the Rolling Stones surrounds this band in attitude, approach, and style even as its frank, sometimes graphic drug- and sexual imagery blasted away the slick glitziness of 1980s commercial hard rock and replaced it with an edginess all the more powerful for its believability and candor. The kicker was the insight, if not outright empathy, that lay at the heart of the band's often astute observations, although lead singer Axl Rose's penchant for pugnacity and prejudice sullied GNR's reputation at times.

Nevertheless, the band's scintillating debut album Appetite for Destruction was undoubtedly the biggest hard-rock introduction since Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? two decades before. Just as Hendrix captured his zeitgeist, Guns 'N Roses chronicled the urban blight amidst it in "My Michelle," "Rocket Queen," and especially in the anthem "Welcome to the Jungle" while the unabashed drug odes "Nightrain" and "Mr. Brownstone" were impressive ripostes to Ronald and Nancy Reagan's Just Say No to Drugs national climate. However, GNR landed its biggest blow with a ballad, "Sweet Child o' Mine," whose touching lyrics put the band leagues ahead of the competition.

For Appetite alone, Guns 'N Roses merits serious Hall consideration, but even though its follow-up EP G N' R Lies prompted accusations of bigotry for "One in a Million," the band delivered a pair of aces in Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Criticized at the time for their simultaneous release—although fans quickly put them both at the top of the charts—they stand as twin pinnacles of the near-original band with their array of songs that encompasses not just notorious sexism ("Back off Bitch," "Pretty Tied Up") and trademark truculence ("Right Next Door to Hell," "Get in the Ring") but auspicious power ballads ("Estranged," "November Rain") and, in a nod to classic rock, covers of Bob Dylan ("Knockin' on Heaven's Door") and Paul McCartney and Wings ("Live and Let Die"). In fact, the band's addition of keyboards to its attack suggested the stylistic expansion of mid-period Rolling Stones, and as the pre-eminent hard-rock act of its day, Guns 'N Roses looked set for the long haul.

So what happened? The group's combustibility fed its appetite for self-destruction only a few years after its meteoric rise, with Rose and lead guitarist Slash—the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the time—falling out not long after having recorded the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" (used on film soundtracks including Interview with the Vampire). The band effectively ceased operations as a front-line unit, although Rose's promise for another blockbuster album, Chinese Democracy, which eventually arrived in 2008, was the modern rock equivalent to Brian Wilson's assurances that the Beach Boys' mythical masterpiece album Smile was, like prosperity during the Great Depression, just around the corner. (Wilson did release a version of Smile in 2004.)

But despite what might seem like a short reign, Guns 'N Roses redefined the hard-rock model while upholding the classic-rock tradition. Those are Hall of Fame credentials.

Hybrids of Differing Stripes: The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Small Faces/Faces

Both examples of the various ways hybrids have formed during the Rock and Soul Era, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Small Faces/Faces represent two different aspects. The Chili Peppers are pioneers, having been the first successful act to combine various genres into a recognizable funk-metal style. Other succeeding acts may have refined or expanded the approach but the Peppers sustained a career while influencing others by doing so.

The Small Faces and Faces merger is another kind of hybrid reminiscent of how Funkadelic and Parliament were combined into one entity for induction. As with those two bands, both Small Faces and Faces shared some of the same personnel although unlike those two bands, Small Faces and Faces did not exist during the same time. In any event, doubling up seemed to work because neither Small Faces nor Faces were Hall-worthy on their own.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Slam-dancing lustily at the intersection of punk, funk, hip-hop, and heavy metal, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have always had difficulty translating their boundless street-level exuberance into effective songcraft. Right up through 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik album, sheer attitude and energy couldn't always obscure the Peppers' penchant for skeletal song structures and sing-songy melodies. Yet the band's approach was undoubtedly influential—Fishbone might have been funkier, Primus might have been quirkier, and Faith No More might have been grander, but the Chili Peppers put this hybrid style on the musical map and have held it there since the 1980s under the guidance of band mainstays singer Anthony Kiedis and monster bassist .Flea.

The first three albums, recorded largely with guitarist Hillel Slovak, found the band thrashing for its voice through exhortation ("Get up and Jump," "Fight Like a Brave"), homage (a cover of Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay"), locker-room lasciviousness ("Catholic School Girls Rule," "Special Secret Song Inside"), and offbeat observation ("True Men Don't Kill Coyotes"). Slovak's overdose death in 1988 brought the band sobering reflection and a new guitarist, John Frusciante, whose metal-edge playing ignited Mother's Milk ("Knock Me Down," "Stone Cold Bush," Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground") and fired up the band for its breakthrough album.

Produced by lean-and-pristine Rick Rubin, Blood Sugar Sex Magik solidified the Peppers' punk-funk attack ("Give It Away," "Suck My Kiss," "Naked in the Rain") while a ballad, "Under the Bridge," ushered the band into the mainstream (and Kiedis gets off a nice ode to Slovak in "My Lovely Man"). However, four years elapsed before the appearance of One Hot Minute, with Dave Navarro (Jane's Addiction) replacing Frusciante, and its relative disappointment, along with recurring drug problems, set the Peppers on choppy waters. But although it took four more years, 1999's Californication, with Frusciante back in the fold, spotlighted a mature band with its chops still functioning (the hit title track and "Scar Tissue"), reasserting the band as exemplars of the style it had pioneered, an impression bolstered by the continuing growth on 2002's By the Way although the Peppers still lacked the musical ability to make it convincing.

While the concept of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has always been stronger than its actual execution, its influence on rock since the 1980s is unmistakable, which is justification enough for the band's induction into the Hall.

Small Faces/Faces: Would Small Faces and Faces (purists insist that the definite article preceding the proper noun is unnecessary) have made it into the Hall as separate acts? Probably not, so they get the Parliament/Funkadelic treatment, and thanks to the diminutive rhythm section core common to both groups—keyboardist Ian McLagan, bassist Ronnie Lane, and drummer Kenney Jones—both groups are inducted as a package deal.

Name branding aside, the two bands sported distinctive, and separate, personalities. Led by singer and guitarist Steve Marriott, Small Faces itself had a few phases, beginning as the best exemplar of the Mod movement this side of the Who while recording for Decca in the mid-1960s. Then, following a change in labels to Immediate, Small Faces dabbled in late-1960s psychedelia (the trendy "Itchycoo Park" became the band's best-known song in the States) before returning to the earlier harder-edged style that presaged Marriott's approach in Humble Pie. As singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Wood brought a similar hard-edged style from their stint with Jeff Beck, Faces also became a hard-rock band, albeit a sloppy one in part due to its reputation as a hard-drinking outfit best known for the driving rocker "Stay with Me."

The early Small Faces combined the raw power of the Who ("E Too D," "It's Too Late," "Own up Time") with the lyrical immediacy of the Kinks ("All or Nothing," "I Can't Dance with You," "Sha La La La Lee") to emerge as a top-flight Mod band—and Led Zeppelin fans listening to "You Need Lovin'" will get a nasty shock of recognition. Moving to Immediate, the band's writing and arrangements became more complex as Marriott's singing grew in confidence, exemplified by the first-class singles "Itchycoo Park" and "Tin Soldier" and the classic album Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake ("Afterglow (Of Your Love)," "Lazy Sunday," the title track), while "Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am" previewed Marriott's upcoming boogie gig with Humble Pie.

Faces' output amounted to a handful of early-1970s albums, and Stewart's concurrent solo career quickly overshadowed the band's efforts. Still, following a tentative start ("Flying," "Three-Button Hand-Me-Down"), Faces roared to life with Long Player ("Bad 'n' Ruin," "Had Me a Real Good Time") and especially A Nod's As Good As a Wink . . . To a Blind Horse, which sported the razor-sharp hit "Stay with Me" along with "Miss Judy's Farm"—just as hard as "Stay with Me" and a tad nastier—and the Allman Brothers-like "Debris," while the band established a reputation as a raucous live attraction. However, Ooh La La was desultory, and the band broke up soon afterward.

After Stewart and Wood left, Marriott rejoined but the moment had passed. (Jones took over the drum chair in the Who after Keith Moon's 1978 death.) Although neither Small Faces nor Faces would merit the Hall on their own, linking their careers through shared personnel results in combined credentials sufficient to gain them all admittance to Cleveland.

Misguided and Mis-Categorized: Donovan, Laura Nyro

An earnest folkie before he became an earnest hippie, Donovan Leitch was a dreamy-eyed poster boy of the 1960s, but although he might be a mite more substantial than the Lovin' Spoonful, he, just as that band, loses luster beyond the context of his era. And just as the Lovin' Spoonful shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame, nor should Donovan. By contrast, Laura Nyro is one of the great unsung talents of the Rock and Soul Era, largely because it is her songs performed by other artists that define the convincing portion of her legacy. Nyro is a worthy Hall of Fame talent—but as detailed below, not as a performer.

Donovan: In Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker's brilliant documentary film about Bob Dylan's contentious 1965 British tour, Dylan is introduced to Donovan Leitch, already being billed as "the UK's Dylan," who plays Dylan one of his songs before Dylan summarily dismisses him. Although the new-Dylan label was perhaps unfair to both, Donovan did seem derivative before he moved into psychedelia later in the 1960s, which brought him his greatest success and largely defines his legacy.

The Scottish singer, guitarist, and songwriter couldn't help but brook comparisons to Dylan with his earliest hits as even his inflections in "Catch the Wind" and "Colours" held a familiar twang and drawl, while his cover of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Universal Soldier" echoed folk's social conscience. And although Donovan was becoming established in the British Isles, he was yet to prove popular in the United States as all three songs, all Top Five in the United Kingdom, failed to crack the US Top Twenty. But like Dylan, Donovan was restless and ambitious, and he soon embraced the burgeoning psychedelic sounds of the mid-1960s, with which he is most closely associated.

Not coincidentally, Donovan's hippie period is also his most successful commercially—both "Sunshine Superman" and "Mellow Yellow" became huge hits on both sides of the Atlantic in 1966, putting him in the forefront of the psychedelic movement, while "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and "Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)" continued the string.

In addition, album tracks such as "The Fat Angel," written about Cass Elliott of the Mamas and the Papas, gave him cachet with psychedelic rockers such as Jefferson Airplane, which is mentioned in the song, and which covered the song on its live album Bless Its Pointed Little Head, while the Allman Brothers used "There Is a Mountain" as the basis for their live opus "Mountain Jam." Indeed, decades later Donovan's halcyon songs began to crop up on film soundtracks including Goodfellas ("Atlantis"), To Die For ("Season of the Witch"), and Election ("Jennifer Juniper"), lending him retro-chic prestige.

But as the 1960s closed, Donovan, significantly, did not catch the wind for the singer-songwriter boom of the 1970s, and his hits and popularity had effectively dried up by the time punk rock arrived to render hippies quaint anachronisms. Donovan was part of the cultural landscape of the 1960s, and his keynotes may be remembered fondly decades later, but his overall body of work, earnest if derivative folkie to patchouli-scented troubadour, does not rise to the level of the Hall of Fame.

Laura Nyro: For a time in the late 1960s, Laura Nyro helped to shape the course of pop music through the plethora of songs she wrote that became hits for artists from Blood, Sweat and Tears ("And When I Die") to Barbra Streisand ("Stoney End") and Three Dog Night ("Eli's Coming"), and especially by the Fifth Dimension, with whom Nyro was most closely associated ("Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Wedding Bell Blues," among others). Combining a Brill Building approach to songcraft infused with soulful feel, Nyro proved to be influential on an array of artists from Jackson Browne to Joni Mitchell to Todd Rundgren with her guileless songs filled with impressionistic allusion and naked emotion.

In fact, Nyro's career has a loose parallel in Carole King's—and that illustrates the crux of the problem with Nyro's induction as a performer: King was an actual Brill Building inmate before becoming an archetypal singer-songwriter in the early 1970s; her 1971 album Tapestry was an influential blockbuster hit that established her solo career. King was rightly enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1990—as a non-performer, in the category now called the Ahmet Ertegun Award. Yet King has a better case than does Nyro to have been inducted as a performer, as Nyro's handful of albums through the early 1970s enjoyed at best only modest commercial success; much like Leonard Cohen's, they served as sources for other artists seeking cover material. However, Cohen has remained a performer for several decades, and his recording and performing record has combined with his songwriting influence to merit inclusion as a performer.

As a performer, Nyro appeared at the landmark 1967 Monterey Pop Festival leading a soul revue, and then announced a retirement from music in 1971 around the same time as her release of a delightful collection of soul and R&B covers, Gonna Take a Miracle, with Labelle backing her winsome if undisciplined lead vocals. Nyro returned to action in the late 1970s, acknowledged—though not nearly enough—as an influence on numerous artists even as her absence had pushed her further into the background. Laura Nyro is certainly an important if sometimes overwrought ("Save the Country") and abstruse ("When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag") songwriter whose accomplishments and influence deserve recognition by the Hall of Fame—as an Ahmet Ertegun Award recipient as a non-performer, not as a full-fledged performer, as her track record does not warrant such recognition. This is the same verdict reached previously for Isaac Hayes, although Nyro's approach was as understated as Hayes's was overblown.