OH, HALL, YEAH!
Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks, Janet going in
They're rockers for the ages.
Def Leppard, The Cure, Janet Jackson, Stevie Nicks, Radiohead, Roxy Music and The Zombies will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at Barclays Center on March 29.
Those seven acts made the cut in a field that also included Rage Against the Machine, LL Cool J, Kraftwerk, MC5, Todd Rundgren, Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan, John Prine and Devo.
Cleveland.com — the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's hometown outlet — announced Monday that Def Leppard won a survey of 3.3 million fans by collecting 547,647 votes. Nicks, whose band Fleetwood Mac is already in the Hall of Fame, finished a distant second with 427,844 votes. Radiohead got 140,458 fan votes.
Def Leppard was a pioneering hair band during the dawn of MTV, where their 1983 hit “Photograph” was in constant rotation, competing with the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna. Though nominated six times, the British rockers have never won a VMA.
Nicks, currently touring with Fleetwood Mac — minus guitarist Lindsey Buckingham who calls the current lineup a “cover band” — is the 23rd artist to be inducted as a soloist and with a band. That group is known as the Clyde McPhatter Club, named after The Drifters singer, who was the first performer to get in twice. Nicks is the first woman to join the club.
Janet Jackson, whose late brother Michael is a twotime inductee, is the second Jackson to make the cut. She and Nicks are the only non British performers being inducted in 2019.
Radiohead was nominated in 2017 and famously booked a show in Argentina the night of the induction ceremony. That didn't seem to work against them in this year's voting. “I don't care,” guitarist Jonny Greenwood said of the Hall of Fame at the time. Greenwood told Rolling Stone magazine. “It just feels non-authentic to us.”
Roxy Music last recorded an album in 1982, but it wasn't until 2014 that guitarist Phil Manzanera indicated he and bandmate Andy Mackay had concluded three years earlier they were finished with performing together.
“When we stopped touring in 2011, Andy and I looked at each other and said, ‘Our job is done here,'” he said.
They are the only band being inducted that is no longer active.
Having formed in 1976, The Cure is the longest consecutively active band among nominees, though singer Robert Smith is the band's only constant presence.
All inductees into the Hall of Fame's 34th class have ties to the 1980s except the Zombies, who performed in the 1960s, then reunited in 1990 and continue to play live with a lineup featuring founder Rod Argent.