Every year I embark on this project with every intention of writing
up a well-researched, insightful essay on each of the nominees for the Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame. Every year I fall short of getting the full slate completed, and am happy if I am able to
cough up one well-researched essay and another one that’s insightful.
Ballots were due today, and I assume the results will be
announced tomorrow, which means there’s not much point in carrying on. But at
least I got an entry done for each of the new nominees, which means that I have
set forth my thoughts on all 15 candidates at some point over the past couple
of years. For the ones who didn’t get new essays this year, here’s where you
can find my thoughts, such as they are, on each of them:
Let’s wrap this up by making it like the Academy Awards,
where they’ve stopped saying “The winner is…” and started saying “The Oscar
goes to…” because there are no losers here, except possibly those dorks in
Devo. This year, my choices for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were:
Todd Rundgren was always meant to be a producer. He knocked around in the Nazz as a very young man, releasing Nazz and Nazz Nazz on SGC Records but leaving the band at the age of 20. Dissatisfied with the production of the Nazz albums, he moved to New York and signed on with Albert Grossman as kind of a staff producer for his short-lived Ampex Records. He worked on some sessions with Janis Joplin for what became Pearl, then engineered the Band’s Stage Fright in 1970.
At that point, Rundgren emerged as one of the most important producers in rock. He helmed Badfinger’s classic Straight Up, from 1971, still just 23 years old. In 1973, he produced the New York Dolls self-titled debut and Grand Funk Railroad’s We’re an American Band, at opposite ends of the critical spectrum.
In 1977, he handled Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, one of the most significant records of that year, although not necessarily in the good way, then produced the last Patti Smith Group album, Wave. His power-pop rep was well-suited for the New Wave acts that began coming up, like the Psychedelic Furs and XTC, whose Skylarking would soon be acclaimed as one of the best albums of the 1980s (and I’m not just saying that to get a retweet from JHB).
But of course, there’s also the solo work. After leaving the Nazz (and while I usually see it referred to as "Nazz," I also see quotes where Rundgren calls it "the Nazz," so that's what I'm going with) Rundgren founded a band called Runt with future Tin Machiners Hunt and Tony Sales. He ended up being mostly a one-man band there, and their second album was called Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren. “We Gotta Get You a Woman” was on the first one, and reached Number 20 on the charts in 1970.
Then came Something/Anything? in 1972, a true solo album with hits rolling off of it, including “I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me,” a leftover from the Nazz days. Then the Rundgren train ran out of steam, with a series of albums getting more and more ignored aside from the 1978 Top 30 hit “Can We Still Be Friends.” He returned with a new band, Utopia, that had just enough success not to be forgotten completely. “Bang the Drum All Day,” from 1982’s The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect, ended up as the American “Rock & Roll Part II,” not even charting when it was first released but turning into an arena anthem.
Rundgren keeps releasing albums, but none of them since Tortured Artist has even made the Billboard Hot 100.
The Matched Set Chic had a nice run as a chart act, with four Top Ten hits from 1977 to 1979, but what really made their legacy was Nile Rodgers’ subsequent work as a producer. They’ve been nominated nearly a dozen times but have never been selected for the Hall of Fame.
The Verdict I really like Todd Rundgren’s music a lot. The more I researched his case, the more I realized that his dossier is pretty thin. He’s put out an awful lot of music, but very little of it has made an impact. His producing career, on the other hand, is more impressive than I thought at first glance, but not enough to garner my vote. I vote No on Todd Rundgren.
Bryan Ferry, one of the most sophisticated dudes in the history of rock & roll, was the son of a man who tended pit ponies, the small horses that worked in the coal mines of County Durham, in far northeastern England. He went to art school at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, then began teaching ceramics at a girls school in London. I found this description (from, I believe, Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera) of what happened next: “Bryan's association with both the girls and their school is unceremoniously terminated when it appears he is more interested in broadening their musical minds than expounding on the finer points of pottery.” “Broadening their musical minds,” heh heh.
By this time he had begun associating with members of what would become Roxy Music. Ferry initially auditioned for King Crimson, who turned him down but helped him get a record deal for his fledgling band. Saxman Andy Mackay signed on, bringing with him a fellow named Brian Eno, who described himself as a “non-musician.” That is of course a very coy self-assessment, although bands have had other non-musicians in them, from Fred Schneider to Flavor Flav.
What Eno really was, from the beginning, was a producer; on the first Roxy Music album, he treated Andy Mackay’s sax solo from “2HB” with tape effects, creating an ethereal sound like no other around at that time. He also played the synthesizer. Roxy’s first single, “Virginia Plain,” from 1972, is clearly a song written by Ferry, but produced by Eno – it would fit perfectly on Eno’s subsequent solo album Here Come the Warm Jets, with atonal squiggles crammed in every corner.
I’m getting ahead of the story a bit here, but Eno left Roxy Music after their second album, For Your Pleasure, and embarked on one of the most innovative and strange careers in music. He composed the startup sound for Windows 95, which is the kind of thing that if you were Bill Gates, Eno would be your only choice to do that. He’s also known as the inventor of ambient music, but his more pop-oriented stuff is just astonishingly good. If you haven’t listened to Here Come the Warm Jets, you owe it to yourself.
After Eno left Roxy Music, their sound become sleeker, more streamlined, almost appallingly sophisticated. I don’t quite understand why songs like “Dance Away” and “Over You” didn’t become U.S. hits, but their only chart success in America was “Love Is the Drug,” which went to Number 20 in 1975. They put many more singles on the charts in the U.K., where a cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” from 1981, was the only Number One hit.
By the time of their eighth and final studio album, 1982’s Avalon, they were starting to get some notice on MTV, particularly with the gorgeous title track. Despite an oft-rumored reunion album, that would be the end of their output, and really, it’s just as well. They had pushed their brand of lush black-tie pop about as far as it was going to go, while going out on a high note: “Avalon” and “More Than This” were as good as anything they had recorded, and that was quite good indeed.
The Matched Set Joy Division/New Order landed a series of singles near the top of the British charts while remaining more or less a rumor in the United States, but for the American kids whose lives they permeated, they were the real deal. New Order also had a lone Top Forty American hit, “True Faith” from 1987 – I don’t want to live in a world where “Bizarre Love Triangle” isn’t a hit, but here we bloody well are.
Neither New Order nor Joy Division has ever been nominated.
The Verdict Roxy Music was, I believe, the last act I cut from my ballot of five. This stuff holds up really well; it’s diverse, distinctive and debonair. “More Than This” should have been a huge hit in the U.S., but it wasn’t, and we have to deal with that. (It made the Top Forty for the post-Natalie Merchant 10,000 Maniacs, bizarrely enough.) Reluctantly, I vote No for Roxy Music.
Like me, John Prine was born and raised in the middle-class suburbs of Chicago. Chicago had a big presence in the folk revival of the 1960s – Llewyn Davis going to the Gate of Horn was based on a real incident – and Prine got his start singing on open-mic nights at a club called the Fifth Peg. One night in 1970, when he opened with “Sam Stone” and “Hello in There,” Roger Ebert happened to be in the audience. Given those songs, Ebert’s review in the Sun-Times was obviously a rave, and Prine’s career was launched.
John Prine was released in 1971, containing most of what people still know about John Prine: the above two songs plus “Angel From Montgomery” and “Illegal Smile.” Prine found himself at a party in New York City with Dylan shortly before the record was released, and when Prine sang some of it, Dylan sang along with him – he knew the album from a preview copy before it even came out. Hey, let’s listen to Dylan for a minute:
"Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. 'Sam Stone,' featuring the wonderfully evocative line, 'There’s a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes, and Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose.' All that stuff about "Sam Stone," the soldier junkie daddy, and "Donald and Lydia," where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.”
If he had had a couple more John Prines in him, he’d be up there with Dylan and Paul Simon among the absolute best contemporary songwriters. Although Prine continued to churn out great songs now and then over the next couple of decades – “Dear Abby,” “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” the incredible “In Spite of Ourselves” – he never put out another record with four stone-cold classics. But who could?
With his tiny little voice, Prine never had what you might call hits – I’m not sure he ever had what you might call “singles.” But his songs very quickly began to get covered, like Bonnie Raitt with “Angel From Montgomery” in 1974. Hey, let’s listen to Bonnie for a minute:
"I think 'Angel from Montgomery' probably has meant more to my fans and my body of work than any other song, and it will historically be considered one of the most important ones I've ever recorded. It's just such a tender way of expressing that sentiment of longing. It's a perfect expression from [a] wonderful genius.”
Johnny Cash covered “Sam Stone,” although he changed the unbelievably tough lyric "Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose" to "Daddy must have hurt a lot back then, I suppose.” The real keeper that you want here is Swamp Dogg’s cover.
The Matched Set Prine’s friend Steve Goodman, who had hit it big when Arlo Guthrie did his “City of New Orleans,” brought Kris Kristofferson to hear Prine in Chicago one night. Kristofferson was so impressed he took Prine to New York to play an industry showcase at the Bitter End, which landed him a contract with Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records.
Like Prine, Kristofferson was a brilliant songwriter, folding bleak imagery into proto-folkie songs, and although some of Kristofferson’s songs became genuine hits – “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night” – they are the same basic model, if “genius” can be considered a model. Prine’s a better singer than Kristofferson, but shoot, I’m a better singer than Kristofferson. Hey, let’s listen to Kristofferson:
“People give me credit for ‘discovering’ John Prine. That’s like saying Columbus discovered America. It was already here.”
Kristofferson’s never even been nominated.
The Verdict I have nothing bad to say about John Prine, but it’s really hard for me to see him elevated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a performer. For one thing, he’s not really rock & roll. Put him in the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, absolutely, but for this ballot, I’m voting No.
The Cure’s very first single, “Killing an Arab,” from 1979,
sounds almost nothing like the florid danceable hits that they would make their
bones on in the 1980s and 1990s. It's skeletal, consisting of nothing more than a
skittering guitar, bass and drums. “Boys Don’t Cry,” the second single, boasted
similar instrumentation, but was a big leap forward in terms of melody and
riffage.
Somebody just getting into the Cure around the time of Disintegration
or "Friday I’m in Love" would probably not recognize these as songs from the same
band, aside from the distinctive yawp of Robert Smith. A lot of bands make that
kind of progression, of course, from raw to overproduced, but what’s great
about the Cure is that those early singles are as great as the later hits. All
the melodicism and atmosphere and weirdness and distinctive yawp were already
present.
The Cure didn’t do anything in America until “Let’s Go To
Bed” got some MTV airplay in 1982, although it didn’t do more than bubble under
on the Hot 100. But it took until Kiss me Kiss Me Kiss Me, in 1986 (the first
CD I ever bought, by the way), for them to have a Top Forty album, and for “Just
Like Heaven” to make the Top Forty – just barely sneaking in at Number Forty,
but at least Casey Kasem announced it once. "Why Can't I Be You" and "Hot Hot Hot!" were almost as good.
They finally had a genuine hit with “Lovesong,” a relatively
weak number off Disintegration that went to Number Two in 1989. (I saw the Cure on that tour and remember how that was the song everyone sat down for.) Disintegration's first single, “Fascination Street,” with its lascivious bass intro, topped only the Modern Rock charts, but in the end the albumwas as jampacked with hit-worthy material as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me had been.
“Friday I’m in Love” was their last Top Forty hit, in 1992. Generally,
I place a lot of stock in how many hits a band has had, but so many of these
Cure songs have entered the realm of classic rock – and what we now think of
as, oxymoronically enough, alternative classic rock – that I’m going to cut
them some slack. “Friday I’m in Love” became sort of the theme song for MTV’s
120 Minutes. Plus, they’re really good.
I also love that the Cure put out “In Between Days,” a nicely
melodic dance track from 1985 which was a modest hit, then decided they could
do better than that, so they rewrote it as “Just Like Heaven,” putting that
steam-powered (and incredibly lengthy) guitar riff on the front of it, and got
a Top Forty hit out of it. Plus, the best dance song of the Eighties.
The Matched Set The Kinks started out as a proto-punk band,
evolved into a chamber-pop kind of thing, then emerged in the Seventies and Eighties as an
arena rock band. Each sound was perfectly suited to its times, and was pulled off perfectly by the band. Is it
blasphemous for me to compare a revered classic band with a bunch of New Wave
twerps in face powder? I don’t know, but I’d rather listen to the Cure.
The Verdict The Cure has been a trailblazing band in New
Wave and Eighties dance music, and their stuff has held up very well, based as
it has always been in such strong songwriting. They are the archetype of what became known as alternative rock. They’re a real band, too, with
guitar solos and everything. What’s not to like? I vote Yes for the Cure.
I’ve written about Janet Jackson’s case for the Hall of Fame
before, here and here, and there’s not a whole lot more to say about it. She’s had more hit singles than nearly everyone who’s already enshrined, and is an icon
to many, many contemporary singers, not just women or people of color. So
rather than go into that, I thought I’d tackle the question of whether Nipplegate
really torpedoed her career, as the legend now has it.
The incident in question took place on February 1, 2004, two
months before the release of Damita Jo, Jackson’s eighth solo album. In the
interim, CBS forbade Jackson to appear at the Grammys, where she had been
scheduled to present an award. But Justin Timberlake, her partner in malfunction,
was still allowed to appear, although he was the one who instigated the incident.
Damita Jo sold just over a million copies in the U.S.,
although Jackson’s two previous albums had both sold over 3 million. None of
its three singles even reached the Top Forty, despite the fact that she had had
two Top Fives from her previous album, 2001’s All for You.
That all looks pretty bad, but I’m not quite convinced. There’s
a line on Wikipedia about the singles from Damita Jo being blackballed by pop
radio, but the reference links to an article that doesn’t say anything of the
sort. It can be hard to tell the difference between blacklisting and just not
liking a record. Her subsequent two albums sold even more poorly than Damita
Jo, suggesting that either her career had completely run out of steam, or the
blackballing was more persistent than anyone cared to admit.
More to the point, Miss Jackson had been placing songs in
the Top Five for 20 years up to that time, and people don’t do that. Elvis didn’t
do that, Stevie Wonder didn’t do that, Elton John
didn’t do that (aside from his late-career Lion King and Princess Di flukes). Only a very small handful of acts have stayed on the charts significantly longer than 20 years. You
don’t have to ask why someone didn’t continue to have hits after 20 years – you
have to ask why they did.
Jackson was only 37 at the time of Nipplegate, not particularly old for a pop star. She had been on the charts forever, but she was only 18 when Control came out. Nevertheless, I suspect she was nearing the end of her chart
run anyway by the mid-aughts, bare breast or no. But really, that’s neither
here nor there: Janet Jackson had done more than enough by Super Bowl XXXVIII
to warrant induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The Matched Set Madonna is one of the few pop stars whose
chart run lasted longer than Janet Jackson’s, although it was only by a few
years. And of course, Madonna made a huge cultural impact, with way too many
articles written about her containing the word “gaze.”
On the other hand,
Nipplegate still pops up in the occasional discussion, while Madonna’s Sex book has been basically forgotten. (Maybe featuring Vanilla Ice in it was not such a hot idea.) When MTV chose its first MTV Icon, in 2001, the selection was not Madonna or
Janet’s brother but Miss Jackson herself. And try though she might, Madonna's acting career has never launched a character as memorable as Penny on Good Times.
So you have someone with 90 percent of the chart impact of
Madonna, and maybe 80 percent of the zeitgeist impact. Yet Madonna sails in on
the first ballot, while Janet Jackson has lingered outside for years.
The Verdict An obvious Yes. Janet Jackson is overqualified
for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Devo left their footprints through an awful lot of Seventies
and Eighties culture, probably more than you realize, with ties to Neil Young, the
Pretenders, Square Pegs, Pee Wee Herman, the Kent State massacre, even the great Toni Basil. They made an early appearance on Saturday
Night Live, reinforcing that show’s reputation as a supporter of the avant-garde
even while, half the time, they were still inviting musical acts like Meat Loaf
and Judy Collins. (Fred Willard was the host.)
I remember watching this live as a wee tot, although I don’t remember my
reaction (I probably hated it). It’s pretty amazing, though, isn’t it? I’m a
little surprised that they came out with three guitars and a bass, since Devo
was promulgating what would evolve into New Wave synth-pop. The bassist is real
good, too.
Devo's label wanted to get the Stones' blessing before they
released this, so Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale found themselves sitting
down one afternoon with Mick Jagger himself. The New Yorker picks up the story:
As the sounds of the
cover filled the room, Jagger sat stone-faced.... “He was just looking down at
the floor swirling his glass of red wine,” Casale recently remembered, adding,
“He didn’t even have shoes on, just socks and some velour pants [! - ed.]. I don’t
know what his habits were then, but this was early afternoon and it looked like
he had just gotten up.”
For thirty seconds or
so, the men sat in silence, listening to the weird robo-funk coming from the
boom box. Then something changed. “He suddenly stood up and started dancing
around on this Afghan rug in front of the fireplace,” Casale said, of Jagger,
“the sort of rooster-man dance he used to do, and saying”—he impersonated
Jagger’s accent—“‘I like it, I like it.’ Mark and I lit up, big smiles on our
faces, like in ‘Wayne’s World’: ‘We’re not worthy!’ To see your icon that you
grew up admiring, that you had seen in concert, dancing around like Mick Jagger
being Mick Jagger. It was unbelievable.”
Let’s take it from the top: Devo was formed in Akron, Ohio,
by the Mothersbaugh and Casale brothers, along with a drummer who would later be replaced by the great Alan Myers. Gerald
Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had been students at Kent State in 1970 when four
protesters were murdered by the National Guard, one of them being Casale’s
friend Jeffrey Miller. That helped inspire the concept of de-evolution, which
would eventually give the band its name. Chrissie Hynde was there, too, and
played in a band with Mark Mothersbaugh before Devo got off the ground.
After seeing the band’s short 1976 film The Truth About
De-Evolution, David Bowie lobbied his label to sign them. The uniforms they wore in the film came from Gerald Casale's day job doing graphic design for a janitorial supply company. Neil Young recruited
them to appear as nuclear garbagemen in his film Human Highway, which Mark Mothersbaugh
ended up scoring. Gerald Casale and Toni Basil began dating, and Devo backed
her up on her debut album Word of Mouth (which actually post-dated “Mickey”), including
three Devo covers.
Devo itself finally landed on the pop charts with the MTV fave
“Whip It,” which went to Number Fourteen on the Billboard pop charts in 1980. In 1982,
they played at Muffy’s bat mitzvah on Square Pegs. I seem to remember a character on that show wearing plastic Devo hair, but can't find any references or pictures thereof. A little help?
Unfortunately, that’s about all there is to the Devo story.
Mark Mothersbaugh went on to produce the music for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and
turned into a highly successful TV composer, but “Whip It” would be their only
Top Forty hit. Their theme for Doctor Detroit peaked at No. 59 in 1983, and
they never even made the Hot 100 after that.
The Matched Set It’s gotta be Kraftwerk, right? We’re going
to deal with Kraftwerk a little later on, but like Devo, they were as much an
art project, deconstructing pop music, as they were a band. They were also a
little shy on the hits, with just “Autobahn” squeaking into the Top Forty.
The Verdict I want to like Devo more than I do. “Satisfaction”
is brilliant, “Whip It” remains a terrific single, and their commitment to the
whole art-project concept is admirable, especially since it’s a really cool
concept. Their only problem is the music – aside from those two singles, there
isn’t anything in the Devo catalog that I actively like, and a lot of it, like “Through
Being Cool” and “Freedom of Choice,” is pretty bad. I suppose I could be
convinced otherwise, but for now, I’m voting No on Devo.
Everybody loves Stevie Nicks’ songs: “Rhiannon,” “Sara,”
“Landslide,” “Dreams.” Too bad we’re not supposed to consider any of those
records here, because they were all Fleetwood Mac songs, and Fleetwood Mac was
inducted into the Hall of Fame back in 1998. We’re here to deal only with solo Stevie, which means
“Stand Back,” “Talk to Me,” “Edge of Seventeen.”
Stevie was also a great duet partner back in the day (which
was evident from her Mac work as well): “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with
Tom Petty, “Leather and Lace” with Don Henley, “Whenever I Call You Friend”
with Kenny Loggins. That stuff, she’ll get credit for here. But when it comes
right down to it, there are really only two strong points in Stevie’s favor:
The whole Welsh Witch persona, and “Edge of Seventeen.”
The shawls ‘n’ twirls Stevie has arguably already been
inducted; she was doing that crap as far back as “Rhiannon,” from 1976, with
Fleetwood Mac. Let’s not kid ourselves that it’s not a huge factor in her
mystique, and therefore in her iconic brand of stardom. My feeling is that you
absolutely should take that kind of stuff into account. Would Kiss have made it
in without the makeup?
Since it’s already been recognized, though, I don’t really feel
the need to recognize it again. It’s a little weird to ascribe her personality
to her group’s candidacy but not to her solo career, but here we are. Opinions
may differ.
Stevie’s other real talking point is “Edge of Seventeen,”
which wasn’t her biggest solo hit (it only went to No. 11 back in 1982) but
certainly has had the longest shelf life. I saw Stevie at Red Rocks about ten
years ago, and “Edge” got possibly the biggest response from the audience (with
the chainsaw riff being played by the man who played it on the original single,
Waddy Wachtel). The title comes from Tom Petty's wife Jane, who told Stevie she had met Petty "at the age of seventeen," but her strong Southern accent turned it into "edge."
Of course that riff showed up again on “Bootylicious,”
Destiny’s Child’s Number One single from 2001. Stevie appeared in the video but
had nothing to do with the recording of the song, aside from the sampling, but
it’s a killer record. To my mind, though, the rest of Stevie’s solo career
doesn’t add up to much.
Fun fact: Did you know that Stevie Nicks considered Joe
Walsh to be the one true love of her life? That’s a bit icky, ain’t it? Joe Walsh doesn't come across as the kind of guy who bathes very often.
The Matched Set Don Henley was inducted into the Rock &
Roll Hall of Fame as part of Eagles, also in 1998. It’s largely forgotten now, but
Henley had a substantive solo career, placing nine singles in the Top Forty between
1982 and 1990. (He and Stevie get shared custody of “Leather and Lace.”) “The
Boys of Summer” is still kind of an Eighties touchstone, for good or ill.
But does anyone think that Don Henley should be inducted as
a solo artist? I don’t think so.
The Verdict Everybody loves Stevie Nicks, who has evolved
from the ethereal spirit of the 1970s to that supercool aunt that your parents
kinda wish you wouldn’t talk to. Shoot, I love Stevie Nicks, too. If she hadn’t
already been inducted with Fleetwood Mac, and we could consider her body of
Mac-work in the current decision, I’d be inclined to vote for her. But her solo
career is really thin. I vote no on Stevie Nicks.
Let’s face it, Radiohead should have gone in last year, on
their first nomination to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s absurd
that we have to consider them again. Leaving them out of the Hall of Fame is
like leaving the Kinks out, or Neil Young, or the Go-Go’s. Wait, the Go-Go’s
aren’t in?
Radiohead is as important to contemporary rock music as Buddy
Holly was to his generation, seeing things in the music that other people hadn’t
come across but that would soon become obvious and greatly desired by all. In the early 1990s, they mastered pop music with songs like “Creep” and “Fake Plastic Trees,”
and then they decided that wasn’t good enough, so they tore the whole thing up
and reinvented it, and sounded better than ever.
The only knock against Radiohead is their relative lack of
chart success. They only had two top Forty hits in the U.S.: “Creep,” which
went to No. 34 in 1992, and “Nude,” which went to No. 37 in 2008. They did have
several hits on the U.S. alternative charts, for whatever that's worth, and they were much bigger in the
U.K., where all three of the brilliant singles from OK Computer, “Paranoid
Android,” “Karma Police” and “No Surprises,” made the Top Ten.
They don’t need the credit for that, though. Jimi Hendrix
had one Top Forty hit. Carl Perkins had one Top Forty hit. If you’re as
important and as good as Radiohead, chart success is a bonus, not a central qualification.
Hey, here's one more awesome thing about Radiohead: Their lyrics. They're not exactly Dylanesque streams of stanzas, but more aphoristic and incantatory, in a way that other bands couldn't even attempt. Thom Yorke will find a line he likes, then chew it around until it loses all meaning and becomes something completely different. What I most like about Radiohead's lyrics is that they're formed distinctively and unmistakably like Radiohead lyrics, and you know exactly what I mean by that.
Take a look at the rhymeless, repetitive, yet haunting lyrics to "Karma Police"
Karma police Arrest this man He talks in maths He buzzes like a fridge He's like a detuned radio
Karma police Arrest this girl Her Hitler hairdo Is making me feel ill And we have crashed her party
This is what you'll get This is what you'll get This is what you'll get When you mess with us
Karma police I've given all I can It's not enough I've given all I can But we're still on the payroll
This is what you'll get This is what you'll get This is what you'll get When you mess with us
For a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself Phew, for a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself
For a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself Phew, for a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself
The Matched Set I’ve
been listening to a lot of Bee Gees lately, from their early days, which span roughly
from “New York Mining Disaster,” in 1967, to “Love So Right,” from 1976. After
that, of course, Saturday Night Fever happened, the Bee Gees became briefly the
biggest stars in the world, with six Number One hits from 1977 to 1979. When
people think of the Bee Gees these days, they think of the late-70s, “Stayin’
Alive” era band.
But the music they made before disco blew up was already worthy
of the Hall of Fame, a collection of gorgeous, delicate Beatlesque pop that kept
them on the charts for the better part of a decade. (Some of the Saturday Night
Fever music, like “You Should Be Dancing” and “How Deep Is Your Love,” had
actually been released on prior Bee Gees albums.)
Anyway, I think Radiohead suffers from a little bit of the
same phenomenon. OK Computer was regarded as such a revolutionary achievement,
from the moment it came out, that it overshadowed what they had already done. The
Bends is arguably their best album! “High and Dry”! “My Iron Lung”! They made
this ridiculously good guitar album, one that would be a career capper for most
bands, then they tore up the blueprints and started over again.
Unlike the Bee Gees, Radiohead didn’t have enough material in
the can before the career-altering event, but man, were they awesome already. They were one of the world's best guitar bands, then they became the absolute best deconstruction whatever-you-want-to-call-it band. They
didn’t need to turn the world upside-down to become one of rock's most important acts, but they did it anyway.
The Verdict I heard
of a couple of voters who passed over Radiohead last year so they could vote
for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, assuming that Radiohead’s induction was a foregone
conclusion. Fellas, in a world where Deep Purple and ELO are considered worthy, Radiohead is not obvious to everyone. Let’s not make that mistake again. I'm voting Yes for Radiohead.
There was a cover story in Rolling Stone about Def Leppard
fairly late in the band’s career, when they were down to a collective total of
nine arms, that ended on a scene of the band trying to jam together, and
failing miserably. They eventually admitted to the writer (the great David Fricke) that if they ever
showed up at a bar and tried to take the stage, the only thing they’d be able to play is
Def Leppard songs. Maybe.
That says a lot about Def Leppard’s music, which is often
characterized as heavy metal, because of the power chords and the shaggy British hair
and the name consciously evoking Led Zeppelin, but to my ears, it's much
closer to high-gloss pop. It’s a studio construction, a la Ace of Base, much
more than it’s like Motorhead. Pyromania and Hysteria were both recorded by each member individually, with none of them playing together as a band, and that's how they sound to me. That's not very metal.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with that - I much prefer
well-constructed pop. But I think it’s the reason why Def Leppard has been
characterized as the heavy metal band that girls like (a formulation I believe I first heard from my friend Gavin Edwards). It’s because they were
focused so much on creating radio-friendly singles, and because they lacked the misogynistic vibe that so much metal traffics in. And it worked, because
they ruled the charts in the MTV era, putting nine singles in the pop Top 30 during
the 1980s.
That’s a strong factor in their favor. Also, there’s the
fact that “Photograph,” which put them on the map, was really great, a McCartneyesque construction crammed with
hooks and gorgeous harmonies, crunched out with those ‘80s guitars. “Photograph”
was the band’s first Top Forty hit, in 1982, and they seemed to spend the rest
of the decade trying to remake it.
The follow-ups were close enough to the archetype to reach
the charts, but I don’t know that very many people are listening to “Rocket” or
“Animal” these days. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” seems to be their most enduring
non-“Photograph” hit, but points off for stealing its trope from an Archies
song.
Def Leppard had a very strong cultural impact in those early
days of MTV, with videos in constant rotation and a crossover appeal to the
teenage girls of the era. I don’t discount that at all, and I think it’s the best reason to vote for them. But I look at their cultural impact since then,
and I just don’t see it. They got outflanked on one side by Guns n’ Roses and
on the other side by Radiohead, and by the early ‘90s, there weren’t a whole
lot of bands cranking out radio-ready processed metal, vying to be the next Def
Leppard.
The Matched Set I
liken Def Leppard to Duran Duran, another MTV-ready band churning out pop hits from
underneath carefully chosen haircuts. “Rio,” like ‘Photograph,” still
sounds great if you come across it on the car radio, but the other hits have a
lot less impact, and they didn’t leave a lot of footprints. Also, girls love
Duran Duran.
Duran Duran has never even been nominated for the Hall of Fame, near as I can
tell, despite a dozen Top Forty hits in the '80s, even more than Def Leppard had. Their image is that of a lightweight, photogenic pop band, and that’s the
same bucket I’d put Def Leppard into.
The Verdict Let’s face it, Def Leppard is going in. They
were to the ’80s what artists like Chicago and the Steve Miller Band were to
the ‘70s, and those acts were voted in to the Hall of Fame fairly easily.
But I’m just not feeling
it. For all their chart success, I can’t say that I’ve go out of my way to
listen to their music since "Photograph," was on the charts. I don’t see any bands that appear to
have been strongly influenced by them, and that's important to me. Nothing against Def Leppard, but they
haven’t earned my vote.
