Piano Rolls (and Rocks)

Let’s face it— the primary instrument of rock music is, and has been for a while now, the electric guitar. 

It’s not the only music you can play on that instrument, and other instruments can play rock… but few things are as associated with each other as rock is with the electric guitar. If you were cataloging recordings by genre, using universally recognized icons and symbols, you’d use an electric guitar-shaped label for the rock albums.

But yes, pianos have been used to make rock music— and make music rock— from the get-go. Plenty of rockstars, including Rock Hall inductees, use it as their primary instrument. And plenty of others, whose main instrument is the electric guitar, will “bring it down a bit” in concert by plinking out a plaintive ballad on the ol’ ivories.

I’m not saying that the Rock Hall needs to induct more piano players, or start prioritizing them. Well, I am implying that. And I do think it would be nice to acknowledge just how much rock music has been made on these instruments.

It just might induce the Hall to take another look at synth-led bands… in my dreams…

Perhaps, the next time the Hall looks for a “special exhibit” topic, it can spotlight the piano and all of the Inductees-- and Early Influences-- who have rocked the house with, well, the instrument that uses as much lumber as the house.

Seriously, wouldn’t you like to see, and hear, a history of rock ’n’ roll piano? I’d watch that documentary and buy its box set.

https://digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_keyboard.html

Update: Billy Preston was inducted with an Award for Musical Excellence in 2021, and also that year keyboard-based band Kraftwerk was inducted as an Early Influence (in a later genre: electronic music).

Then in 2022, Duran Duran was Inducted, as was Lionel Richie, who plays piano when he plays something, and composes on piano regardless.

In 2023, keyboardist Al Kooper was inducted for Musical Excellence, which is good because he belongs in, and that's how he belongs in. 

Longshots and Critical Darlings

In linguistics, there are two main schools of thought. Prescriptivists would say that “alright” is unacceptable, since it should be “all right.” Descriptivists would say “alright” is… fine, because so many people have used it for so long, it has become acceptable. 

So the question is… what is the purpose of the Rock Hall? To tell people which rock acts are important, or to reflect which acts the people themselves already think are important?

Since its very inception, the Rock Hall has been about prescription, not description. It is run by experts, we are told, who really know which acts are really important for us to know about and listen to.

And that’s fine. After all, the acts that are on the radio and loudspeakers in public places and in superhero movie soundtracks… you already know about those. They are easy to find out about. You don’t have to attend a class or visit a museum— just sit down, turn on the closest music-playing tech, and there they are.

If museums serve a function at all, it’s to educate. And that means telling you things you don’t know, and can’t learn from the TV and radio.

If they serve another function, it’s to preserve history. In pop-culture, “history” is last week. Come on, name last year’s winner for Best Picture at the Oscars.

There is a story about a boy on an archaeological dig in the Middle East. He excitedly shows the dig’s leader a pottery shard he found, with some writing on it. “Nice,” says the leader. “That’s 200 years old.” The boy gets even more excited, until the leader says, “You can keep it. We’re looking for things that are 2,000 years old.”

But this not rock science, it’s rock music, which has been around less time than some people still living. Still, even music that’s 25 years old is… “old” in music terms.

Once, in the mid-’00s, my own wife referred to a 1980’s song as “old.” I took umbrage; I listen to that era’s music, but also jazz and blues from the 1930s, folk music that’s even older, and classical that’s older yet. “No,” I said, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic is an ‘old’ song. That song on the radio is younger than you, and I am not married to an ‘old’ woman.”

So it’s important to tell people about music they don’t know, whether it’s because it was always obscure, only popular among a certain group of people, or— gasp— made before they were born!

On the other hand, if the Rock Hall did not induct bands people know, they wouldn’t sell any tickets. It’s a balance.

There is a book I have called The Rock Snob’s Dictionary. I suppose I am to a degree a musical snob. But because I am, I can introduce my kids to music their friends can’t. I know what songs the songs on the radio sampled, or plagiarized, from. When my kid doesn’t recognize, say, a sitar in a song, I can tell him that’s what it is.

It’s the job of the experts in the Hall to tell us what, and who, we don’t know, not to just echo what’s popular. “Fame” runs both ways. It can be a “hall of the already-famous,” or a “the famous-because-they-are-in-the-Hall.”

A TV station once advertised the reruns they broadcast by saying, “If you haven’t seen an episode, it’s new to you!” even if it is, you know, old. And education is about what’s new to you, even of it is “already knew” to others.

So there should be at least one inductee every year that makes people go, “Who?” Because the next step after that can be, “Well, if they got in, they must be pretty good! I’m gonna go check ’em out.” Which is when the preservation and education happen.

And that’s pretty damn alright.

Update: Todd Rundgren got Inducted in 2021. 

Don’t Know Where I’m Goin’…

A “long, strange trip” down a “long and winding road” may be great to sing about. But if your music resembles that, don’t expect to be inducted into the Rock Hall. 

The Hall tends to favor music that is melodic, structured, and direct. There are very few inductees that indulge in meandering musical exploration— prog rock, jazz-rock, jam bands, and the like.

Guitar solos seem fine, as long as they are short. And a jam or two in the course of a concert is also acceptable.

But don’t commit those to record, or expect them to be played on the radio, or make them a regular part of your identity… and then expect to be inducted.

A long song or two in your catalog might be OK, but again, the song should be highly structured and melodically predictable. No noodling and doodling for them.

"TL;DR" is Internet-speak for “Too Long; Didn’t Read.” Except for the Hall, for whom it stands for “Too Long; Don’t Regard.”

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/jazz/jazz-musicians-look-to-rock-n-roll-hall-of-fame-for-inspiration/

Did We Run Out of Early Influences Already?

As with the Non-Performers/Ertegun Award, the Hall seems to have lost steam in giving out the Early Influences Award.

It was given every year, from the inaugural year— 1986— to 2000.

Then, not for nine years, until 2009. It can be understood if, during that time, people just assumed that anyone worth receiving it already had.

But then, they started giving it again… every three years, for some reason: 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018…

In fairness, it is potentially possible to run out of people who one can say both lived before rock music was a “thing” and also contributed to its development. Reasonably speaking, they would have had to be active between 1920 (the early days of blues and jazz) and 1950, probably in the US… and have not just performed, but likely recorded and been broadcast somewhat widely.

Still, it’s hard to fathom that-- even with those narrow parameters-- only 33 people qualify.

Rock pulls from so many other genres, and in so many ways. Rock is not just about the music— it’s about stage presence, dance moves, costuming, vocal inflections, and that rock attitude and energy that electrify.

Certainly, we can look across a three-decade span in one of the most musically fertile places in world history and come up with someone every year to who contributed to rock music.

I have an idea. The Hall began inductions in 1986, and as of this post's first posting, it has inducted the class of 2020. That’s 34 years of inductions. And, as of 2020, there are 33 Early Influencers.

So let’s call that “close enough for jazz” and just say that the Hall has inducted, at least on average, one Early Influence per year.

How’s about, then, going forward, they induct one more Early Influence every year, to keep the average going… until they really run out.

https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/11/53debedacc4690/rock-roll-hall-of-fame-20-earl.html

Update: in 2022, they Inducted music preservationist Elizabeth Cotten, who like Pete Seeger kept the old songs alive by always singing them. 

In 2023, Link Wray, an early rocker, was inducted as an Earl Influence after multiple nominations.

“Later” Influences

It is one of the impressive things about the Rock Hall, that it recognizes that the music it honors did not come from nowhere. Its “Early Influences” category honors just that— the roots of rock.

Thus far, these influences have been shown to be blues, country, folk, gospel, jazz, doo-wop… everything from New Orleans stride to Western swing. One notable exception is classical; not a few inductees incorporated classical themes, modes, and even specific pieces into their music, sometimes their entire oeuvres (how’s that for classical?).

Wouldn’t it be something to see Bach or Beethoven inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

In any case, other genres didn’t stop influencing rock, once it got going. Artists emerged in the late 1960s and since who, while not rock, were borrowed from by rock. 

Since they weren't "early" influences, they can't go in that category. They were "later" influences...

Now, the Hall recognizes this, and inducts such artists as… Performers. But some of them are so far away from rock that— unlike rap or country— they don’t even fall under the overall banner of “popular music.” I mean, jazz, classical, movie scores, and modern and experimental music (like what Philip Glass does).

There are already enough categories, but I wonder if these artists don’t belong in the catch-all “Musical Excellence” category, instead of taking some of the precious few slots available each year for Inductees who play, y'know, rock 'n' roll.

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/pop-songs-sample-based-on-classical-music/

Update: The Hall seems to have really embraced this idea. In 2021, they Inducted two-- Gil Scott-Heron, who was an Early Influence on rap... and Kraftwerk, an Early Influence on electronic music. 

Then in 2022, they Inducted Harry Belafonte, an Early Influence in world music (well, its influence on rock, anyway-- world music had existed for a while). 

In 2023, the Hall inducted DJ Kool Herc, another rap pioneer, into this category, alongside Link Wray, an early rocker.