Rocking out, well, sort of
Things are a little off-key in Cleveland
Hundreds of Republican delegates were milling in the glass atrium of the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame on Wednesday when Donald Trump’s helicopter burst suddenly into view.
“There! Look!” Rapt faces turned skyward and a roar of sustained cheer followed as the aircraft circled jauntily around the building. A quick, teasing victory lap, setting the mood for one he will take Thursday, when he seals the winning deal on the convention stage.
The Beatles “Hard Day’s Night” played in the background but none of the giddy Trump faithful much cared. You say you want a revolutionary? Thanks but no thanks, John Lennon. They’re going with this guy.
That this scene unfolded in one of rock’s most hallowed halls is just weird. Or, as Hunter S. Thompson might say, bad craziness. For those eager to date rock’s death, you could do worse than stick a pin in this day.
What’s weirder is that with each passing day, you hear more whispers of “Nixon 1968” in RNC circles—the idea that this supposedly unelectable candidate has a path to the White House by following in Nixon’s footsteps, harvesting the fears of a nervous, divided nation as the candidate of law and order and winning wars.
Six floors up, the rock hall has a major exhibition underway that tells where the music was for Tricky Dick, including a remembrance of the Kent State killings. “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’, we’re finally on our own.”
It’s not quite there now. Thanks to major sponsorship dollars from AT&T, the hall is wide open and free to everyone gathered in Cleveland during the convention.
And thus the hall is a crawl with Trumpers, who see in the displays an echo of the anti-establishment triumph they are about to inflict on the party’s old guard.
“I thought I wouldn’t be able to help myself, I’d get all catty with the Trump people,” one rock hall guide told the Star Wednesday, asking that we not publish her name.
“But much to my surprise, everyone’s been very sweet. People from Georgia, Alabama, Texas, just goodnatured, you know. We have a big display on how rock was attacked as the devil’s music and you think to yourself, ‘Hmmm . . . weren’t these the people that did that?’ But they’ve been nice.”
Also in the hall Wednesday, a breakfast session featuring Caitlyn Jenner speaking to more than 100 LGBT Republicans. The hall is open to all, even if the Republican platform is not.
Cleveland rocks — but it rocks uneasily among Trump Nation. A case in point: The band Third Eye Blind became overnight folk heroes among progressives for a taunting performance in front of GOP convention attendees Tuesday night. Lead singer Stephan Jenkins at one point mocked his Republican audience, asking, “Who here believes in science?”
A source at the hall of fame told the Star the band left a bad taste in the mouths of senior managers. “They were just miserable to work with for weeks, making demand after demand. Joe Walsh (of the Eagles and James Gang fame) was also booked, but when he realized the convention was in town, he cancelled. He put his money where his mouth was by not taking a paycheque. Third Eye Blind did the opposite, taking the money and then being jerks about it the whole way through.”
There’s deeper weirdness still inside the convention arena, where guitarist G.E. Smith has taken a drubbing on social media for leading the GOP house band. Much of the Twitter outrage takes it as a onetime fling for the alumnus of Bob Dylan and Saturday Night Live. But he did the same thing four years ago in Tampa, later explaining that though he leans left, the big RNC dollars enable him to round up and pay handsomely a hand-picked band of veterans who have little in the way of retirement savings.
But it remains an awkward dance. Mitt Romney’s Tampa never approached the ferocity of rhetoric of Donald Trump’s Cleveland. And now Smith’s band finds itself dealing out warm, loving chestnuts between speeches that spit fire. It was surreal to see Trump’s faithful on Tuesday night pound their fists in the air, chanting lustily for Hillary Clinton’s head after the mock trial Chris Christie staged. “Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up!”
The G.E. Smith Band finished the night singing the O’Jays’ “Love Train.”