IF I HAD A BALLOT FOR THE 2014 ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME NOMINATIONS

Link Wray

Background: Whether guitarist Link Wray personally invented the power chord is not clear. What is clear is that Wray's heavy, distorted, menacing guitar tone, voiced most effectively in a series of instrumentals starting in the late 1950s, had a pronounced impact on hard rock starting in the 1960s, and by extension it found its way into heavy metal and punk rock by the 1970s. Wray's technique is epitomized by the 1958 instrumental single "Rumble," which has endured in popular culture, notably in Quentin Tarantino's landmark film Pulp Fiction.

With some sources placing the origins of "Rumble" a few years earlier than its release date, the watershed instrumental was one of the very few instrumentals ever to be banned from radio play in some markets as "rumble" was, during its time, well-known slang for a fight. As one story goes, after Wray witnessed a bar fight during a gig, he wanted to simulate that experience in aural form. Peaking at Number 16, it was Wray's highest-charting hit and one of only two to crack the Top 40. In 1959, Wray reached Number 23 with his instrumental "Raw-Hide," which indeed sported country and western flavor in its lively tempo. But Wray was never destined to be a pop artist; the hard, primitive rock exercises he and his band the Ray-Men devised, which stood in marked contrast to polished, "twangy" pieces by contemporary Duane Eddy, would remain just below the surface of rock music, surreptitious influences on subsequent guitarists.

Early 1960s British rockers including Jeff Beck, the Kinks, and the Who had picked up on Wray's thick, powerful technique—Peter Townshend's chording in the early Who instrumental "The Ox" is practically an homage to Wray. Moreover, listening to Wray's best tracks today is to hear the roots of garage-rock, punk, and metal. The brawny "The Black Widow" and especially the steely slicing of "Jack the Ripper" paint evocative sonic atmospheres, with the brash "Big City After Dark," the manic "Run Chicken Run," and the punchy "Deuces Wild," with its twin drummers, not far behind. As the 1960s progressed, Wray found his pioneering style already in sync with contemporary tastes—"Hidden Charms" would fit easily in the Nuggets set while "Climbing a High Wall" flashes some nasty wah-wah—but by now he was no longer an innovator. Wray's limitations as a technician are apparent on 1959's "Dixie-Doodle," which switches humorously between "Dixie" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" although Wray's phrasing of both melodies is weak. Furthermore, Wray's attempts at vocal numbers ("The Shadow Knows," a cover of Jimmy Reed's "Ain't That Lovin' You") were amateurish, particularly his attempt to cash in on the "Batman Theme."

Link Wray's fame rests on his hard, heavy, rumbling guitar technique, which struggled to find recognition in its heyday of the late 1950s through the mid-1960s but that managed to become a distinctive influence on subsequent guitarists.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. In comparison to his contemporary Duane Eddy, Link Wray lacked the polish and the commercial success that would make him a more recognizable figure, and Hall voters will hesitate to name him as a qualified performer.

Would I vote for the artist? No. Not as a performer. Link Wray's contribution to the development of rock music is indeed worthy of the Hall of Fame, but it is very difficult to justify Wray's inclusion as a full-fledged performer. He is an ideal candidate for the Ahmet Ertegun Award, which honors "industry professionals who have had a major influence on the development of rock and roll."

Yes

Background: There is no doubt that Yes epitomizes progressive rock: big ideas, even bigger musical execution of those ideas, the instrumental firepower to drive that musical execution, and, every now and then, the accessibility to appeal to listeners beyond the band's fervent fan base. And don't forget those Roger Dean album covers, evoking Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and Heavy Metal magazine to illustrate the mythical, mystical, science-fiction thrust of Yes's best-known material. Yes was truly the band whose albums were ideal to play Dungeons and Dragons by—and given the length of the band's greatest conceits, those albums could sustain a long night's worth of abstract treasure hunting and Orc slaying.

It would take a couple of albums for the band's formula to coalesce. Late-1960s psychedelic folk informs the eponymous first album, which features covers of the Beatles and the Byrds, but orchestral backing on much of the second album (Time and a Word) signaled the band's elaborate constructions to come in the 1970s. The Yes Album (1971) featured lengthy, multipart songs drawing from Lewis Carroll ("I've Seen All Good People") and Robert Heinlein ("Starship Trooper"); this set the stage for the keynote set Fragile (also 1971), which saw keyboardist Rick Wakeman join singer Jon Anderson, guitarist Steve Howe, bassist Chris Squire, and drummer Bill Bruford to form the most instrumentally accomplished version of Yes. Yet despite some notably accessible moments ("Long Distance Runaround," "Roundabout"), the album began to make a fetish of virtuosity at the expense of emotional connection, a trait that mushroomed on the next album (Close to the Edge) and prompted Bruford's departure to King Crimson—an eyebrow-raising move as Yes was now a commercial success and Crimson definitely was not; Alan White replaced Bruford.

Tales from Topographic Oceans, a double album with just four side-long songs, exemplified the elephantiasis that gripped the band for the next few years (Wakeman too left Yes—only to make his own overblown series of solo albums before returning to the fold), and while the later 1970s found Yes with occasional accessibility (the cheerfully chaotic "Going for the One," the wistful "Wondrous Stories"), individual divisiveness and a fading audience spelled the end of the band. Or did it? Having weathered personnel conflicts, Anderson, Squire, and White regrouped with original keyboardist Tony Kaye, guitarist Trevor Rabin, and producer Trevor Horn for the 1983 album 90125, which spawned a pair of power-pop hits, "Leave It" and the chart-topping "Owner of a Lonely Heart," that really reflected the influence of Horn and Rabin more so than the "classic" Yes.

The band continued in the commercial vein with diminishing returns before affecting a transition back to its roots in the 1990s, with Howe, Wakeman, and even for a time Bruford returning. But Yes's legacy remains centered on its prominence as a progressive-rock icon of the 1970s, and that is where evaluation of its inclusion in the Hall of Fame will remain focused.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. Not this year, anyway. Yes's nomination should be seen as an attempt to counter charges that the Hall is biased against progressive rock, which means that voters will not necessarily endorse Yes as a worthy example of the genre.

Would I vote for the artist? No. Yes embodies too many of the negative traits of progressive rock, which is one of the most promising genres in rock but which is also the most prone to excess in pursuit of that promise. In Yes's case, intellectual pretense and obfuscation overwhelm lyrical inquisitiveness, and instrumental indulgence overpowers musical invention.

The Zombies

Background: Unusual for a British Invasion band, the Zombies put the instrumental spotlight on keyboardist Rod Argent rather than on guitarist Paul Atkinson, as was the practice of any number of guitar-dominant, big-beat British Invasion bands from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones. (Only the Animals, among the notable British Invasion groups, also featured a keyboard-dominant approach.) Instead, Argent gave the band a swinging, sophisticated sound that contained the stirrings of jazz-rock that would come to fruition in a few years. It worked initially, as the band's first single, "She's Not There," hit Number 12 on the British singles chart but raced to the top of the American singles chart in 1964, in no small measure due to the coyly rueful lyrics sung with nonchalance by Colin Blunstone. "She's Not There" has attracted a raft of cover versions including those by Vanilla Fudge and Carlos Santana, who had a hit with the song in 1977.

A few months later, the Zombies notched another US Top Five hit with "Tell Her No"; significantly, it just missed the Top 40 in Britain, possibly because its group vocals bore too much of a resemblance to the Beatles'. Whether that was the reason, the band found itself scrambling for hits, as was the custom at the time; it even resorted to a cover of the Little Anthony and the Imperials standard "Going out of My Head," which failed to chart. After getting a record deal with CBS, the Zombies cut an album in 1967, Odessey and Oracle (the misspelling of "odyssey" was a printer's error not fixed prior to release), that did little to reverse the band's fortunes.

The album did feature a song called "Time of the Season," a coolly sophisticated pick-up song right in sync with the free-love period, that had tanked its first time out in 1968 but that hit Number Three on the US charts a year later. By then, however, the band was already defunct, with Rod Argent off to form his own eponymous group best known for "Hold Your Head Up." Odessey and Oracle has, over the years, become a highly regarded artifact of the psychedelic era, but it and the Zombies' previous singles are a footnote to the Rock and Soul Era and not a major entry.

Will the artist be voted into the Hall? No. The 1960s have been picked over pretty thoroughly by the Hall, and there are no glaring oversights from the period not yet rectified, although proponents of Sonny and Cher, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Tommy James and the Shondells, and any number of other acts will argue otherwise. If by some chance Hall voters do elect the Zombies, it would be on a par with their election of the Dave Clark Five.

Would I vote for the artist? No. The Zombies had a refreshingly different sound exemplified by the wonderful singles "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season," but the band made too little impact to be worthy of the Hall. I'm surprised that the Hall didn't try to package the Zombies with Argent, which featured some of the Zombies and which had commercial success and a longer life span than the Zombies, although neither Argent on its own nor combined with the Zombies are up to Hall worthiness. That's a bad precedent that I don't want to see pursued any further (cf. Small Faces/Faces) in any case.

Voting Summary

The table below summarizes the 16 nominees for 2014 by how I think the Hall voters will vote and by how I would vote were I eligible to do so.

2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees
Nominee	Hall Vote		My Vote
	Yes	No	Yes	No
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band		X		X
Chic		X	X
Deep Purple	X			X
Peter Gabriel	X		X
Hall and Oates		X		X
Kiss		X	X
LL Cool J	X		X
The Meters		X		X
Nirvana	X		X
N.W.A.		X	X
The Replacements		X	X
Linda Ronstadt	X		X
Cat Stevens		X		X
Link Wray		X		X
Yes		X		X
The Zombies		X		X
Totals	5	11	8	8

Although I myself am still surprised to see that I would vote for more nominees than would the Hall of Fame voters, I do think that this year's ballot does have several worthy nominees across historical and stylistic ranges. My estimations of how the Hall voters will decide is purely a shot in the dark—as if I could hope to encapsulate what more than 500 voters will think—and it is based on their collective historical record. I will not elaborate further on the Hall's vote but I will summarize my own choices below.

In the deep historical period, Link Wray lacks the standard track record of a full-fledged performer although his undeniable influence on the development of rock music makes him an ideal Ahmet Ertegun Award candidate. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was among the first white practitioners of blues but could not capitalize on its discovery with appreciable commercial or critical success. Meanwhile, the Zombies simply did not exert sufficient popularity or influence to merit serious consideration.

Moving into the 1970s, with a number of genres and styles on display, Kiss and Linda Ronstadt are the biggest names from the decade that deserve to be enshrined—both became part of the cultural landscape that fosters the music and must be recognized for their achievements. And although Deep Purple, Cat Stevens, and Yes are also among the big names of the decade, none were among the most significant acts of their respective genres, and the overall qualitative merits of their respective catalogs are insufficient compensation. Chic is definitely a borderline choice that rises above its primary genre, disco, because of its subsequent influence on a variety of styles. However, the Meters, despite its discreet influence, lacked the popular edge that Chic had and fall below the line.

The 1980s yielded another broad range of genres and styles, including examples of the Great Bifurcation that split the alternative scene from the mainstream, although the fusion of both at the end of the decade produces Nirvana, the most obvious/least controversial pick on this year's ballot. Among pop names, Peter Gabriel and Hall and Oates are the biggest, and while both Gabriel's artistic and commercial achievements are sufficient to grant him induction, Hall and Oates has only its glory period, commercially speaking, to draw from, and that is insufficient. LL Cool J might lack the hardcore credibility expected in some hip-hop circles, but it is his crossover appeal that pushes him across the borderline; conversely, N.W.A. didn't exude crossover appeal in the conventional sense and in fact didn't survive very long, but its moment was a significant one for the Rock and Soul Era. Finally, the Replacements were one of the first underground rock acts to enter the mainstream, and the band's modest success does make it a borderline pick, with only its songwriting to nudge it across.

There. That is my best assessment of the 2014 ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All that's left is to wait for the actual results.

But before we get to that: Who would you vote for? Or not?