Here's what you missed at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony last night
Aux Features Music
The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony isn’t usually the most important event in a given year, but it is at least a justification to get some famous people together, have them talk about famous musical acts, and then watch those famous musical acts perform and/or choose not to perform out of some completely justifiable belief that the whole thing is dumb and pointless. This year’s event was supposed to happen in May, but in March it was delayed to November because of the coronavirus pandemic—with the organizers presumably assuming that there’s no way things would be actively getting worse after nearly eight months. The induction ceremony was finally held yesterday, which also happened to be the day the U.S. presidential election was called, almost as if the universe was trying to send the Rock Hall a message about this year’s ceremony. Is the universe a big Nine Inch Nails fans and worried that getting into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame would be like selling out? Yeah, maybe.
Anyway, the pandemic is still going on, obviously, which meant there couldn’t be a big ceremony with speeches and performances, so instead the producers put together a series of pre-taped tributes to all of this year’s inductees—who, in case you forgot since they were announced in January, included Whitney Houston, the Doobie Brothers, T. Rex, Depeche Mode, the Notorious B.I.G., and the aforementioned Nine Inch Nails. Then, possibly because the Rock Hall producers did somehow guess that there would be something more monumentally important happening in the world last night, they uploaded a bunch of clips to YouTube for us to watch today when we need a break from making jokes about Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
Here’s Rolan Bolan, son of Marc Bolan, accepting T. Rex’s induction on his parents’ behalf and noting the fact that he never got to knew his father until he started listening to T. Rex and recognizing the impact that the band’s music had on the world:
Here’s Cissy and Pat Houston, accepting Whitney Houston’s induction, and you can read the speech that Alicia Keys made in her honor over at Pitchfork.
Iggy Pop, St. Vincent, Miley Cyrus, and more inducted Nine Inch Nails (you can read what they said at Pitchfork), and you can see Trent Reznor’s acceptance speech below.
Here’s Tyanna and C.J. Wallace accepting the induction of their father, the Notorious B.I.G., who was honored in speeches (which you can read about here) by JAY-Z, Nas, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Here are the Doobie Brothers accepting with a video that is a little less emotional than the others, if only because this is a pretty traditional and expected Rock Hall induction. Of course the Doobie Brothers are in there. They did “Black Water.”
Finally, here’s Depeche Mode cracking jokes and seemingly marveling at the fact that they’re all on a video call together. Their speech was preceded by tributes from noted superfan Charlize Theron, Christ Martin of Coldplay, Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, and Win Butler from Arcade Fire.
43 Comments
They need to induct Jethro Tull.
Iron Maiden and Judas Priest are IMO the two biggest exclusions (The Smiths too, but Morrissey is garbage, so whatever).
Fun fact: Reznor produced Halford’s solo effort 2wo; so I guess if you want to get technical, Halford’s now part of the HoF as well:
I love both, but LOL who the the fuck cares? Half the people accepting these awards sound moderately annoyed to accept them. As always, the question is, who is this for?(Edit: the “industry” people no doubt seem psyched to get recognized, and no doubt their early careers managing tours are damn tough)
well, if Rush’s induction was any indication it’s for the fans.and it only took 40 years to happen.
Well what do you expect following Neal Peart’s gambling scandal. He should’ve never been betting on other bands.But on the other hand, i suspect like 90% of the other guys in the HoF were using banned substances during their prime, and should’ve NEVER been inducted, but they got in anyway, so whatever.
Bill Hicks was there first 🙂
Heart was inducted the same night after being snubbed the year before for The Beastie Boys.
YES.
as someone who idolized both Heart and Rush growing up, it was such sweet vindication. having these two bands be inducted was an idea that was publicly ridiculed by the hall of fame folks a decade earlier.
Yes, we’re fully aware that it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, we’re just sitting around waiting for the heat death of the universe, we’re just having a little fun here, alright?
I guess it depends on your definition of “fun”. I remember going to the HoF in the 90s when I was like 14 and being like “WTF MADONNA IS IN HERE AND SHE ISNT RAWK AND METALLICA ISNT6!11″ and then realizing the HoF is a giant Hard Rock Cafe with fewer chicken wings and that you should look at the shiny costumes and not worry about it too much.
Plus the HoF is in Cleveland. I grew up in OH and find it funny that of all the cities and towns I went to either growing up or for work, I’ve -never- been to Cleveland. I’ve driven through it so many times I couldn’t tell ya, but never stopped once. And the sad thing is, I’m a Browns fan.
I agree, but I would include Thin Lizzy and Motorhead (as well as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest)
Hey, they have their Heavy Metal Grammy so they should be content!
Pat Benatar
Bat Penatar
And Cyndi Lauper.But, yes, Pat needs to be in, but I’m sure Neil Geraldo will push his way in, too.
I read this as “indict” for a minute and thought “Shit, what did they do?”
Martin Gore is a gifted writer and gifted composer.I have said for many years that Martin L. Gore is one of our most criminally underrated and unrecognized songwriters. Sure, DM makes great catchy, poppy, dancey electronic music that appeals to all kinds of music fans (even Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top for God’s sake!!!), but Gore has a real gift for crafting lyrics about serious themes like corporate greed, racial prejudice, suicide, and BDSM(!) into pop masterpieces. Just read his lyrics sometime. Martin L. Gore is one of the greats.
Al Jourgensen should have been one of the artists to induct NIN. There’d be no NIN if Ministry, and a whole host of other industrial acts, hadn’t come first. When Jourgensen opted to take Ministry into less commercial territory, Reznor picked up Jourgensen’s pop sensibilities and ran with them.
And if we’re being completely honest here, Ministry really should have been inducted into the RnRHoF before NIN. Kraftwerk too. I’m still very angry that Kraftwerk wasn’t inducted last year. There would be no NIN or Depeche Mode without Kraftwerk before them and even Reznor has said as much.
I’ve been a Ministry fan through a few of their phases. Early pop, angry synth industrial, more metal.. but I don’t have more recent albums. But I’m a fan. But not everyone can be in the HOF. There are higher priority acts. I wanted to see Devo make it in.
Gary Numan sends his regards.
Of course Marc Bolan had to follow Zowie Bowie’s dad’s lead and name his kid Rolan.
I’m sad to hear that Rolan Bolan isn’t a professional bowler, Rollin’ Bowlin’ balls at the highest tier of the sport.
Kind of surprised Bolan’s kid didn’t follow Bowie’s kid’s lead and go back to Feld.
I mean, Zowie is his middle name – he has the very, almost laughably average name of Duncan Jones.
That would never happen in real life. Even Michael McDonald comes back for reunion shows every now and then.
I never understood the whole “selling out thing”. Just about every act in the hall not named U2 had their moment in the sun ages ago and are no longer chart toppers. Yeah, in the big scheme of things having a statute or whatever in Cleveland, Ohio might not change the world. But if it allows people to hear their music again and for younger people to realize “this act was important and you should listen to their music sometime” and maybe buy it or see them in concert that will give aged artists no longer at the top some cash, I am all for it every year.
No The Go-Go’s in the Rock Hall of Fame, no peace
YES.
You spelled “The Replacements” wrong.
Actually The Go-Go’s spell their own name wrong (I disagree with the apostrophe) but I spell it their way, out of respect
I see what you did there…
the fact that they consistently overlook the go-go’s just shows how petty the whole thing is. no-one can deny how groundbreaking and history-making they were by industry standards.
whether some idiot (who, let’s be real, is probably some man) likes them or not is beside the point.
Here’s what you missed:
Several dozen fifty-something guitar players all incoherently ‘jamming’ on a blues riff while some poor harried sound guy tries to figure out who is soloing now…
fuck jann werner, david geffen and alla them robber baronsthey simultaneously MADE the music industry and DESTROYED itnow they run a fan club for “people-who-didn’t tell-them-to-fuck-off-in-the-70s”which explains the WHY of rush, yes, tull, et al
Christ Martin?
Christ, Martin?
Rock hall became a joke once they put Whitney Houston in.
Became a joke once they started letting rappers in.
First the RRHOF gave us joy because it was such a massive boondoggle, the mistake by the lake!
Now it does because eventually people decided to take it more or less seriously and we’ve had some great performances (Kim Gordon singing Nirvana’s “Aneurysm”) AND some great stories about famous people being huge jerks (Steve Miller Band, meet Black Keys!). And so before COVID it gave Cleveland…something! It’s also nice how they have been mostly inclusive even when bands aren’t friends anymore (as often happens) and even reveals when the bands are still on good terms (the inclusion of and shout out to Vince Clarke who was really vital to the early DM was really nice). You get into some borderline arguments about this or that bassist who was only in a band for two or three albums but generally it’s been inclusive—for instance, I was okay with them leaving out Nirvana’s first drummer, but I wish there was some slightly lesser setting you could have included him in, or Pat Smear, like “honorary mentions”
Andy Fletcher’s house seems to be decorated exactly the way I’d picture a member of Depeche Mode’s house to be decorated at this stage of their lives.