They’ve Officially Run Out of Rock Stars

The 2005 inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were announced today. They seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I have to wonder if maybe somebody in Cleveland’s going “Hmmm, maybe we shoul have limited ourselves to one a year….”

So let’s go down the list, shall we?

U2

This is the choice I have the least trouble with. If we were talking about FatDave’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, U2 would never even be considered, but we’re talking about the real Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and apparently U2 had some kind of impact. I guess they may have even been cool for about 10 minutes in 1983. So anyway, I’ll reluctantly give you U2. If they ever open the Overrated Self-Important Rock Star Hall of Fame, I expect Bono to be near the top of list (just above Sting).

The Pretenders

The Pretenders were far from horrible, but hall of fame material? Not in my book. They had a couple hits but so did Adam Ant. Shall we put him in the Hall of Fame? There’s always 2006….

The O’ Jays

Personally, I’d consider them more soul than anything else. And I don’t think they ever did much besides Love Train. But Love Train made it onto Freedom Rock, and there’s gotta be a Freedom Rock clause somewhere in the Hall of Fame by-laws.

Percy Sledge

See above, but substitute “When a Man Loves a Woman” for “Love Train” and take out the whole Freedom Rock thing. Nothing against Percy Sledge mind you, but to paraphrase Dire Straits, it ain’t what I call rock & roll. Come to think of it, Dire Straits hasn’t been inducted to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I mean it’s not like they’re the Beatles or something, but c’mon, they’re more rock & roll than Percy Sledge.

Buddy Guy

OK, you know what? Buddy Guy fucking rules. But you know what else? That’s blues, not rock & roll. Was the blues a huge influence on rock music? Well duh. Was Buddy Guy specifically a huge influence on rock and roll? Why don’t you ask Eric Clapton. But the blues is still not rock, at least not until you speed it up and play in straight-8ths instead of triplets. Now, there is an “early influences” category which contains the likes of Woodie Guthrie, T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. If that’s where they’re putting Buddy, then what took them so fucking long?

Interestingly, these artists’ competition was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (not rock), the J. Geils Band (not legends) and Conway Twitty (you gotta be fucking kidding me).

Now obviously the term rock and roll is somewhat amorphous. What is and isn’t rock is open to debate, especially when you consider genres like funk that are direct offshoots of rock. This is why I don’t bitch about Curtis Mayfield and Parliament/Funkadelic being in the Hall of Fame. That and I like their music much more. Some would say soul is also an offshoot of rock, though I’m not convinced. I think it has an independent bloodline. But if you think Percy Sledge belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by all means write your own rant and send me an email telling me I’m an asshole.

And it should go without saying that the worth of one artist over another is largely a matter of opinion. I mean, there’s maybe ten acts in the history of rock that everyone can point to as legendary. But this is a Hall of Fame we’re talking about. Can we really let in any band that had a couple minor singles in the 80’s?