Welcome to the rock hall of lame
How many old geezers must find a place in music’s hallowed home?
First resist the urge to issue a peep about the latest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class, because, as former Modern Lover guitarist Asa Brebner declared on my Facebook page after the vote became public, “who gives a (expletive)?”
The fact is, we all do, though we pretend we don’t because, each year, we find the results so infuriating.
Yes? ELO? Joan Baez? I don’t feel outraged. I feel inspired that there are actually other old folks out there who really care about music. Those are the ones who remember when Steve Perry, with that feathered hair belted out Open Arms to packed arenas.
On that note, let’s get this out of the way: Why do all you people hate Journey? What did their rock anthems ever do to you? It’s not like they broke up the Beatles.
I asked Journey guitarist Neal Schon this question. It was clear we have different Facebook friends. He told me he heard only love.
“We’re selling out everywhere we’ve been playing,” he said. “If there was so much hatred, we wouldn’t be selling tickets.”
So as we prepare to celebrate Journey — and sorry, kids, but slap on Infinity with a clear mind and just try to deny its brilliance — Yes, ELO, Tupac, Pearl Jam and Joan Baez as the latest inductees, we should remember that all awards are legit and deserved when the right people get them and when they don’t, there’s a cabal of backstabbing insiders hell bent on dismissing great art.
There should be debate and passion and bitterness, and not just from Jon Bon Jovi, who contends that “two (f----)” are keeping his band out, even when the title of their biggest record, Slippery When Wet, was inspired by a visit to a strip club and the original cover (nixed, thankfully, by the record label) was an almost headless torso showing off her ample breasts in a torn T-shirt.
The question, for me, is how long the Hall can continue without serious changes. Namely, we are running out of geezers. What do you do when your nominees are no longer popular? Check the numbers. Green Day’s No. 1 album, Revolution Radio, sold just 90,000 copies when it debuted earlier this year. American Idiot sold 267,000 copies when it hit No. 1 in 2004. By 2021, you’ll be able to land in the Top 10 by handing out a few thumb drives outside the local Shop & Save.
There simply aren’t enough eligible rock heroes around to keep the inductees list growing. That is going to force the Hall to lower the bar for what constitutes a Hall of Famer, letting in critical faves like the Meat Puppets and Television as well as Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Some of you will be pleased, particularly the MC5-agitators on my feed. But I’m not sure how this will play in the Barclays Center during the induction ceremony. Maybe it’s time to remove the 25-year wait for eligibility so Wayne Kramer can be on the same bill as Beyoncé, for example, who can’t be nominated until 2028.
Are we running out of acts? No. ... What we are running out of are centrist, undeniable, white guitar acts. That’s what we’re going to run out of and it’s going to get worse.
To understand all of this better, I called Chris Molanphy, the pop critic and chart analyst for Slate and Pitchfork. He’s an expert at this stuff and, as an added bonus, is one of the thousand-or-so folks who vote for nominated artists. He said my geezer theory had to be refined.
“Are we running out of acts? No. In fact, it’s getting worse year after year. What we are running out of are centrist, undeniable, white guitar acts. That’s what we’re going to run out of and it’s going to get worse.”
By that, he means the supply is going to dry up.
“And then you’re going to have to ask, is Creed going to be nominated? Nickelback?”
That gets to the heart of the problem, which is the way the Hall now works. It is the disconnect between the elite, nominating committee — the cabal of perhaps a few dozen insiders including Springsteen manager Jon Landau, Questlove and Metallica manager Cliff Burnstein — and the larger, voting body that Molanphy is part of. There are other critics in that larger group but they’re far outnumbered by artists and industry figures. Steven Tyler votes. So does Clive Davis.
So you get the discriminating/ snooty nominators — who push Chic forward 11 times and watch helplessly as the group is nixed by the popular vote. The cabal only begrudgingly seems to bring forward Chicago, Journey and Steve Miller as candidates. All make it on the first try.
Molanphy, for the record, had an o-fer year. He voted for Chic, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Janet Jackson and The Cars.
“This is going to continue to be a problem as the Hall moves into the ’90s,” he says. “That’s why Pearl Jam became eligible. Rage will become eligible. Soundgarden. They’re going to have one more good wave of really straightup-the-middle, meat-and-potatoes rock acts. And then by the time they get to the late ’90s — does Moby get nominated? The Chemical Brothers? Daft Punk? — you’re going to see fewer and fewer meat-and-potatoes rock acts that are incontrovertible.”