The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced the names of those deemed worthy of being enshrined for future generations to honour for four decades. Throughout that time, agreement and disagreement have followed in equal measure. Every year brings arguments over whether this artist deserves it, or that artist does not.
For example, the hip-hop trio Salt-N-Pepa, who were named for the Musical Influence Award. The category is meant for artists who exerted an influence on rock music. This immediately raises the question: do these three girls really have an influence on rock music? Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted as performers in 2007, despite being a hip-hop group.
Then consider the Hall’s own tribute:
“Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the first rap group inducted into the Rock Hall, elevated hip-hop from party music to a weapon for social change. Put simply, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were innovators. Sonically, their new techniques and equipment expanded the sound of hip-hop. Lyrically, their masterpiece “The Message” exposed the dirty underside of a landscape known for partying—and no one saw it coming.”
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Reading that, one is left to wonder: is this the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Why is it eulogising hip-hop? Or is the key phrase here “elevated hip-hop from party music to a weapon for social change”? Why has the definition branched so far out? What, in the end, does “rock and roll” mean? The Hall’s interpretation of “rock” seems remarkably broad and abstract. Even though by then rock music already had a clear identity. with a central trunk that had branched into hundreds, perhaps thousands, of subgenres.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was initiated by Ahmet Ertegun. A founder of Atlantic Records. Who became its leading force. It was incorporated as a foundation on 20 April 1983. The aim of honouring and preserving the history of artists, producers and key figures who had influenced rock and roll. The first inductees were announced on 23 January 1986.
At a time when the physical Hall of Fame building did not yet exist. Several cities were considered as possible locations, including New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles, before Cleveland was chosen in May of the same year. The building itself would not be completed until 1995.
The Process
Today, the induction process has four stages.
First, the Nominating Committee prepares a list of artists considered eligible or worthy.
- The main criterion is that the artist must have released their first commercial work at least 25 years earlier.
- Must have demonstrated musical excellence, impact and influence on later generations.
This committee consists of around 30 people, drawn from experts and figures within the music industry, including artists, executives, historians and journalists. Its membership changes from year to year. The Hall says the list is kept secret to prevent lobbying and to allow members to make independent decisions.
Which is rather like many other secrets in this world. People more or less know who is involved… or, at least, can make a fairly accurate guess.
The list is then sent to more than 1,000 voters, including existing Hall of Fame inductees, artists, critics and others connected to various corners of the music world.
The problem (if it is a problem) is that each individual will interpret “musical excellence” or “impact and influence on later generations” differently. Here we are speaking of sincere voting, not bad faith. This is why almost every year produces the familiar complaints: why did this band not get in, and why did that person get in? It is not difficult to understand. If FR!DAY ! AM !N RÖCK had a vote, it would probably give priority to rock and metal artists, and pay rather less attention to hip-hop.
Bias and partiality hide inside all of us, dear congregation.
The Lists
(read the list at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
Once we understand how the annual list is assembled, we can reasonably infer that each year’s names are filtered through both expertise and personal outlook. That gives us a broad framework for considering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Musical Influence
Let begin with Musical Influence. This category is for artists who did not necessarily play rock directly, but whose music affected rock and roll in one way or another. In 1986, there were three such names: Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Yancey and Robert Johnson.
Jimmie Rodgers was the king of country music, with a long and distinguished legacy. He helped bring hillbilly music, the music of rural “country folk” to national popularity, turning it into a major branch of country music. That branch would exert enormous influence on rock and help generate one of rock’s earliest forms: rockabilly, a fusion of blues from black people, Appalachian ballads and gospel that helped give birth to rock and roll.
Robert Johnson, meanwhile, has been extravagantly praised by iconic artists such as Eric Clapton and Keith Richards. He is the king of Delta blues, surrounded by the legend that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his extraordinary guitar ability. And Jimmy Yancey may be less widely known than the other two, but he was a crucial figure in boogie-woogie piano and the so-called “Yancey bass” style (the right hand playing repeated riffs, syncopated against a recurring bass rhythm.)
These three names allow us to look further back into history. Rock and roll did not simply appear out of nowhere in the 1950s. It was a mixture of American musical languages with deep roots in Europe and Africa: blues providing the emotional foundation, gospel giving intensity to the voice, and country music offering narrative form. When all these elements came together, they became American rock and roll.
Non-Performers
Then there is the Non-Performers category, later officially known as the Ahmet Ertegun Award. This category is for those who were not performers, but whose work in the music business made a significant contribution. In the first year, there were three names: Alan Freed, John Hammond and Sam Phillips.
This category tells us that rock depended on more than music alone.
Alan Freed was the man who turned the phrase “rock and roll” into a household term. He did not invent the phrase, and the music itself had existed for years before his career began, but he popularised it and redefined its meaning through radio, bringing this music to a new audience, especially young white listeners. The concerts and music events he organised drew both Black and white teenagers together, cutting across racial lines.
John Hammond was a record producer who discovered or supported a remarkable range of major artists, from jazz to rock, including Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Pete Seeger and Leonard Cohen. He persuaded Benny Goodman to hire Black musicians such as Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton, forming an interracial quartet that stood as a symbolic challenge to racial segregation in the 1930s.
Sam Phillips recorded many artists who later became legends, including B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and Ike Turner. He became most famous after founding his own label, Sun Records, and recording his first white singer: Elvis Presley – The King of Rock and Roll.
Seen through these three figures, rock becomes a story of cultural mixture between Black and white communities, whose markets had previously been kept largely separate, but were gradually drawn into the same musical economy.
The Artists
On the performers’ side, the ten names were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Elvis Presley.
Many names raise almost no doubt. Elvis Presley was the King of Rock and Roll; it would have been stranger had he not been included. He was the man who transformed music associated with Black communities into mainstream songs for the whole of America. Buddy Holly, despite having less than two years of major creative work, changed rock from an art of live performance into an art of studio creation through his use of overdubbing technique.
But when we come to names such as James Brown, Ray Charles or Sam Cooke, some may begin to wonder: is this rock as well? The question is interesting because it reveals the central problem of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The word “rock” may not refer only to a musical genre, but to the whole current of American musical culture that helped give birth to rock and roll.
Ray Charles brought together gospel, blues and rhythm and blues. Sam Cooke turned gospel into soul music that pop enough to enter the pop market. As for James Brown, he laid the foundation for funk groove, influencing even hard rock acts such as Aerosmith.
When Rock is not just music
And if we can accept these names, then accepting Grandmaster Flash becomes understandable. The issue is not genre alone. “Rock” also means culture.
To be fair, the Hall has generated arguments almost every year over who deserves entry and who does not. Yet the first class, “the Class of 1986”, seems to have faced remarkably little criticism. If there was any notable objection, it was that every inductee in the first group was male. Was this a form of exclusion? On the night of the ceremony, Roberta Flack, who introduced Little Richard, said that perhaps the following year would be “the year of the woman”. She named three or four pioneering female musicians whom she believed deserved induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Perhaps what Roberta said that night helped awaken the Hall’s sense of gender equality. The following year, the Hall inducted its first woman: Aretha Franklin.
Personally, I still wonder why Sister Rosetta Tharpe was excluded from the first group of nominees. The Hall would later honour her in 2018 as the first female guitar heroine of rock and roll. Perhaps the bias of the time still clouded the view: rock was seen as a male-dominated world. The writing of early rock history often elevated commercially successful male stars, while reducing the role of Black female innovators including one of the true mothers of rock and roll.
Perhaps this is why the debate surrounding the name in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame each year is always so intense. Rockers are born with the image of rock as roaring guitar riffs, rebellious spirit, raggedy sounds, and the innocent passion of youth. Yet the Hall of Fame seems to define “rock and roll” abstractly, tracing its cultural roots to a fusion of blues, gospel, country, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, and ultimately, hip-hop.
The Class of 1986
Looking back at the inductions in 1986, it becomes clear that rock and roll is not defined by any one person, race, gender, or even any single musical style. Rock and roll is a seemingly incompatible blend of Black and white culture, commercialism and resistance, sacred music and worldly desires. Perhaps that’s why the Hall of Fame selections remain controversial; each selection attempts to determine which version of history deserves to be remembered.
And perhaps that is the true meaning of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: a critique of the historical nuances of modern pop culture.