At long last, prog-rock’s Rush and blues icon Albert King get their due. Does it matter that they’re finally getting inducted into rock royalty alongside a disco queen and a hip-hop powerhouse? (Commentary)
In my view, bluesman Albert King influenced rock’s development as much as any guitarist of his generation.
Revisiting Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recently, it hit me like a Neil Peart drumstick to the noggin, a reverberating Jimmy Page power chord to the chest cavity, a Roger Daltrey scream to the eardrums.
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After surviving roughly six decades – two or three generations worth – not only has rock ’n’ roll become THE establishment, with its requisite herds of gray-haired, retiree tourists waxing nostalgic about the good ol’ days, but just about every musical genre wants to claim a piece of that sweet rock pie.
Consequently, the walls and display cases of this impressive institution on the shores of Lake Erie seem to be filled with as many artifacts from pop, R&B, blues, jazz, folk, hip-hop and country stars as “conventional” rockers: Stage jackets from Fats Domino and Michael Jackson, folk legend Lead Belly’s acoustic guitar and John Entwistle of The Who’s “Warwick Buzzard” bass, Eminem’s hat, a tip-of-the-hat to Hank Williams and original lyrics to “Hats Off to Larry,” a ’60s hit by Coopersville’s own Del Shannon.
This sort of thing once truly bugged me, partly because I felt deserving bands (prog-rock’s Rush) and undeniable rock influences (blues legend Albert King) were being overlooked in favor of borderline “rock” inductees such as Madonna and ABBA.
Rush
But if you view rock as an all-encompassing department store rather than an exclusive boutique, having The Beastie Boys and Run-D.M.C. share the limelight and some celebratory drinks with The Stooges and Metallica now seems like a perfectly reasonable – and raucous – party, in the tradition of rock’s rebellious roots.
More than ever these days, rock music is a potpourri of styles, blending everything from bluegrass to hip-hop in an often tasty but unidentifiable stew.
That doesn’t mean I don’t still get incensed at the snubbing by the Hall of such stalwart talents as Jethro Tull, Linda Ronstadt and Deep Purple, but it makes Tuesday’s announcement of 2013’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees an intriguing and tolerable nod to the eclectic, wide-ranging nature of the beast: The rock muscle of Rush, Heart and Albert King balanced by Public Enemy’s rap, Donna Summer’s disco and Randy Newman’s classic songwriting. (Lou Adler and Quincy Jones also will be honored in induction ceremonies next year with Ahmet Ertegun Awards for Lifetime Achievement. Learn more about all the inductees online here.)
Heart
Maybe I’ve gotten soft about the whole thing, but there’s satisfaction in knowing that at least Rush, King and Heart have finally gotten their just due among the Hall of Fame’s 279 inductees – Rush for carrying Canada’s prog-rock banner, King for helping inspire bands like Led Zeppelin, and Heart for proving that girls can rock every bit as hard as the boys.
Perhaps this ‘softening’ means I felt less obstinant defiance and more sentimentality as I strolled the Cleveland museum’s hallways, ogling the odd “Moog Liberator” played by The Isley Brothers, checking out the cigarette burns on Jimi Hendrix’s couch, marveling at Robbie Robertson’s 1961 Gibson customer guitar/mandolin combo, reading Michigan rock icon Bob Seger’s handwritten lyrics to “Like a Rock” and straining to see details of Kurt Cobain’s death certificate, which listed the singer as a poet, musician and punk rocker who died as a result of a “contact perforating gunshot wound to head (mouth).”
Rock Guitar Giants: I saw plenty of ’em during my visit to Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Some of my favorite displays relate to The Rolling Stones, who currently are celebrating 50 years of rocking audiences. There’s the 1966 hate mail from Fiji in which the letter-writer assails the British band: “You are dirty and stink. I hate you because you don’t look like men but animals.” And then there’s Mick Jagger’s tongue-in-cheek 1981 correspondence to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine, in which he wonders about “consent to register the name ‘Rolling Stone,’ what do you offer as far as cover stories, special small ad rates and summer clothes coverage?”
In the end, I’d argue that Janis Joplin’s spectacles, John Lennon’s Yamaha upright piano and Iggy Pop’s shoes are as significant as artifacts in any museum, powerfully shaping modern life and culture – and extending rock’s reach to genres as far-flung as country and rap.
It makes rock ’n’ roll as important, enduring and inspiring as any art form of the past several centuries, and apparently even more so, as Albert King once crooned, “as the years go passing by.”
Email: jsinkevics@gmail.com
